Dropped frames at playback in FCP 5.1 on Mac G5 Quad

[Khashyar Darvich]

The hard drives are all about half full, so they shouldn’t be fragmented.

The audio mixdown will go quick? If that is the case, then there is no reason not to mix it down.

Khashyar

[Kevin Monahan]

[Khashyar Darvich] “Connected to the monitor’s firewire hub is one Sony DSR-25 dv deck, although it is not on or being used when the dropped frames occur.”

Then are you monitoring video through the AJA card? If so, are you very, very sure that you are working with a DV timeline. Check your sequence settings. BTW, I would never have the deck connected via the monitor. It’s best you invest in a PCI card with more FW ports.

Your workflow is a little wacky too. Sounds like you are not editing horizontally, but vertically. In standard editing, rarely would one use more than 2 or even 3 tracks unless there was heavy compositing going on. You might try duplicating sequences and trying alternate cuts that way.

Kevin Monahan
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[Khashyar Darvich]

I appreciate your feedback, Kevin.

Yes, my ntsc monitor is connected through the break out box of the Kona Le.

Yes, the sequence is an ntsc dv/dvpro format.

I haven’t had any dropped frames when capturing on my dv deck, and it is turned off when I am not capturing, so I don’t think that it would impact the dropped frame issue… It is the only firewire connection on the monitor, so I think that the firewire information passes through the monitor and is pretty clean. But, it may be a good idea to get a firewire card any, since I have 2 extra free pci slots.

Regarding the video tracks… I am not doing much visual layering, but I just can see the visual layered clips more easily if I place them in video layers… But, again, I will use L-Cuts if it is going to help.

I have used other software with the same visual track layering of clips (Media 100, AVID and Adobe Premiere), and I never had this same issue.

I feel that the G5 Quad should be able to handle this.

I just finished rendering EVERYTHING on the timeline (now I have 5 video layers- including many rendered subititles and titles- and 12 audio tracks), and after 5 minutes into the timeline I had dropped frames again.

By the way, I do have some mp3 music files that I imported as a temp track… Is that going to be a big problem? Do I need to burn a CD, and then reimport them as AIFF files?

Also, what are the avergae number of video layers that everyone tends to work with on a long project. Two to three? Sometimes 4? (Perhaps this is a good question for a seperate thread).

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hi guys,

I selected “render only” and then “mixdown,” and the process took about 5 seconds (on the 2 hour timeline with 12 tracks), and the “mixdown” color bar is half red and half grey…

but then, after 12:50 in the timeline, and at a place where there was only 2 video tracks and 4 corresponding video tracks, frames were dropped again.

This seems very strange and like it should not happen.

All of my audio tracks are shwoing the waveforms… I read in the “FCP Pro 4” bible that every time that you change the audio bands, that FCP takes a little bit of effort to create a new cache of the audio level bands… Should I turn these bands off when I want to play the film on the timeline?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Khashyar

[Jeremy Garchow]

I don’t think the problem is with your computer. I would double check and make sure that your render settings are acutally going to the GRaid. i would also unhook that other firewire cable. Make sure you select all in the timeline and then do the audio mixdown. Do the frames drop at the same spot everytime? Perhaps you have a gooofy render file somwhere that’s tripping up your system. A good way to ensure that everything is up to snuff is to delete all you rrender files and start clean render files, but that might not be possible in your case, since it’s a two hour movie. If you have the time, I say go for it. Also, download and install the Kona system test (available on AJAs site for free) and run it on your media drive and tell me what kind of performance you are getting. I know the GRaid webiste says 75MB/sec, but that’s marketing garbage and not real world numbers. Kink to test:

https://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_KONA_System_Test_v2.app.tar

Jeremy

[Khashyar Darvich]

Very good advice, Jeremy…

I just figured out that when I “mixed down” the audio tracks before, the reason why it only took a few seconds on a two hour movie is because I didn’t know that I was supposed to select the audio tracks first.

So, I clicked on “select all,” and it selected all of the tracks, and then I mixed down the audio tracks (which took about 10 minutes or so)…

I’m playing the film through now, and I’m at 17 minutes so far…

I’m almost certain that I set all the capture settings to the G-Raid…

The dropped frames happen at different places, so I don’t think that there is a corrupted render file, but… at some point, I will delete all of the render files, and do one long render.

If the proper “Mix down” of the audio does not work, then I will try to unplug the DV deck from the firewire port.

22 minute so far, and no dropped frames yet…

Khashyar

[Jerry Hofmann]

No, I said that it was most likely the speed of your drives keeping you from doing that much RT.

Jerry

[Jerry Hofmann]

An audio mix down performed from the sequence render submenu doesn’t do anything but create a render file which has mixed the tracks down. Your separate tracks remain in the sequence, and can be exported separately later.

Jerry

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

ALL OF THIS DISCUSSION (!) over something that could have FIXED the problem after the 3rd post or so.

I have been posting AUDIO MIXDOWN info for YEARS here and solved SCORES of these kind of problems.

But the info needs to be PRECISE and tell users to SELECT ALL of the audio tracks before choosing to Mixdown.

Here’s the (boring, old, tired) post:

————————–

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

You should “Mixdown” the Audio for playback before you dub out of FCP, or during the edit, if you have audio/video stuttering, drop-outs, sync-slippage, or freezes.

NOTE: Mixdown has even been demonstrated to help with slipping, skipping problems (or “missing” audio clips) for files being EXPORTED as QT (or similar) files out of FCP.

First, SELECT ALL of your audio tracks (highlight them) on the timeline, then:

Sequence Menu > Render Only > Mixdown.

You should see a dialog box telling you its rendering.

It might seem to make little sense that “Mixing down” even simple audio tracks will “fix” complex video “freezes” or random audio dropouts to tape or export, but it CAN.

NOTE: It does not matter of you only have one audio track, if there are random freezes during output, you should try the Mixdown.

[Khashyar Darvich]

I played the 2 hour timeline all the way through while I was sleeping las night, and there were no dropped frames after I mixed down all the audio.

Thank you everyone for your feedback and help.

Yes, Thax, the step that I was missing in the audio mixdown was to select the tracks first (I clicked on the sequence, and the went to “edit” and then “select all.”) Before I understood that I needed to select the tracks, I would choose “mixdown,” znd the process would take about 5 seconds or less, so I thought that something was taking place.

Is there any way to just select all of the the audio tracks without including the video tracks (when you choose “select all,” or is it not important since the mix down will only impact the audio? The imporatnt thing is that it seems to have worked.

But, my question is: why can’t the G-Raid drive handle 12 audio tracks? is it becuase it peaks its capabilities by trying to process (a maximum of) 12 different audio files at the same time?

Actually, I believe that my timeline began to drop frames not after I created the 12 audio tracks, but after I was changing audio levels on the first rough sound mix. Perhaps the different levels information for each audio track was maxing out FCP or the G-Raid.

Thanks again for all of your help,

Khashyar