Constant problems with FCP and peripherals

[Mary Ann Roman]

I have constant problems with my FCP system. Problems include:

1. recognizing camera (which I use to load footage).
2. An EZquest ext firewire drive that mounts inconsistently.
3. FCP and system freezes.

I'm suspicous of both the drive and the camera. The camera's firewire port may be a little iffy. Could this be causing freezes? The drive has trouble mounting every time I have a freeze. I've used disk warrior on it many times. Do I have a lemon?

Are there other things I should do to stabilize the system?

Dual 1.8 G5
OS X 10.3.9
1GB DDR SDRAM
Final Cut Pro HD 4.5

[Peter Wiley]

I am not familiar with Disk Warrior on OS X. If it does not repair permissions, try doing that first use disk utility. You can also try trashing FCP preferences and/or zapping the PRAM (see system help).

What are you trying tp do when the system freezes? Capture?

[Mary Ann Roman]

Disk Warrior does repair permissions, I;m not sure why it is better than Disk Utility but a tech at Apple recommended I get it. I haven't tried zappling p-ram or trashing preferences.

Today FCP crashed while starting up. Other times it has frozen if I've left it alone for awhile and have to wake up the system.

[Boyd Ostroff]

I've used to run FCP 4.5 on a dual 2.5 G5 with several external drives and 10.3.x without problems.

I suppose there could be a variety of things happening. For starters, what version of QuickTime are you using. I know there are some issues with FCP 4.5 and QT 7. If you have QT 7 installed you might want to downgrade and see if it helps. Regardless, perhaps it would be a good idea to reinstall FCP and QT from the original disks. Then afterwards use software update or go directly to Apple's site and install all the applicable updates to FCP, but NOT TO QUICKTIME. BTW, you should be sure that the software update preference pain is NOT set for automatic. Since you're running some older software, this can cause problems when new versions of Quicktime are released.

Not sure, but the QT installer on your original disks may balk at replacing a newer version. If so then you should be able to find an uninstaller for QT here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....81&postcount=3

As far as the disk problems, that could certainly be related to the drive hardware. Try using that drive on another machine, and try another external drive on your FCP machine to see if the problems go away.

[Peter Wiley]

As FCP is starting up, I think this happens on 4.5, you will notice a number of "loading" messages that appear under the the place were the version number is listed. When FCP freezes on start up does it always freeze at the same loading message? If it does the message is an important clue.

I am going to guess that the problem is not with FCP or the drive, but that part of the file system on your startup disk has been horked -- I had a version of this problem the other day which prevented me from burning to DVD -- and prevents the system from seeing drives properly and this would explain the freeeze on startup and waking up and with mounting the drive and camera.

The fix here is to try the fsck command . . . go to the following link and follow the instructions.

http://www.osxfaq.com/dailytips/07-2002/07-31.ws

Read them carefully before you begin. Note that you may have to type fsck -yf instead of just fsck -y to get this to work properly and note that the instructions say you may have to do fsck more than once.

[Mary Ann Roman]

Thanks so much for the replies. I will check on the Quicktime issue or maybe I should upgrade FCP? The fsck command was one I've heard alluded to, but never heard how to do it. I will definately try it.

Right now things are running OK again after having used disk warrior on my start-up disk (this usually helps for a while, but the problem always seems to return). I'm also looking at buying a USB/voltage regulator - I have limited circuits here and perhaps brownouts are at the root of this...

[Martin Mayer]

Also seek out and install Apple's latest ProApplication Support package (up to v3.1 or more now).

http://www.apple.com/support/downloa...macosx104.html

It cures many funnies with Apple's pro apps.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Mary Ann Roman

I'm also looking at buying a USB/voltage regulator

Definitely do that - crashes can cause big disk problems. I think you meant "UPS" (Uninterruptible Power Supply) instead of "USB" (Universal Serial Bus :-)

Upgrading isn't a bad idea either, although you might need to also upgrade to MacOS X 10.4.x (even if this isn't strictly required, it would insure that you have all the latest versions of system components).

Apple is currently offering an attractive deal for the "crossgrade" to the full version of Final Cut Studio for $200. This includes not only FCP, but also DVD Studio Pro, Motion and Soundtrack Pro.

http://www.apple.com/universal/crossgrade/

If you go this route then the ideal would be to "clone" your system disk drive to an external drive using a utility program. Then do an erase and install with MacOS X which completely wipes your hard drive. At the end of the install process you are asked if you're upgrading from another machine. Answer yes and browse to find the cloned external drive. The installer will bring over all your old files and applications. This should insure that you don't have any conflicting old libraries and system components. It worked well for me at any rate.

[Mary Ann Roman]

Thanks, I did mean UPS.