NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2002

[Ken Tanaka]

Dropped frames (DFs) were a frequent problem with FCP 1.2.x and became less prevalent with each successive release. Now with FCP 3 it seems to be somewhat of a rarity...which, of course is no consolation to you, sergeant.

DF's can be a real bogey-man induced by a relatively wide variety of causes. On a brand-new system such as yours my bet would be with your settings or your RAID configuration. RAID can be a -very- tricky animal and, to some degree, it can be overkill for FCP. I would look first at your RAID. If possible, de-install the RAID and install a single drive on your ATA bus to determine if this is the culprit.

BTW, you didn't note whether you're using OS 9.x or OS 10.x.

OX10 latest edition.... Had removed ALL drives but main... Nothing in the system but the ONE drive which is on the ATA buss (80G Baracuda) ... EVERYTHING else is out... STILL the same... Zeroing out that main hard drive as we speak and going to reload all.... Zeroing was the ONLY thing I haven't tried... Maybe something on that drive thats corrupting the files... 80G, taking over 8 hours so far, and about 3/4 done now.... Hope the hell that does it.... Even has Apple stumped... Did every test under the sun and the hardware is fine.... It's definately a software problem and they're not sure if it's FCP or OX10 at this point....

<<<-- Originally posted by bogiesan : It's not a bug because it doesn't happen with everyone's system.
The most likely causes for dropped frames are trying to capture to your startup drive or to a drive that isn't fast enough to handle the data stream.
Do you drop frames when attempting to capture to each of your drives?
Why did you stripe the x15s? Are you capturing uncompressed component?
If your RAID is the only volume that is dropping frames you've got a SCSI problem. Those are easy to cure or nightmares, depending on your familarity. If all of your drives are dropping frames there is something fundamentally wrong with your FireWire setup, most likely.
Can you play back without dropping any frames if you use imported files from tutorials on CD or DVD?

Be sure to check creativecow.net FCP forum and Apple FCP forum for a different kind of expertise.

david


<<<-- Originally posted by sergeant : Just got FCP 3 and my new G4 1G dual... It's loaded with 1.5G ram and two Seagate X-15 Hard drives (striped), plus an 80G IDE for the main....

Problem is, no matter what, I constantly get dropped frames, even on the tutorial... Have cleaned EVERYTHING out, started FRESH, reinstalled all software, but still get it.... Have also removed all added hardware and everything by process of elimination, with NO change...

HAS TO BE A BUG... ANYBODY GOT THE SAME PROBLEM PLEASE LET ME KNOW...

Thanks -->>> -->>>


Hi...

It's not hardware and not in capturing... It's only in playback.... Stripped the X15's as they're only 18G drives and they run at 15,000 rpm 3.5 dt.... Runs just a litle bit faster than a single drive and don't have to switch drives if they filled up at 18G.... No, not uncompressed... Just a big project.... About 24G in size... Not using main drive for any capture or work..... Unit is dedicated for editing only...

[Jeff Donald]

Hi,

The 80 gig AT drive should be partitioned into at least three partitions. OSX and FCP 3 on one partition. OS 9.2 on second partition. Third partition should be for media files. Capture and playback with the media, OS and FCP 3 on the same partition can cause problems. Are the dropped frames occuring when you are printing to tape or just playing back from the timeline?

Jeff

<<<-- Originally posted by jtdonald : Hi,

The 80 gig AT drive should be partitioned into at least three partitions. OSX and FCP 3 on one partition. OS 9.2 on second partition. Third partition should be for media files. Capture and playback with the media, OS and FCP 3 on the same partition can cause problems. Are the dropped frames occuring when you are printing to tape or just playing back from the timeline?

Jeff -->>>

Thanks for the reply.... The software comes loaded as it was.. Now getting rid of the 80 G AT drive ands putting the system on one of my X15 drives... Going to use the 80G for storage only... It's slower then hell, but OK for that purpose.... 9.5 access @ 7K rpm... The X15 is 3.2 @ 15K... Much faster... X15's never caused a problem... Ran them in my PC, loaded to the hilt.... I did zero out the Mac drives and reloaded everything and it SEEMED to clear up the situation, however, I'm not satisfied with the speed.... As of now, I'm zeroing out everything again and will load onto my X15's... I'm beginning to think it's the mismatch in speed or the slow speed that may be causing the problems... Never had this with Premier 6.0 on the PC with the X15's... Problem was, Premier was just too limited, even with After Affects, for me..... Will let you all know what happened after I get it ready to run....

[Jeff Donald]

Hi,

The AT drives are plenty fast if your are only capturing DV. The specs for AT 7200 RPM drives far exceed the requirments of DV. SCSI is needed if you are doing uncompressed video. It is a known issue that have the system software (OSX), the program software (FCP3) and the media (your digital files from the camcorder) all on the same partition will cause dropped frames.

