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Another Dropped Frames Thread!
I am new to both Apple & FCP. Having just shelled out ££££’s on the latest Mac Pro Dual Quad Core, 8Gb, 4 TB system and FCP Studio 2, I am surprised that my very very simple starter project consisting of 1 layer of PAV DV footage, including Stereo Audio Track 48Khz + 1 stereo Music track (also at 48Khz) playing through the in built audio (set at 48Khz) with no effects (i.e. just straight editing), occasionally brings up the “Dropped frames” dialog box.
It never says what the cause is, just some stuff to try. Disks are configured in a mirrored striped array.
My point here is that I am surprised that such a simple project doesn’t render in real time consistently without dropped frames, given the amount of hardware it is sat on. Having come from using Sony Vegas running on not the latest PC hardware, I never experienced such dropped frames (unless of course I layered lots of effects or Magic Bullet), so I guess I am doing something wrong and could do with some tips or any optimisations I should make.
Since the original post above, what I have discovered is that if filters tab or motion tab is is selected in the viewer window, dropped frame warnings always come up. If I select the video tab or Stereo tab in the viewer window, and then play the timeline, no dropped frames.
Seems to be related to what tab happen to be selected in the viewer window (even though I am playing the timeline).
Regards
Declan -
3 Replies
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I’m curious – which drive does your media sit on?
Technically media should not be on your boot drive, however having done this in a pinch on a much less robust system than yours, I’ve had minimal problems.
Another cause could be full media drives. If they are over about 90% you will get a very sluggish system. Sadly, I’ve done this as well.
I’ve not heard of the tabs in the Viewer effecting the timeline playback before. Interesting.
Best regards,
Tom Meegan
Woven Pixels -
I figured that the way I had set the drives up was probably not optimal, so thanks to time machine, I re-configured the drives so I have two independent raids, just striping, One pair of 1 TB for the System, and one pair of 1Tb disks for media (may change this again as I don’t need 2 TB for system stuff, but this is the 1st Mac I’ve had so need to get used to it).
So in answer to your question, the media was on the main drive, however, only 82 GB on a 2TB partition is being used, and the project was just a handful of DV clips (6 in total, longest duration 1m30s. I was using some media just to get used to FCP.
Looking at the Apple support note for dropped frames, I was getting the first warning box, i.e. it doesn’t give the cause of the dropped frames.
Since reconfiguring the drives (and without moving the media to the second raid array), I can’t reproduce the problem, even by clicking on the tabs as before), which makes me think that, although disk utility let me create the raid in a mirrored pair of striped arrays, that this is a sub optimal config.
i.e. before
RAID (mirror)
-> RAID 1 Striped
–> 1TB Disk
–> 1TB Disk
-> RAID 2 StripedNow
RAID System (Striped)
–> 1TB Disk
–> 1TB Disk
RAID Media (Striped)
–> 1TB Disk
–> 1TB DiskDeclan Smith
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If I were you, I would most certainly stripe 3 drives together for your media. As you said, there’s no reason to waste 2Tb on your system drive.
BTW, CalDigit has a Raid card solution for four media drives in a Raid-5 config, that comes with a tray for your system drive that fits neatly inside the 2nd unused optical bay.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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