Harddisk and Mac questions

[Cleveland Brown]

I recently got a powermac G5 with the dual 2.5's Got the FCPHD production suite with it. I have already filled up the hard drive but it only took about 45 minutes of video captured at DV NTSC 48BIT. I need a good external HD and don't have a lot of cash for it. I also have a few other quiestions if anyone can help.

While doing a batch capture, after logging the clips I wanted. It started the capture and never stopped at any of the clips. Got the spinning colorful disk and it wouldn't stop. I had to shut the computer down to get it to respond. The video does not show up anywhere in the Bins but I suspect it kept it somewhere on the hard drive. I am not as familiar with Mac as I am PC. So my questions are as follows.

1. If it is on the Hard Drive, where would it be?
2. How can I do a disk clean up?
3. How can I see the available disk space for the Hard Drive.
4. If you log clips and they overlap. i.e. the end of one clip is also part of the next clip you log, will it cause problems when you do the batch capture. I tried this and got the spinning disk lockup. (the Canon XL2 is reomote controled capable via firewire)
5. How can I set the amount of time before my monitors shut off. I tried toing to monitor settings and it does not give me that option. I think the machine is qoing to sleep on me after 5 minutes of not hitting any buttons, even while it is capturing. It is getting annoying.

Thanks to anyone who answeres any of these questions.

[Rob Lohman]

Cleveland: I've renamed your thread (since I cannot see where you ask what
kind of harddisk to get) and moved it to our Mac forum (it was in the HDV
forum).

If you are looking for a new harddisk I hear a lot of Mac people are using
Lacie brand external drives.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Lots of questions.... will take a quick stab at them...

I have already filled up the hard drive but it only took about 45 minutes of video

That doesn't sound right unless you've put a LOT of other stuff on your hard drive. 45 minutes of video should take up less than 10GB on your hard drive. After installing all my applications and many thousands of other files
on my 160MB G5 hard drive I still have about 60GB free. I suspect the drive is not really full, but you're misinterpreting some error message (or there's a disk problem). Something similar seems to be going on in this thread also: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=43615

While doing a batch capture, after logging the clips I wanted. It started the capture and never stopped at any of the clips. Got the spinning colorful disk and it wouldn't stop.

There have been a number of posts about problems with FCP and the XL-2. I'm not sure what the resolution of these have been, but I suspect you might be having the same issues...

The video does not show up anywhere in the Bins but I suspect it kept it somewhere on the hard drive.

Unless you configured it specially, look inside your documents folder. There should be an FCP folder there and a capture scratch folder inside that. The capture files will be in folders named for each project you create.

2. How can I do a disk clean up?

What do you want to "clean up"? If you want to delete the unwanted capture files just locate them and drag to the trash. If you're worried about hard drive problems then start by running the disk utility program inside /Applications/Utilities. Select the icon for your drive and click the "First Aid" button. If you're still worried there might be a problem, DiskWarrior is my favorite 3rd party program.

3. How can I see the available disk space for the Hard Drive.

On the desktop click once on the icon for your hard drive. Go to the File menu and select "Get info".

4. If you log clips and they overlap. i.e. the end of one clip is also part of the next clip you log, will it cause problems when you do the batch capture.

It shouldn't be a problem, or at least it hasn't ever been a problem for me.

5. How can I set the amount of time before my monitors shut off.

Go to System Preferences and click on the Energy Saver icon, choose whatever settings you like.

Hope this gets you started in the right direction. Although it's probably not related to your problem, you really shouldn't use the startup drive (main internal disk) for video capture and editing. It has too many little files on it already and will become fragmented, impacting performance. The system and applications also need to constantly read and write to that drive. The cheapest expansion is buying a second internal SATA drive; I picked up a 250 GB drive for a reasonable price. Look in the back of your G5 manual for very clear instructions on how to install - it's easy.

