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Dropped Frames on Playback WHAT???
Hello Gurus,
This is an age old topic, and I’ve done quite a bit of research on this. But I still have a problem and have some questions that I hope some pros can maybe shed some light on.
Editing in a ProRes 422 HQ sequence of a mixture of stills and graphics, footage bought from Getty, and footage shot on the Canon 5DMKII. 1920×1080 23.98 fps. All video is confomred to the same codec and settings, and stills are only as large as I need them to be, ie. if I’m only zooming in by 20% I’ll keep that still around that size…And yes I am doing this online and not offline, but with ProRes it usually isn’t a problem.
I get dropped frames upon playback, and randomly. As I play out the 30 or so minute timeline, it will frequently drop frames and I get the warning dialog window stating that RT extreme has determined it being caused by slow disks.
I find this very hard to believe. I have two 1 TB 7200 RPM Seagate Barracudas internally software striped into a RAID 0 (I back up manually so I’m not worried about redundancy, only about speed performance). I keep my capture scratch on this RAID, my project file and applications on my main boot drive.
I’ve tried several things: Switching between Safe and Unlimited RT, Playing Base Layer Only, Playback at 50%, Framerate at half, messing with stills cache in preferences, turning off wireframe, all pictures are at fit in window, real time audio mixing at 4 or 6 tracks depending, futzing with real time video compression, etc. The dropped frames happen randomly, and there aren’t any filters/effects, yet as I’m about to start the color correction phase.
When I was getting lots of dropped frames (the playback would stop every minute or two sometimes), I would restart my system, and that helped for a short while, then it’s back again. At this time I kept both audio VO wav files and such with my video and other stills and graphics elements on the RAID together. Then, through trolling the internet for solutions, I found on the Blackmagic site a suggestion of moving VO and other audio to a separate drive. I did that to the third volume on my computer, also a 1 TB 7200RPM drive but by WD. This seemed to help alot. Also mixing down my audio to 2 tracks helped too. But I still get random dropped frames, just not as bad as it was before.
I’m not really sure what else to do.
1) Is it just that my computer CPU is not fast enough? Or my graphics card is not beefy enough? I’ve maxed out my graphics card for this computer model…
2) Will installing a RAID controller card really help in this situation? Eventually I will get an external RAID chasis, but right now I don’t want to be installing/updating in the middle of this project. I’ve read that throughput can be better with a card, but it depends on usage. Is this really necessary?
3) Could it be my Seagate RAID drives themselves? Blackmagic comes with a program that clocks the I/O speeds of disks, I’m clocked my RAID and it was definitely somewhere close to the 200Mb/s. this should be plenty right? When I get home tonight I’ll post the actual numbers.
4) I’ve also run diagnostics on my RAID drives with TechTools and all looks good. I’ve read that defragging capture scratch disks is a No No. Is this true?Any ideas are really appreciated.
Thanks,
JosephMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D -
32 Replies
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The dropped frame warning should simply be turned off. Reason is, that it shows up when the sequence can’t play unrendered effects too… The more CPU you have the less you’ll see the message. Also if it’s not this causing your problem, look to the drives. If they are really full, they slow down a lot.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
DVD:https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX Cinema Displays
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Thanks for the response Jerry. There are really no effects except simple compositing and cross fades/opacity levels, still moves, etc. Super simple stuff that my computer should be able to handle.
I’m afraid it could be my drives, but if they are clocking in at just under 200 MB/s, I don’t see what the deal is there.
None of the volumes are even at 60% full.
I’ve also tried deleting any empty video and audio levels to keep real time rendering at a minumum.
I did realize one thing though, I have to take a look at my boot drive. I just realized that my boot drive is older, it’s 500 GB, I just recently swapped boot drives to this one before this project started. I think it’s 7200 RPM, but I could be wrong. It could certainly be dying on me.
Thanks,
JosephMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D -
Just out of curiosity, try and see what happens when you close the Viewer window.
Just curious, because I was having dropped frames left and right whenever the motion or filters tab was open in the Viewer… but if I close the viewer, the dropped frames problem goes away.
I posted about this in two other places, but I guess I’m still being “moderated” so my posts don’t show u p right away.
I’m pretty sure this is the same bug. I have FCP 7.0.2 AND Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Good luck.
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Thanks Anthony, tried it, and other variations, and to no avail. I ran the Blackmagic disk speed tests:
Boot Disk: 62.3 MB/s Read, 49.4 MB/s Write
RAID 0: 190 MB/s Read, 182 MB/s WriteI think my boot disk is slow. In System Profile, it lists my boot drive with a link speed of 3Gbit, and a “Negotiated Link Speed” of 1.5 Gigabit. At first I thought my RAID drives were bad, but it seems they are holding up speed tests.
