Dropped frames in FCP 7

[Chris Borjis]

are you rendering all?

[Ella Currer]

Hi, yes I get the orange bar above the clip (and any alpha graphic I try to use) and if I render it, it plays fine. The problem is in FCP 6 I never had to render, it would play through composites that were much complicated without any rendering. So something is wrong in that it’s forcing a render when Dynamic playback should easily be able to handle something this basic (text with drop shadow).

[Shane Ross]

Yeah…what he said. Adding Drop Shadow makes the text render go from GREEN to ORANGE, and really, with ORANGE, unless you have pretty fast drives (not FW400) or unless you render, you might get dropped frames.

Shane

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[Ella Currer]

Thanks, guys. The thing is that I didn’t get the error message on this exact same composite in FCP 6 and now I do. Once rendered, it plays without error message but the playback is slow over the clip with the alpha. In FCP 6 it played back smooth.

[Chris Borjis]

yeah anything thats green is usually fine, but even on my caldigit
array that can handle anything, orange might drop frames.

if you edit to tape you have to render anyway so might as well
do it to get highest quality playback imo.

[Ella Currer]

Thanks, guys. The question is not how to render but why in FCP 7 only are frames dropping over simple alphas like text with drop shadow. I used this exact same composition in FCP 6 and there were no dropped frames. I upgrade to 7 and there are dropped frames.

[Chris Borjis]

it could be what happens often with an update….something new is broken
while something that was broken is now fixed.

simple as that…

[Dave Bergan]

I have the same issues. Things that were not dropping in FC 6 are now. I can not even play EX1 footage with dropping frames, let alone a rendered timeline, and I know the footage and timeline settings match. Though Pro Res seems to play fine, so since I render my effects to Pro Res they play at those points, but real time effects and graphics that have a gray bar drop frames. I replaced my hba, reinitialized my raid, reinstalled OSX, reinstalled FCS, and nothing has worked. I have never had dropped frame issues before, ever.

It looks like a few people have some issues, but I’m still trying to figure out if it’s me. I would think if it’s Final Cut there would be a lot more people complaining.

Dave

[John Fishback]

I just upgraded to FCP 7.0.1. I tried adding a Text generator (with drop shadow) over a DVCProHD clip, and while I got an orange line, it played fine. I also tried the Boris Title 3D generator with drop and it had no orange – just a pale gray bar and played fine. Did you do a clean install?

John

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[Ella Currer]

No, just an upgrade. That’s what I’m sort of narrowing it down to too. Anyone do a clean install and experiencing this? In the meantime, I’ll clean install.
Thank you.