But if you aren't comfortable with opening up your computer then you can always just buy an external firewire drive. Again, bigger is better. If you're only editing DV then firewire 400 works fine.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Cleveland Brown

I have already filled up the hard drive but it only took about 45 minutes of video

I think I may know what your problem is here. Since it seems to be a recurring theme, I've turned it into a "sticky"; see this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=44189

[Cleveland Brown]

Boyd, Thanks for you help. What I ended up doing was deleting the last set of clips I had captured. After deleting one of the two minute clips, my hard drive suddenly showed that it had more that 100gigs available again. I thougth that made more sense. Then I decided to just capture the entire contents of the tape since I had already logged most of it twice already and didn't want to sit there and do it again.

I got a strange error message when I tried to use the start/stop detection feature. "the file is not one that can be anylized." By this time I was pretty pissed off since I had tried to capture this video over and over to no avail.

I called Apple and they told me that sometimes when you get a lock up, FCP will create some off the wall ghost file that makes the hard drive think it is taking up an ungodly amount of disk space. They emailed me instructions on how to delete the preferences file. After that you reset your sequence and capture settings and it should work fine. It did of course work just fine. I captured the entire tape at DV NTSC 48 Khtz, used the Stop/Start detection and broke everything into subcilps. This time it only took up about 10 gigs which made a whole lot more sense. I'll post the instructions for dealing with that issue on a seperate post reply right after this one. Problem solved.

Or is it? I am now having another issue. I figured out how to change the sleep options and reset them to 15 minutes, now it won't even go to sleep, even when I tell it to. It goes to sleep and wakes back up immediately without me touching anything. Same thing if I try to shut down the computer. No idea why but I did switch out the monitors and am wondering if that could have something to do with it. Very strange.

About using the boot drive, right now I have no choice. I can't afford another hard drive at least for a few more weeks so for now I will have to use it. I did read your take on that in another post of yours elsewhere on the site and it makes sense. My next post will tell how to fix the problem with the hard drive filling up.

[Cleveland Brown]

Final Cut Pro 4: How to delete the preference files
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn how to resolve issues caused by unusable preference files in Final Cut Pro 4.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When troubleshooting Final Cut Pro, one step you can take is to delete the Final Cut Pro preference files. Doing this restores Final Cut Pro to the default settings and behavior. These files contains user preferences for scratch disk settings, capture settings, window layouts, and so forth.

To delete the Final Cut Pro 4 preferences files, do the following:

Quit Final Cut Pro 4.

Click the Finder icon in the Dock.

From the Go menu, choose Go to Folder.

Type: ~/Library/Preferences/ Note: The tilde "~" refers to your home directory. For more information see "Mac OS X: Using Your Home Directory".

Click Go.

Drag the file named "com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist" to the Trash (Figure 1).

Double-click the folder named "Final Cut Pro User Data".

Drag the file named "Final Cut Pro 4.0 Preferences" to the Trash (see Figure 2).

Drag the file named "Final Cut Pro POA Cache" to the Trash (Figure 2).

Open Final Cut Pro.

Important: Do not delete any of the other files in the Final Cut Pro User Data folder.

Once this process is completed Final Cut Pro reverts to its installed defaults. Reset all of your desired application preferences to match what they were before--in particular your Scratch Disk Preferences, keyboard mappings, and the selected Sequence Settings.

Back up configured preference files

To avoid recreating all your custom settings in the event you have to delete the preference files again, follow these steps to save a clean copy of the file:

Make a backup copy of the "Final Cut Pro Preferences" and the "com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist" files immediately after it is configured for the first time.

Put the backup copy of the files in a safe place.

If you have to delete the preference files again, you can simply replace them with the backup copy of the saved, clean files. This preserves your desired preference settings, while eliminating any unwanted behaviors that may have been caused by a faulty Final Cut Pro Preferences file.

Note: It is not necessary to back up the Final Cut Pro POA Cache file.

Cleveland,

To your question:

"I need a good external HD and don't have a lot of cash for it."

I like the LaCie 250GB Porsche External FireWire external hard-drive. Looks good and I think it's a good deal for $190.

[Boyd Ostroff]

If budget is a concern then go with an internal drive, like this 250GB Seagate SATA disk for $160. This way you're also pretty well assured the fastest possible performance and you don't tie up any of your firewire ports.

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/...pno~200683.asp