Final Cut Pro Playback Problems

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

Final Cut Pro Playback Problems

Posted by Samantha Whittaker on May 19, 2010 at 7:39 am

PLEASE HELP! I’m having major problems with playback of HD and DV-Pal footage in FCP. I’m using FCP 6.0.6. on a Mac Pro. I’ve tried every simple solution and nothing works. Everytime I play in FCP, the cursor spins for about a minute, then there are delays in the playback – almost as if it’s dropping frames (I do not get any messages) – and then the cursor spins again. Sometimes it doesn’t want to play at all. I’ve been using this Mac for a year and a 1/2 and have had no problems, all this started last week. I’ve done all the updates, my footage is always on the Internal Drives – until the project is complete – I have plenty of Memory (800 GB) working with 6GB RAM. I’ve check my sequence settings and the footage always matches the timeline. My old projects all play fine but it’s all the new ones I’ve started since last week.

All I can think of doing is re-installing FCP? Would this help?

Please if anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
Sam

B&C Group:
FINAL CUT PRO 6.0.6
Mac OS X 10.5.8
2x 2.8 Quad-core Intel Xeon
6GB RAM

Samantha Whittaker replied 15 years, 12 months ago 3 Members · 6 Replies
6 Replies

Rainer Wirth
May 19, 2010 at 12:05 pm

You have got a streaming Problem (Hardware)
Do you have a raid ? Internal Raid? External Raid? Where do the files come from?

Rainer
Samantha Whittaker
May 19, 2010 at 12:19 pm

Hi Rainer,

Thanks – I don’t know exactly what you mean by a RAID (I am quite useless when it comes to computer terms) but my mac is broken into 2 hard drive spaces – one which has all my apps; etc, has at least 190 GB left, and the other which I store all my projects and footage on has at least 800 GB left. I also have a DROBO machine – which is an external hard drive / “robot” but it switches on and off when I switch the mac on and off.

Streaming problem – is there anyway to fix it?

Thanks,
Sam

B&C Group:
FINAL CUT PRO 6.0.6
Mac OS X 10.5.8
2x 2.8 Quad-core Intel Xeon
6GB RAM
Chris Tompkins
May 19, 2010 at 2:41 pm

Ya, you don’t want your media on an internal drive – unless it’s a seperate drive from the OS. Stripped drives would be preferred.
Sounds like you have a thruput issue.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta
Rainer Wirth
May 19, 2010 at 6:20 pm

So, you don’t have a raid, you are on a internal sata drive.
If you work in SD 25Mbs you should be able to edit. If you start working in more advanced codecs, your internal drive isn’t fast enough to handle the data. Then the machine starts to stop or makes weird things.
The best thing to do is to work from a Mini Raid, like Lacie or other manufacturor who has a 800 FW connection. These raids can handle up to 80 Mbs and the most important fact: They work with Raid Level 5 which means that your data is save when one drive goes bad.
But you should check your machine (techtool Pro for example) first

I hope this helps

Rainer
Samantha Whittaker
May 20, 2010 at 6:08 am

Thanks guys! I’ll check out using a RAID / Lacie and see if it fixes the problem – sounds like it would.

Sam 🙂

B&C Group:
FINAL CUT PRO 6.0.6
Mac OS X 10.5.8
2x 2.8 Quad-core Intel Xeon
6GB RAM
Samantha Whittaker
May 24, 2010 at 12:27 pm

Hi Guys, I just wanted to thank you so much for all your help!

Myself and another tech took a look at my Mac on Saturday and it comes down to the fact that my internal drive was corrupted. I have cleaned the drive and now FCP works properly – no problems. I’ve spoken with my boss about this and we have decided to go for a RAID system to protect the hard drive and projects.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! 🙂

B&C Group:
FINAL CUT PRO 6.0.6
Mac OS X 10.5.8
2x 2.8 Quad-core Intel Xeon
6GB RAM

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