-
Dropped frames in FCP HD 4.5
I have purchased 3 new 2 Ghz G5, 1 gig ram, great video card, great everything macs. But it seems that i am dropping frame rates on playback in FCP HD 4.5 on even the simplest things (cross desolve transitions, etc.). I have tried turning off mirroring on desk top, reducing viewer and canavas sizes to 50%, resetting scratch disks, thowing away FCP preferences and starting anew. Nothing i have tried is working and i can’t imagine that its because these machines can’t handle the workload. After all they are only 2 months old. So my guess is i am missing some sort of setting/preference. Somebody help me, i’m losing my hair.
-Jordan -
4 Replies
-
You’ll get the best realtime preview by keeping all media files on drives other than your startup disk. Is this what you are doing? Post which versions of OS, FCP, and QuickTime you are running and which capture card you are using? Also note that realtime playback has a lot of options you can set to give you better results, such as not dropping or allowing droped frames, quality playback settings also come into play here. You aren’t seeing problems after rendering, right?
Faster drives help too. For example, I’ll get much more RT when playing back from a fibre channel array over say, a FireWire drive… Also not necessarily going to help here, but more RAM in these machines is going to make your life better. I’d suggest another gig per machine… Motion especially benefits from this. If the choppy playback really gets you, try using the QuickView function in FCP to preview unrendered effects, or type option+p to force a ram held frame at a time playback, this will be slower, but not drop any frames…
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
-
All versions of software (except FCP is HD 4.5 not 5) are the latest and most updated from system update. OSX= 10.4.x, QT has been updated as well. basically i keep pretty religous about updates. as for a capture card, i’m not so sure what you mean. each system breaks down like this; dual monitors, Sony DSR-11 deck or better, and 15 inch NTSC monitor.
So far after rendering i am seeing a problem once in a blue moon but not often. I try to keep things rendered as well if i’m going to review the work in entirety.
as for the drives i save on, yes it is a seperate drive from the system, an internal one i use for only media files and projects.you mention changing a setting to not drop frames. how would i do that?
-Jordan -
That setting isn’t in FCP 4.5.
Try typing option+p. Forces no dropped frames but rate will drop as it will playback unrendered effects as fast as your system will do it. Again, faster drives will matter…
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
-
I have had some similar issues as well.. I have a Dual 2.7 with 4GB RAM, FCP 5, and a 900GB 3 drive striped SATA RAID on a Sonnet SATA Controller. I get 280MB/s read and write in my Blackmagic Drive speed test yet still drop frames on single DV clips.. its a total pain in the ass.. I find restarting FCP helps for about 30 mins which leads be to think it a Software/OS issue. I have all my scratch and work files on the RAID.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up