Dropped Frames on Playback WHAT???

[Peter Berg]

I am in the same situation here and was looking for a little help. I’ve read through this thread and tried the ideas presented. I still get dropped frames when I playback.

In my case I have a 90min timeline, 1920×1080, 23.98p, Uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2, 2 tracks of audio (16bit 48khz AIFF’s). I am just trying to play back to my standalone dvd burner (Since I can’t get quicktime references to export). Dropping frames at various points in the timeline. Very Frustrating since I think it should not be happening. I also have a fully rendered timeline (only some dark blue lines in the render bar area).

Can anyone shed any light on this one? I did a clean wipe of my system about 2 months ago and did a fresh install of Final Cut Studio 2 (I’m on 6.0.6). I have a G5 – Dual 2.5 CPU’s, 8GB of ram. My drive system is a RAID 5 with a 4 drive stripe, connected via SAS to a Highpoint RAID card.

When I run the AJA disk speed tool, I get around 305 MB/sec. when I look at the graph, the read speed is very consistent. I have about 15-20% space free on the RAID. I did try to trash the prefs and repair disk permissions on my C: (boot) drive.

Can anyone help please??

-Peter

[Joseph Hung]

From what I’ve learned so far, it could be that your system is a G5 and uncompressed 10bit is gigantic. Also, have you tried checking the SMART status of your RAID drives individually? You can see that in Disk Utilities. I would also download Rember and test your RAM.
I’m not sure why you can’t export with Quicktime Conversion to ProRes 422 Standard, or HQ. Please expand further on this? Just do a self contained Quicktime, don’t do reference as the file will have to reference your RAID again, which could be the problem. Of course this will only be useful if you have a final cut. You will hardly lose any quality, trust me, I’ve done tests between Uncomp 10 bit, ProRes, and ProRes HQ, and the differences are barely discernible.
From now on, the material I work with, HQ is a bit overkill and standard 422 is just as good, you’ll never tell the difference. According to Apple’s ProRes white paper, Uncomp 10 bit requires 1326 Mbps, while ProRes 422 HQ requires 220 Mbps. I can be wrong this, as I have been before, so someone more knowledgeable should answer to this.
My problem it seems, stems from a bad drive, and that a software RAID 0 with only 2 drives internally was barely fast enough, in my opinion. I’m going external RAID 5 with 8 drives and a card from now on.
I have a feeling you might have the same issue: The speed tests say you have ample amounts of speed, but there may be a bad drive in your array that you haven’t noticed yet.
Seagate also has an app to test drive integrity. This is only for internal drives though. And the process is a PITA. Maybe there is another app that can help test hardware integrity?
Good luck,
Joseph

Mac 2.66 GHz Quad Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.4
FCP 7.0.2
AE CS4
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4
8GB RAM
2x1TB RAID O (All Media Scratch Disk)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
ATI Radeon X1900
Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic HVX200A, Panasonic DVX100A, Canon 5DMKII, 7D