Motion Bogs Down (How Can I Fix This?)

[Noah Kadner]

I’d try a reinstall.

-Noah

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[Matt King]

I reinstalled according to how the Mac site recommended. It does not seem to have helped.

In fact, the lag actually seems worse. Now the weird thing is in the past it will bog like this for a while and then things pick up long enough for me to get my hopes up that everything is fine…then it’s back to editing in mud with gloves on.

Should I be looking at something else?

-Matt K

FCP 6.0.4
Motion 3.0.2
JVC GY-HD110
JVC BR-HD 50
Mac OS X 10.5.5
Mac Pro 2 x 3 Dual-Core Intel Xeon 8 GB 667 MHz

[Mitch Ives]

Several of us are having the same problem. I’m quiting and restarting the machine often to fix the problem…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com

[Colin Mcquillan]

Try unloading your ram once in a while

go Mark -> Ram Preview -> Clear Ram Preview

I find this helps out bigtime when ever my system slows down while in Motion. It goes from stutter to snappy right away.

Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C.

[Mitch Ives]

Have tried that with limited success, but we’re willing to try anything at this point…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com

[Matt King]

I appreciate the input. I feel that my problem is getting narrowed down.

Before my post, I had gotten into a habit of clearing the RAM preview and things would work for a little while and also restarting the program and then restarting the machine. I have set resolution to 50 % and Half also.

It became such a stumbling block to have to stop so frequently that I figured it must be something I was doing wrong or some set up on my particular machine that was funky.

I did the re-install and it worked about as long as just restarting the machine does. I’m just curious how everyone else gets their machines to fly while I am stuttering along and what I need to change.

-Matt K

FCP 6.0.4
Motion 3.0.2
JVC GY-HD110
JVC BR-HD 50
Mac OS X 10.5.5
Mac Pro 2 x 3 Dual-Core Intel Xeon 8 GB 667 MHz

[Winston A. cely]

Do you have anything else running on the same machine that Motion is running on? I’ve found that iTunes will crash Motion almost every time. I try not to even have FCP open if at all possible. The only thing I can’t turn off at the moment is Mail.

I was having really bad problems for almost a year, and as it turns out it was my graphics card (x 1900 xt). It was still under warranty, and Apple replaced it and now everything is running better than before. I can even let iTunes play in the back when working, though I still advise against it; I now let my tunes play through the PS3.

Overall, I’m disappointed in how over-the-top particular you have to be in order to have the performance that’s advertised. From what I’ve read, every time there’s a major upgrade you have to wipe your hard drive completely, and reinstall the system not to mention the programs to have the performance that’s touted by Apple. I could understand doing maybe a clean install of the programs themselves, but I rarely hear that that works.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Sound it out: Nu-clear, not nu-cu-lar.

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe

[Matt King]

Yes. I usually have FCP open and sometimes even Safari (listening to Pandora). I will try shutting everything else down all the time and see how that works.

How do a person (average guy) go about figuring if they have a bad graphics card?

Thanks again for the input everyone.

-Matt K

FCP 6.0.4
Motion 3.0.2
JVC GY-HD110
JVC BR-HD 50
Mac OS X 10.5.5
Mac Pro 2 x 3 Dual-Core Intel Xeon 8 GB 667 MHz

[Winston A. cely]

I was having a multitude of problems; other than Motion slowing to the point of uselessness, I was getting static on my monitor, and eventually, I couldn’t start or restart my computer with the monitor plugged in. I had to unplug the monitor (30″ Apple HD Cinema) wait for the computer to finish starting up and then plug in the monitor. I had to call Apple support 3 times before they sent me a new card, and the third time was actually on accident. They were trying to transfer me to someone who was going to come to my office to check the computer out, but they transfered me to expert support instead. He said right off the bat they needed to replace my card so that was awesome.

What graphics card do you have? I know there’s a new one out that ATI made that’s specifically made to run both Windows and Mac. I believe it’s the HD 3870. From what I understand it’s a great card especially for Pro-Apps. However, don’t expect to get as good a gaming performance as the Nvidia cards.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Sound it out: Nu-clear, not nu-cu-lar.

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe

[Matt King]

I have recently started seeing mysterious blue lines across one of my monitors, but it is infrequent. I will keep an eye on this too. Thanks for the information.

The NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT card is in this machine. The whole set up is 2 to 3 years old. Here are the specs for the nvidia…it might mean something to somebody:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0393
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3008
Displays:
DELL 2407WFP:
Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported
DELL 2407WFP:
Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported

-Matt K

FCP 6.0.4
Motion 3.0.2
JVC GY-HD110
JVC BR-HD 50
Mac OS X 10.5.5
Mac Pro 2 x 3 Dual-Core Intel Xeon 8 GB 667 MHz