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Dropped Frame on iMAC G5
My school just installed a new 30 seat 2 GHz iMAC G5 lab. 1.5 gigs of Apple Ram. FCP 4.5. They all drop frames like mad. Simple dissovles. Wipes. Everything. Drops frames off the internal drive as well as external firewire drives. We have G4 iMacs and Dual 900MHz towers that work fine on the same footage.
I’ve been editing with FCP from the start. I use a Dual G5 in my HD production business. No problems there.
Is there a problem with iMac G5’s and FCP?
Dennis Lisonbee
Utah Valley State -
9 Replies
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iMac’s are not the best platform for Mac and FCP. Why?
You can’t add a second HD for media. Doing that is much more stable for any DV show.
You can’t put the FireWire drive on a separate bus as there are no PCI slots.Try this:
Capture straight to the native HD.
After capturing to the native HD, copy the footage to the FIreWire drive.
Reconnect the clips to the new location of the footage.Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
The G5’s drop frames from good clips both on the Native Drive as well as Firewire Drives. No on e has tried to capture yet. I’m not sure why a G4 iMac works fine but a brand new G5 iMac does not work with FCP. In fact my PowerBook works better.
Of course if the problem is not fixed, Apple is going to lose a client. The Dean of the college and the IT team have “Bill Gates is God” stamped on their foreheads and they have been looking for ways of dumping Apple.
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Any chance they could all be upgraded to FCP 5? The Dynamic Real Time playback is great because it alters the quality level as needed during editing so that frames aren’t dropped.
If that’s not possible, investigate what the playback quality is set at. Maybe knock it down to “medium.” As long as they render, mixdown audio, and print to tape when they’re done the lowered quality-level won’t actually affect the final project, just the view while editing.
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My iMac G5 never drops frames, but I’m on FCP 5 with a G-RAID connnected. I would suggest the upgrade to v5.
Steve Connor
Cardinal HD -
Yeah, Bill Gates is God – but of which realm…?
I would also suggest uppgrading to FCP 5. The dynamic is worth it – it dynamicly lowers the video quality instead of dropping frames.
My wife has a iMac 2G with 1.5 Gig of Apple Ram. No dropped frames.
We don’t do HD (only HDV and DV) so our requirements might be a bit lower than yours. Anyway, we keep all our footage on a laClie 500Gb disk and swaps the disk between my PowerBook and her iMac depending on who’s working on the projects at the time. My Ti800 drops frames even with dynamic, but so far everything runs smoothly on the iMac. Have quite heavy stuff (multiple layer, channels, and effects) going on. I’m using the iMac for everything my PB chokes on (including capturing HDV footage), as well as a rendering node for Electric Image and Compressor. -
[Dennis Lisonbee] “Of course if the problem is not fixed, Apple is going to lose a client. The Dean of the college and the IT team have “Bill Gates is God” stamped on their foreheads and they have been looking for ways of dumping Apple. “
Oh, yes, like running a video editing application on windows machines is something you want your IT people involved with. That’s funny.
You don’t say which OS you’re on, did you? I imagine the new iMacs are running Tiger and that’s probably the issue. FCP4+ and Tiger did not get along well. I have no clue why not but most of the
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Thanks for all the posts. This lab of iMAC G5’s is fresh from Apple that was put online Friday. I had to verify to IT that the lab worked so we could take classes into it Monday. We also have an iMAC G4 lab and a Dual 800 G4 lab. All computers have the same build. To test the lab I took a student project on a firewire drive to all the labs and tested. The NEW iMac G5 lab is the only place there are drop frame problems. Since all the labs have the same image I’m not sure what the problem is. A 2GHZ G5 should out preform a G4 but at this point it does not.
If the lowest quality setting of RT is used there are no dropped frames. Medium or High drops frames. There is a FCP 5 upgrade coming. We asked for it in April, but education moves very SLOW. Especially if it is Apple products.
Dennis
Political Note:
We have 300 XP boxes in our teaching labs with a combination of VEGAS and Premiere and 70 Computers running OS X 10.4. The IT people want all boxes to be XP and they are looking for an excuse to move us all to XP. A new MAC that drops frames is a perfect excuse.
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FireWire drives are simply not approved for use with FCP.
That is understood, correct? Many people use them without incident, many people have problems with them.
They are the weak link in the chain….
Unsupported hardware makes for a bad combination with FCP.
Your lab should’ve bought G5’s, not iMacs. IMHO, that wasn’t the smartest move.
These XP boxes, they have internal media drives no? Or are they operating on FireWire drives?
If they are operating FireWire drives, are they using a separate PCI card? That’s probably whey
they’re more stable.You can’t have separate media drives with an iMac, so for me that’s the biggest problem.
Even G3 towers with internal drives worked rock solid with FCP.I guess I’m a hardcore when it comes to stability. Since FCP 1, proper harddrives make all the difference.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
Kevin,
Thanks for your information.
Students have been successfully using firewire drives in our labs for over five years now. I’ve also successfully been using firewire drives professionally with DV assets since Apple put their first firewire port on a G4. For HD work I use SATA Raids.
I have no control over the computers the school purchases for these labs or the amount money set aside to replace computers. I’m hired to teach in the labs the “powers that be” provide with their limited resources. In my business I would never edit on an iMac nor recommend anyone to purchase an iMac to professionally edit with.
We have three labs total. iMac G4, Dual 800 G4 and now the iMac G5. The iMac G5, which is the latest Apple version, is the only lab with the problem. We have tested with the assets on the internal drive and on an external firewire drive so the problem is not unique to the firewire drive. Since others are having success with the iMac G5, I’m asking what to look for to make these computers work the way our other labs work.
Dennis
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