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External FW Drives PAUSE
Can’t find anthing on this, so I’ll just ask:
I have several external FW400 drives attached to a G5Dual2.3 system running FCP 5.0.4 — they are Seagate drives, the ones that are always on sale. I am editing in DV only.
So what happens is, as the I play a sequence and the timeline leads to the next piece of video, and that video is on a drive that hasn’t been played from for a while, FCP stops playing, pauses for a bit and then I get the skipped frame message. I have also noticed that when this happens the little blue light on the front of the drive goes dark…when it come back on the error message is displayed.
My theory is that if a drive isn’t accessed for a few minutes, then it spins down or goes into some sort of standby mode, and then when I need it, it has to pause all operations while it spins up or does whatever it is doing. I’ve noticed this happens with everything now, even just on get info – the light goes out, ypou can hear the drive make some wirring noices – about 3 seconds and then it’s running fine. Clearly there is something going on with drives.
Is there a setting I’m missing that keeps the drives active and ready at all times? They are all formatted as Mac OS Extended (one the 5 is journaled – but would that effect all of them?) and they are al daisey chained together.
Any help? Anyone else have this problem?
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15 Replies
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I’m not sure if it applies to FEW drives, but make sure “Put the hard disk{s} to sleep whenever possible” is notchecked in the Energy saving section of system preferences.
Steve Cohen
Editor
O2 Media Inc. -
thanks, I do have that unchecked.
I’m starting to think that having the firat drive in the chain “Journaled” might be the problem. -
Google “spindownfix” (all one word)…it is an applescript that turns off the function that spins the drives down after a period of non-use. You have to run it everytime you restart the computer.
Shane
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
Wow – thank you.
If this solves my problem…I’ll dance a jig in your honor. -
Shane,
Aren’t you supposed to be that LAFCPUG meeting???
DRW
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I’d really like to…but I got saddled with kid watching duty. Wife has a ladies night out.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
I was gonna go stump them on something, but the with the Hollywood Bowl in action there was no chance I was heading anywhere near Hollywood.
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[dndobson] “Is there a setting I’m missing that keeps the drives active and ready at all times? They are all formatted as Mac OS Extended (one the 5 is journaled – but would that effect all of them?) and they are al daisey chained together.”
The daisy chaining is probably affecting you more than anything. 5 drives chained together is not a very efficient way to edit video. FCP is probably “pausing” when it has to seek out media on some of the farthest drives along the chain. If your drives are fragmented, this compounds the problem.
I never recommend more than two drives be daisy chained together, especially FW 400 drives. Purchase larger drives and consolidate your media. If you can, step up to FW 800 drives so you get faster data throughput on your system.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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you could also get another firewire card, and split them up!
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FireWire daisy chaining can be a disastrous way to store lots of media. One reason is because of the sleep problem (there are others too). Typically, only the first drive in the chain will recognize the Energy Saver preference. The others may not because of firmware issues. If the firmware is not up to date for the drives and enclosures, they will ignore the Energy Saver, so there’s nothing you can do about having a reliable way to play out your video.
FireWire drives have never been approved by Apple, in fact, they are very cautionary about their use. Personally, in pro situations, I try to avoid them whenever possible. The cheapest way to store media is not always the best way, especially when Apple doesn’t whole-heartedly support them.
Internal drives? Yes
External RAIDs? Yes
FireWire Drives? Nope.Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters
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