If you require SCSI for uncompressed video via a third party board from Aurora, Pinnacle or Digital VooDoo check the Apple site to make sure your SCSI controller is approved by Apple for FCP3 and OSX. If your board is not approved by Apple the drivers for your board are probably the source of your dropped frames. If your board is approved then go to the boards MFG's site and download the latest OSX drivers and reboot.

If you want a really killer AT drive system get the 133 Sonnett Raid card and two 120 gig Special Edition drives from Western Digital. Their speed is exceeding Ultra 3 SCSI drives. The total cost in only $600.00.


Jeff

[Jeff Donald]

Save your pennnies and see what Apple bring out at Mac World in July. I am sure you see DDR memory in the new G4's and some other goodies. The discounts on the dual 1gig G4 will also look very good. I use a dual 450 and I figure I'll have to upgrade in a year or so. when I bought mine In January of 2001 it seemed like it was screaming. Oh, well. It still does does what I bought it for and more. Such is the state of computer hardware.

Jeff

[Steve Nunez]

Hello everyone,

working on a small project (dv) with a few tracks of audio (about 6) and I have noticed that upon playback onscreen- all the audio plays fine..if i try to Print To Video back out to a mini-DV camcorder- the video has certain audio elements missing- as if they've been muted or not even processed.....if I export the sequence as a .mov file- the audio is present again- anyone have any idea why the audio (only certain small parts on 2 tracks) isn't playing back out to dv?

Using a 933 Mac G4 quicksilver with FCP 3.0
Thanks fellas...

[Ken Tanaka]

Hi Steve,
I've not had much practice printing to tape with FCP so I'm not sure what's happening. But, for what it's worth, I have a suggestion. Make a copy of the sequence you're trying to print to tape and mix-down the audio to 2 tracks before performing the export. Then see if the problem recurs. Another wild-hair brainstorm that may be worth checking is to see if each piece of your audio is at the same sampling rate.

[Martin Munthe]

I own a Dual 450 too. The fastets mac I ever owned was a 7100 80mHz. The operative was blazing fast and stable. How can this be? Well, each system upgrade get heavier to run. My dual 450 is not as fast as when I bought it. Not by a long shot. I used to be able to play Unreal without any lag at all. I can't do it today even though it's the same software. I imagine the heavier system software is designed to make our computers feel old so that we keep buying new hardware. Macs are great computers but when will the industry come to sense? They are creating a need for DDR that perhaps we would not need if they could write the darn system the right way. Don't get me wrong. I love speedy hardware and DDR. But I know that in a year that hardware will not be as fast as it was when I bought it.

[Jeff Donald]

The audio mix down should do the trick. Also check under preferences for real time audio playback and and set it lower if necessary.

Jeff

[Joe Redifer]

Well I suggest running some sort of system diagnostic tool that can report the speeds of your computer such as CPU processing, HD read/write speeds, system rescources used and all of that. Run this when you first get your new system. Then run this same exact software after you've updated the OS a few times a couple of years down the road. Make sure everything is equal, such as if you have an application running in the background make sure you have it running again when you re-test.

My single 450 G4 Mac is just as fast as it was when I bought it over 3 years ago (or whenever it was when the G4's first came out--- a few months after that). The problem is that I have since used faster computers here and there. So my 450 Mac SEEMS a bit slower by comparison. But it still is pretty zippy. Of course I don't use (or even allow) Virtual Memory and completely defrag my HDs once every few months.

When in July is Macworld? I usually watch that via streamed Quicktime (eeewww).

[Jeff Donald]

Macworld is the 15 through the 19. Big, big rumors flying about, but I don't think you'll see G5's yet. I think DDR on the high end G4 and speeds around 1.2 to 1.5 ghz will be big news.

Martin,

Are you running OS X or 9.2.2 ? OS X does not have the snappy feel of OS 9.2.2 yet. But when Jaguar is released in July a huge performance increase will be seen.

Jeff

[Joe Redifer]

Will we have to pay to get Jaguar? I hope not. Every time I hear about it I get horrible visions of the awful Atari Jaguar video game console. Oh the pain!

[Martin Munthe]

Jeff,

I run 9.2.2. I have to since I'm using an Igniter card (no X drivers yet). I've been using Mac professionaly since the eightees and use all kinds of tools for diagnostics. My Macs are slower on 9.2.2 than they were on 9.1. In 9.1 I could run full screen graphics in iTunes with no problem. That is not the case in 9.2.2. All game graphics are slower. Since video editing puts very little demand on realtime graphics I do not notice any difference in that field. New codecs are also rendering faster. It's the GUI and 3D that are slower on 9.2.2 that are written for faster hardware. If this was not the case I could run 9.2.2 on my old 1400 PowerBook. I can't.