FCP dropped frames warning

[Roli Rivelino]

Just a thought, the dropped frames message can pop up if you’re stressing the drives, I noticed that you seem to only have 1 internal drive?

If so have you consigned your scratch disks to the external drive?

Also, if those externals have esata connections, I would get myself a good esata card, (if they’re still selling the pro without a built in esata connection) and use the drives that way, if you’re going to do a lot of HD editing and grading then you’ll need the extra oomph.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Brad Mirman]

Yes, The first external is set as a scratch drive for video and the second for audio.

[David Roth weiss]

[Brad Mirman] “Yes, The first external is set as a scratch drive for video and the second for audio.”

That setup was recommended for some NLEs in the past Brad, but it’s not a recommended setup for FCP. However, I doubt that’s the source of your issue.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Roli Rivelino]

I also used to get the dropped frame error when I used an external with firewire; I reckon this could be the source of your problems, as I said in my earlier post (sorry to recommend a solution that costs money) you need to either add a second internal drive or get an esata card to connect one or both of your externals.

In the mean time set up your video and audio on the same drive and see what happens.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Zane Barker]

First off what format video are you editing? And how many streams of video are you trying to playback at the same time?

Second, you have a Mac Pro why have you not added some additional drives inside the thing and made a nice little raid that will give you much better speeds then FireWire?

Have you run disk utility and disk warrior on your drives?

Hindsight is always 1080p

[Kevin Monahan]

Don’t set audio and video to separate scratch disk. That’ll trip things up.

Kevin Monahan
60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
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[Brad Mirman]

What does Disk Warrior give me. It appears to be for file recovery. As for Raid, I am a little nervous about it. It is my understanding with Raid, that if one drive gives out, all information, on all drives are lost

[David Roth weiss]

Disk Warrior is not a file recovery application, it rewrites and re-organizes the file structure on disk drives and RAIDs, correcting any issues it finds that can lead to lost files or even entire lost drives.

Rather than worrying about using it on your RAID, you should be more concerned about not using it. CalDigit recommends it, and I’ve used it for five years without it once causing a single issue.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Brad Mirman]

If I were to go RAID:

Do I need a RAID card?

Should I go RAID 0 or RAID 1?

If I go RAID 0 and one disk goes they all go, right?

Would I be able to back up RAID disks to external disks in case of an internal failure?

I am using two WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200 rpm. Could I use these?

A lot of questions I know, but if I am going to do this I want to do it right.

Thanks

[David Roth weiss]

Brad,

SATA drives are so robust that they hardly ever crap out, so don’t sweat over your media too much, especially the stuff that can be recaptured. That being said, it is prudent to backup to inexpensive firewire drives if you have them around.

And, you can easily stripe two or more drives together as RAID 0 with the Apple Disk Utility and with no raid card. RAID 1 is not a great idea for video, because it eats up half your drive space and saps half of the RAID performance as well, pretty much making it useless.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.