Could this be the culprit? I have plenty of space on all drives, I can’t imagine what is bogging down my system.
Help!
Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D -
Your drive speeds are fine, they are likely not the problem.
What are your playback settings in the RT menu set to, what are your sequence settings? What is the source material? all one format or?
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
DVD:https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX Cinema Displays
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Hi Jerry,
These settings are what I’m usually on, because through experimentation, it gets worse using other options.
RT popup menu: I’m usually on safe, it runs smoother on it, video playback for just viewing usually medium, high when i’m doing CC, Full frame playback, multiclip playback on, record to tape full quality, there are settings for when the scopes are up.
i’m going to turn off multiclip and record to tape because i haven’t tried that yet.
Sequence settings: HDTV 1080i 16:9, square pixels, 23.98 fps, Apple ProRes 422 HQ, 48K 24bit,
Video Processing: Render 10bit in high precision YUV, max white is white, and motion filtering is normal.
Render Control: filters and frame blending checked, 100% frame rate render, 100% resolution render, codec same as sequence.
I haven’t changed much of the sequence settings, because I figure that’s what I want right? Especially during CC and finalizing.
Everything in the timeline has been transcoded to the Sequence settings codec. Shot on the 5DMKII, a 30p, transcoded, conformed, retimed. Lots of stills and video from Getty transcoded, conformed and retimed if necessary. the audio files are mixed down 2 track wavs on a different drive at this point. i’m going out to BluRay DVD, and eventually a post house will take my ProRes output and lay it to HDCAM.
Again, it’s sporadic and sometimes it’s worse other times it can play for a long time without interruption.
All unecessary apps and processes have been disabled. I have a feeling my capture scratch is too full of unnecessary stuff. May try to media manage as this is pretty much the final cut, bring that into a new project and go from there. However, this will have to happen after the opening, and i’m on a tight deadline so gotta just power through and get it done first. There will b e more work after the opening, so a kind of fresh start might be good.
Thanks for any insight…
JosephMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D -
Any other thoughts anyone? I’m pretty stumped and can’t figure out what is bogging down my system. Can my graphics card be dying, and does that effect playback in FCP? Do I need to do a fresh install of FCP/OSX?
Any ideas are welcome and appreciated.
JosephMac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D -
Have you tried opening the activity monitor to see what happens when you press play in FCP?
I am on a small network and sometimes, usually when I am file sharing with another computer, there will be a spike in activity in the Network pane that coincides with the dropped frames. In my case, this was because I was accessing a file from another computer.
Also, keep an eye on the %CPU column. See if anything goes crazy when you press play. (obviously, you’ll have to move the FCP windows around to see the Activity Monitor in the Background. In fact, this is how I figured out that my Viewer window Motion and Filters tabs were associated with my dropped frames.
Also, check your Energy Saver settings… see what happens if you check and uncheck the “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible. This can cause dropped frames if you are accessing a different scratch disk which has been asleep, but it doesn’t account for dropped frames over and over again.
A more extreme approach (if you have time on your hands) would be to install FCP 6 and OS x 10.5… Then, see how it works. Do the “combo” updates if necessary, and see if you still get dropped frames.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember which codecs are supported in FCP 6, but you could find that out fairly quickly if you look it up.
Anyway, I understand the frustration of having a “top of the line” computer and getting dropped frames. Unfortunately, it probably won’t change for the better any time soon.
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Yes, I monitored through Activity Monitor and it spikes a little for sure, which I think is normal when I hit play, but it doesn’t seem to coincide with anything obvious. Maybe I’m missing it…
No network here, and I just tried a few things, like cleaned the intake on the fan to my graphics card, turned off mirror on desktop when i need to watch on my broadcast monitor and not in the canvas, checked my pci-e utilities settings to make sure i’m not dumping too much bandwidth to my Blackmagic card (only needs x1), etc. All these things seems to help, esp. the mirror on desktop toggle. A PITA for sure when I have to constantly go back into A/V setings to switch it on and off.
I think this is a number of things, and I’m slowly widdling away at it. Checking out my graphics card and cleaning it and mirror on desktop helped alot, I can play for 10-15 minutes now, but still get the random dropped frames due to slow disks.
Yes, it is frustrating when you know your machine can handle it, because others with the same machine and set up and in similar situations don’t have issues like this. It’s a little ridiculous that I can’t play this timeline down without going through so many hoops just to get it to play without interruptions. I’m definitely missing something obvious…Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D -
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