HELP!! FCP playback is jerky on Mac Pro

[Roli Rivelino]

If you have one partitioned drive you will have all sorts of problems with playback and rendering. Your scratch disk needs to be on a seperate drive from your boot drive.

Your boot drive should only have your project files on it, as these are tiny file size and only contain basic info, your media files, especially with HD will be massive and Final Cut needs to have those stored on a seperate drive.

Get an external or better still install another 1TB internal drive in your pro.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “I will get over my manualaphobia, one day at a time.”

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

[Marty Dale]

Hi Roli,

thanks for the repsonse.

I don’t think I was clear enough before – I have a boot drive and a data drive. The scratch is saving to the DATA.

I also have a load of external drives in a RAID (6T) but it makes no difference.

Also previously to FCP 6 everything ran fine (even if the FCP scratch disk was saving to the Boot it was never a problem).

The problem also appears to be with HDV, although I am working with Apple Pro Res HQ and occassionally it still jerks.

thanks!

Martin

[Roli Rivelino]

Wow, sorry Martin, that’s got me stumped, my system is much smaller than yours, but plays back HDV (from my Panasonic HVX) fine; though I do get dropped frames if I’m editing effects rich and have lots of sequences open.

You sound like you’re in advance of me as an editor, so forgive me if it sounds like I’m stating the obvious, but I found that if I set the RT on the timeline to unlimited, playback is a lot smoother and I don’t get any dropped frames, this is done at the expense of full quality playback, but seeing as Final Cut always outputs at full quality I’m OK with this.

Also in the same menu I have ‘scrub high quality’ checked along with, dynamic, dynamic, multiclip playback and full quality checked.

In User Preferences, I’ve limited real time video to 44 MB/s, this is not default, but a tutorial I watched told me this is a good idea to set to this.

As far as the Pro Res 422 is concerned, you’re only meant to edit using that, Final Cut finds it too big to output with.

I got a lot of this set up info from the lynda.com essential editing tutorials.

I hope this helps, good luck.

Oh one last thing, do you have an esata card installed in your pro? I had a lot of troubles when I had one installed in mine, just a thought.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “I will get over my manualaphobia, one day at a time.”

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

[Marty Dale]

Hi Roli,

really appreciate the response – I have been searching the forums for a good week before I posted and this doesn’t appear to be a problem that anyone else has had!!!!

I have tried every variance of Sequence setting (Unlimited/safe, medium/dynamic etc to no avail).

Another bizzare thing is that I have an HD monitor hooked up through a Black Magic Card and that plays fine.

This makes me think its a graphics card / monitor problem – but i’ve been cutting HDV on the same system for 2 years prior to FCP 6!

I’m now thinking I will reinstall MAC OS and also FCP 6, if that doesn’t work it may be a case of selling the computer!

thanks for the websites and other tips,

Martin