I have some video on a WD 1tb usb hard drive, and typically have no problems when I need to edit video from it. All of a sudden, when I load certain video into the trimmer and hit play, nothing happens, then I am not able to play anything at all (nothing in the timeline or trimmer). It comes back to life after a reboot. it doesnt do this when using video from an internal drive. Anyone know why that might be happening?

It's possible that your external drive is going to sleep. Most of them are set to power down to save electricity and wear and tear on the drive. You should be able to go into the settings using the tools that are installed on the drive when you first hook it up.

Mine usually will just pause for a second and then start running if they happen to be powered down. You shouldn't have to reboot to "wake it up"

I don't think it's going to sleep, unless it falls to sleep in a matter of seconds. I just tried it again, one second a clip will play in the trimmer just fine, then the next clip will crash the trimmer, and then won't let me play anything at all. I am moving all my video off the hard drive and on to an internal drive, but it would be nice to know whats causing this, its got me stumped.

I should add, if I don't put it in the trimmer, and instead, go right to the timeline, it works perfectly....so its something in the trimmer.

okay, weird find. it also only seems to be happening if I have the "show video monitor" button deselected, and am viewing the trimmer in the main video monitor....

Are you viewing any of this via firewire and convertor through to an External Monitor?

Grazie

no, its all on my computer monitors

Oh well, that's that theory outta window then . .

Grazie

thanks for the thought anyway!