Beachballing on playback

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

Beachballing on playback

Posted by Jen Bradwell on June 9, 2008 at 1:25 am

Hi folks:

I’m having a problem with more than one FCP 6 project on my MBP. After working on a project for, say, an hour, I’ll have a major delay trying to playback or performing any other function. Sometimes it’s a few seconds, sometimes it’s more like a minute. I’ve gone through a big spring cleaning of trashing prefs, render files, waveform & thumbnail caches. I’ve restarted, zapped PRAM and rebuilt permissions. My project file size is less than 70 MB. I’m using four external LaCie FW800 drives with only around 10% free space left on each one.

FCP 6.0.3, working with DV material
MBP 2.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM
OS10.5.2

Any ideas for what other steps I might try or what could be going on?

Thanks!
Jen in Berkeley, CA

Jen Bradwell replied 16 years, 9 months ago 4 Members · 6 Replies
6 Replies

Rafael Amador
June 9, 2008 at 2:11 am

Run DiskWarrior or TechTools in all your HDs.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.
Simon Webb
June 9, 2008 at 4:03 am

Also, you might want to check Energy Saver in your System Preferences and make sure that the “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible” box is unchecked.
Jen Bradwell
June 9, 2008 at 4:07 am

Yes, that’s unchecked. I’ll run DiskWarrior and report back on how that goes. Thanks. -jen-
Rafael Amador
June 9, 2008 at 5:07 am

Jen,
Please do it (report).
Thanks,
rafael

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.
Scott
June 12, 2008 at 6:29 pm

Hi Jen,

Just another possibility…

I am on my 4th MBP. The previous 2 have suffered from the “too much thermal paste” issue. (too much paste between the processor and the heat sink actually causes the processor to overheat, this causes errors, and it slows everything down.)

It’s a slim chance that this is it.

If you are able, shut the system off until it cools down to room temp and try again. See if it runs at normal speed and then slows down again.

And definitely let us know what it was! 🙂
Jen Bradwell
June 12, 2008 at 7:12 pm

Thanks for all the tips, guys. I went out to buy Tech Tool Pro the other day since my copy of Disk Warrior is not Leopard-compatible. The Apple Store sold me a non-Leopard compatible version of Tech Tool Pro though (even the new version has been out for months! Grrrr!)

Anyway, while I’m waiting for my web order of Tech Tools, I decided to upgrade to 10.5.3, with a QT update (to 7.5) as well. So far, all seems to be behaving normally!!! I’ve been editing for a few hours now with no issues. Previously I couldn’t go more than an hour without the major slow down. Once the slow down happened before, I couldn’t close and reopen FCP without rebooting the computer. That problem has definitely gone away since then. Hopefully Ms. MBP is back to her previously zippy self. I’ll post any other issues, though.

Thanks again!

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