Whenever I create a file in FCP, though I have 'hide extension' unchecked, it still hides the extension. Seems like it actually is an OSX problem. Any solution?

How do I keep external hard-drives from falling asleep? If I'm working in FCP and haven't used media on a HD in a while, it goes to sleep. Then if I play a sequence there's a pause while it starts up. Is there a way to keep it 'alert' continuously?

thaks,
elmer

Whenever I create a file in FCP, though I have 'hide extension' unchecked, it still hides the extension. Seems like it actually is an OSX problem. Any solution?

In the Finder, choose Finder menu > Preferences, then under the advanced tab, enable the "Show all file extensions" checkbox.

How do I keep external hard-drives from falling asleep? If I'm working in FCP and haven't used media on a HD in a while, it goes to sleep. Then if I play a sequence there's a pause while it starts up. Is there a way to keep it 'alert' continuously?

Go to the Apple menu > System Preferences, then in the Energy Savers pane set the "Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for:" slider to "Never" ... also uncheck the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep whenever possible" checkbox.

Excellent! Thanks!

The problem with external drives going to sleep may not be that easy to remedy. I have a 500GB Seagate firewire drive which goes to sleep after a period of inactivity. I also have a total of 12 other external drives (really!) and none of them exhibit this behavior. So I think it's a drive-specific thing in this case which is beyond the control of the operating system.

I started a thread on this topic a long time ago, and IIRC somebody mentioned a shareware program which is supposed to help with this but I never followed through. So I only use that drive for archival storage since, as you say, it's annoying to have it go to sleep while using FCP.