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FCP 6 slowing down mysteriously
Hi guys,
It’s my first time posting here and I hope you might spread some magical light over what has been torturing my editing for the last few weeks. I have been going nuts trying to troubleshoot what’s going on with my system for a while without understanding what’s wrong.
I am editing some HDV footage and all is well the first hours of editing. After that the system becomes so slow that clicking anywhere in the timeline takes the slider 10 to 30 seconds to react, not to mention playback.
I do not have the spinning ball, I can move the mouse but I cannot do anything with it (nor acess dock or finder when this happens). The system goes so slow that it basically is impossible to continue working on it. Not even a full reboot of the Imac gets the speed up.About a month ago I bought myself an Imac 2.8 extreme, 3 gigs Ram and 500 gb internal disc, to be able to edit HDV footage (as my old Imac g5 was getting too slow for this task). It’s not a macpro but it should be fine. I am working off an external 640 firewire 800 disc (newly formatted, 500 go free). I know HDV isn’t the best codec to edit in so I even tried reencoding the media to apples intermediate codec but had same result with system slowing down.
I am getting worried that this may be an issue caused by the new iMac’s graphicscard (as many new iMacusers are having problems with freezes) but apart from this I have never had a single real freeze or any problems with the system.
if you have any idea what might be going on I really any help you can give.thanx
Pelai
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9 Replies
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Hi,
First of thinking that you got any problem with FC you need to make sure that your system is optimized. What kind of maintenance do you make to your computer? Do you use DiskWarrior or Techtools? Is your external HD Journaled?
Rafael -
Hi Rafael,
I did a fresh erase and install of OSX 10.4.10 and then installed FCP studio 2 without practically any other software. My internal bootdrive is journaled but the external scratchdisc is not (I even tried moving the project to another newly formatted external disc when this problem first arose but I still had this same problem).
I have repaired permissions and trashed prefs.I would think there is nothing wrong with my system.
Is there anything else you might think of?
Thanx
Pelai
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I had a similar problem recently and I found that render files were going into my FCP applications folder. Do me a favor and control click on the FCP application from within you Applications folder (make sure FCP is quit before doing this). When you control click on the FCP app, choose show package contents.
Open the resulting folder that is marked ‘contents’ and then open the folder called ‘MacOS’. Check to see if there’s folders called render files or audio render files within the ‘MacOS’ folder.
If there is delete only those folders (leave the Final Cut Pro executable file and plugins folder in there). Then trash your FCP prefs, reset your scratch disk and this problem should go away.
If this isn’t your problem, post back.
Jeremy
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Hi Jeremy,
Thanx for your suggestion.
I did find a render files folder but containing only a constant frames folder. Du you believe this might be the culprit? Anyway, I trashed the folder and prefs as you suggested.
I’ll post back in a few days when I get a chance to edit again and see if there is some improvement.Otherwise there is something that has occured to me. My scratch disc is a Lacie Big Disk (with two 320 raided discs inside). I know that when this slowdown occurs the fan on the Lacie disc is runnning quite loudly and the top of the disc feels quite warm as well. Is it possible that overheating the disc could be slowing it down after some intensive hours of use? I have checked with the AJA Kona System Test what my reading & write speeds are when this happens but they are all ok.
thanx again for your help
Pelai
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[Pelai] “Du you believe this might be the culprit?”
I am not absolutely positive about it, but it could be.
I don’t think your drives getting hot will slow the system down as long the system test is checking out okay.
Let us know how your further editing goes.
Jeremy
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[Pelai] “I would think there is nothing wrong with my system.
Is there anything else you might think of? “
Hi Pelai,
The think is that you can’t know if there is something wrong with your system unless you run one of those program and tell you how are the directories.
I’ve run DiskWarrior three days ago and let the directories clean, but now I open DiskWarrior and I see that my main HD have 3.454 “Items out of order”. This is not much (araund a 1%), but after three or for more days working I will have much more items out of order. In a week or so I know I will have a 15% or so out of order, and I will start to notice that by miself because mi Mac will start to go slower, or FC will start to behave worst.
I’m editing video in a Mac since five years and I would shake if I wouldn’t have my copy of DiskWarrior.
About your LaCie (external HD also have directories that get really meesed) there is a “La Cie Update Tool” (a Firmware update) that you may need to use. You can download it in the LaCie web-site.
Rafael -
Thanxs Rafael & Jeremy for your generous help.
I downloaded the Lacie updater tool but apparently I’m ok there.
I will run discwarrior as soon as I have a chance, I really hope that it is that simple, cause last night folllowing Jeremy’s advice I still had a slowdown.I have run discwarrior on the external disc before and used apples hardware test on the iMac to check it. I have not run diskwarrior on the iMac itself though so this will definetely be my next step.
I’ll post back as soon as I have tried this.
There is one thing though that just ocurred to me but maybe it has no relation to my problem. When I first recieved my iMac a month ago and started editing I had a sort of bug. Whenever I left the computer for half an hour or so in the middle of editing and then got back to it there was always a problem on the timeline. Wherever I pressed play the sound rolled fine but the video would just jump between same three frames. The only way to make it alright was to either restart Final Cut or close the timeline and then reopen the sequences.
I still can reproduce this but I can also avoid it by setting the computer to never sleep and never put drives to sleep.
Secondly, even when the iMac is off it apparently gives the harddrives power through firewire 400/800. I’m not sure if this is intended cause my old G5 imac and Powerbook do not have have this “feature”.
What do you think about this?
thanx again guys!
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Hi Pelai,
I bought one of the firt Double Processor G5 in 2.004
The firt six months was a real nightmare. Every 20 minutes freezed. Was not only my problem, y found many people posting with the same problem. Not answer from Apple at all, and no way to get any help (I live in a country without any Mac service provider)
I bought DiskWarrior and all the problems desapeared.[Pelai] “the iMac is off it apparently gives the harddrives power through firewire 400/800. I’m not sure if this is intended cause my old G5 imac and Powerbook do not have have this “feature”.
“
This is a bug. I have the same problem with the MacBookPro that I just bought three weeks ago. I havent look for a solution yet because I’m waiting for the Diskwarrior update for Intel Mac. If the problem persist after the optimization, I will try to see what’s going on.
Rafael -
OK,
After a few days of work I have now been able to do some e
I have now used diskwarrior on my internal systemdrive and got myself a new external media drive (to be sure the Lacie wasn’t causing this issue).
After a few days of work I have now been able to do some editing and unfortunately the issue still remains.I am starting to think that it is graphics-card related, since so many new iMac users are having problems with it…
If think of anything else, don’t hesitate to post.
Thanx again
Pelai
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