I'm having a minor issue with FCP and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

Lately when I use FCP, it runs fine when I first start it. But after I work with it for about an hour, it slows down quite a bit. For example, if I attempt to move the playhead in the timeline, there is a delay before the move begins. Or if I hit play, there is a delay before it starts playing. This happens even if I have no other applications running. Also, the project I'm working on is not especially big (7 mins long) or track intensive (2 video tracks, 3 audio tracks) and no fancy effects other than dissolves and speed changes. Fortunately, if I quit FCP and open it again, the operating speed goes back to normal. It's just kind of annoying since I have to quit the application several times a day. This never used to happen, so I'm kind of baffled. Any ideas on what might be causing this?

System: I'm running FCP 4.5 on a Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 with 1GB RAM, OSX 10.3.9, and working with standard DV. I also use two hard drives, a 300GB primary drive and 250GB scratch drive.

Did you change any configurations recently? Update the system, FCP, etc., even with a small jump?

Otherwise, maybe something just got corrupt. It can happen.

If you can't figure anything else out...
Options:
1. Reinstall FCP (this isn't too much work, so you can hope that'll fix it)
2. Reformat the computer

It might also be something weird about the specific project. Does it do it on anything else? I guess you'd have to test that for an hour.
If you can, get your stuff into a new project, perhaps.

Hi Brennan. It's been a few years since I ran FCP 4.5 but I remember behavior exactly like you describe after long edit sessions. I think you just need to quit and reopen FCP.

However 4.5 used to have some issues with 10.3.9. I remember I held off upgrading to 10.3.9 specifically because of that, I was working a really big project and didn't want to take any chances, so I stayed at 10.3.7 IIRC.

But really, FCP 5.x under OSX10.4.x is a big speed improvement. I remember seeing much better RT performance when I upgraded.