Full FCP 7 Assault – Out of Memory, Dropped Frames, Playback Trouble suddenly.

[Mark Suszko]

Where are the project files located, and what’s the status of the hard disk space?

[David Roth weiss]

What is your camera original material? Is it really HDV? That sequence setting raises a big red flag for me.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Marc Israel]

Thank you both for your assistance. Mark, the original files are located on a Lacie Rugged RAID 4TB external drive. Lots of unused hard drive space still on it. I had them all on a WD drive, and just bought this Lacie recently for backup but now it’s instead my mainstay. David, original camera material is all over the shop, as this is a feature-length project shot over years wth different cameras. That said, I’ve divided the film into different “projects”, as each is between 10 and 30 minutes each with plenty of files, sub-sequences, folders to sort through and so it’s easier/cleaner/more organized to work on it this way and will fuse them into One later. At least half of the film uses 1440 × 1080 MPEG-2 Video, Linear PCM, Timecode files gotten from a little Canon HV30. THAT said, current “project” is however using 50% footage shot on a different Canon Vixia camera ( (I think, but forgot model #), was converted from MTS files to mov files and then again to Apple ProRes422 using Compression. There’s then a mix of various photos from myriad sources, along with a decent portion of footage shot on an Olympus OM-D E-M5 DSLR and again converted to Apple ProRes422.

[Mark Suszko]

I was wondering about how much drive space is left on the internal drive, where I’m guessing your project files are. Especially in cases where the machine needs to render non-ProRes files, it needs enough free space in our “c” drive to swap files in and out. My first guess is, that’s where the “clog” is…. what size is the main hard drive and how much space is left?

[Marc Israel]

The internal drive is a 500 GB and there’s 136 GB of free space. But no, my project files are all on the external Lacie drive.

[David Roth weiss]

Marc,

Your sequence settings, ie. set HDV is a HUGE problem for you – HDV has long been discontinued, because it’s a horribly “lossy” codec that was in use for a very brief time, before the mire modern compressed codecs like Pro Res 442 were developed, and it get zero performance increase from GPU processing, because that hadn’t been invented yet.

You should open a new sequence, set the seq settings to Pro Res 422, square pixels, and copy and paste everything from your current timeline. You might have to resize some of all over the place material, but you will ultimately have real-time performance and much faster renders.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Marc Israel]

Please bare with me, as I’m not super savvy on these particular tech matters. Also this is a sprawling and complicated film project…

Half of the film, which involves hundreds and hundreds of clips and several dozen heavily edited sequences, was filmed solely with a Canon HV30 mini-dv camera using 24p mode. I remember that, in order to get the video files working properly, I had to perform a pulldown removal procedure. These QuickTime Movies files all have are 1440x1080MPEG-2 Video, Linear PCM, Timecode. I worked on these sequences for two whole years, editing the hell out of them, and never had any issues using FCP 7. All these sequences are 1440×1080, 23.98 fps, HD1080p24, 48 KHz, 32 bit Floating Point. We’ll call this project “Road”.

The Road sequences and “project” file is NOT the project I’m having issues with now, but the above info might be significant because…with this newer “project” (smaller film within a larger film) I’m presently editing and experiencing trouble with (let’s call it “Peru”), every time I first created/opened a new sequence in the project, in order to have the sequence settings be the same as the larger Road project (because they’ll eventually merge), I would drag any one of the Road HV30 clips onto it, whereby FCP would ask me if I wanna adjust the sequence to fit the files, and I’d click Yes. Thus, both projects have the same sequence settings, which you, David, are telling me could be the culprit and a HUGE problem. “Peru” is the project using 50% footage shot on a different Canon camera (or maybe it was Panasonic? I forget). It created MTS files on an SD card which I then converted to mov files and then again to Apple ProRes422 using Compression. There’s also various photos from myriad sources, along with a decent portion of footage shot on an Olympus E-M5 DSLR and again converted to Apple ProRes422, and a ragtag assembly of clips siphoned from the web and turned into ProRes422 with compression. I wasn’t having any issue with this project at all until a couple days ago, when trying to render a heavily-special-effected sequence, whereby blotche, digital squares, and all manner of visual disturbances appeared in the final rendered clips, and finally where “out of memory” kept appearing when I even tried to render this sequence. This was followed by “dropped frames” and very sluggish playback no matter what sequence I was working on.

I am made nervous (or more nervous) by hearing that, apparently, this whole huge epic project is using a discontinued, horribly “lossy” codec, because this film has been my “life’s work” for some time. And the prospect of having to spend hours, if not days, to fix it, and going through a huge amount of sequences, readjusting size, etc, and possibly reconnected media issues…oy I’m getting ahead of myself, but anyway of course I need to do whatever will make things right. I just wanna be sure the problem has definitely be properly identified. Does any of the above confirm or put holes in your idea, David? Why was everything working hunky dory until just a few days ago? Thanks a lot for your input.

[Marc Israel]

Here is some additional info that might prove to useful.
First, I opened the “Road” project” tonight, and learned that now it too is having the same problems. Won’t even play a basic timeline without the dropped frames interrupting before long.
So the nI just went plugged in my WD drive that was my mainstay drive until a week ago and opened the last saved project icon on that drive to see if that would have the same problems (using the capture scratch from that same drive). Indeed there were problems right away, on both projects. As said, I’m not too tech savvy, but this would make me think that the problem has to do with something configured/changed on my Macbook Pro itself (rather than a faultiness or corruption in any of the capture scratch, or in the project icon, or the external hard drives’ mechanisms themselves). I would guess, but could be wrong, the issue is not primarily the HDV sequence setting (tho’ I duly take not that it is apparently not the best choice). I am stumped, and my project stalled until I can figure out what’s going wrong. Any thoughts/input/help would be greatly appreciated,

[Mark Suszko]

Start-up audio file on my FCP-7 system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDnS4pkmzis

“It’s not dead; it just smells funny”

[Marc Israel]

Dave, Thanks for the input. You wrote “FCP has a 4GB memory limit. You have apparently hit it with the last work you did”. As mentioned, I went back to an earlier version of both projects on a different drive, and had the same issues, and indeed the project is broken up into smaller, separate projects, and many different timelines within each project. When I open any of these projects or timelines, the issue persists. Does that not hint to some other problem than reaching the 4 GB limit? Is the 4GB limit in relation to a single project?

I don’t know much about frame rates. How can I find out what the frame rates are, and how change them?

Thanks for the tip on motion. I have never used much special affects in my films, so never even bothered to try Motion. But that’s a grand idea now that I’m needing more visual effects in a coupe vignettes.

Mark, always good to see some Holy Grail, but wasn’t sure how it relates. Also, why are all the posts in this thread out of order?
Thanks guys!