Multi-Clip Stuttering Question

[Jerry Hofmann]

Sounds like you need another disk to use as a scratch disk for your media (External FW drive would help). If you’re running media from the internal, you’re taxing it too much.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D

[Keebsone]

I have a 250GB Lacie Firewire which I am running off. This problem still exists. I just bought a Lacie d2 Big Disk Extreme with RAID 0 which I am about to try. However, before I do that — I noticed that the item properties on my clips show that the Data Rate of my clips are only 3.6m/second. This seems very slow to me. Is this something with my preferences that I can change? Or is it a result of my system? Thanks so much for your help. I’ve been trying to figure this out since yesterday and have been frustrated thus far.
Best,
Dave

[Kevin Monahan]

[keebsone] “I have a 250GB Lacie Firewire which I am running off. This problem still exists.

That’s because you are playing 9 streams of DV video at the same time. Your drives are too slow for that in 9 up. You may want to try a 4 up view and work from that. OR Buy faster drives.

I just bought a Lacie d2 Big Disk Extreme with RAID 0 which I am about to try.

That’s faster than a FireWire drive. Yes, try that.

However, before I do that — I noticed that the item properties on my clips show that the Data Rate of my clips are only 3.6m/second. This seems very slow to me. Is this something with my preferences that I can change? Or is it a result of my system? Thanks so much for your help. I’ve been trying to figure this out since yesterday and have been frustrated thus far. “

3.5 MB/sec is perfectly correct for DV.

Kevin Monahan
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[Keebsone]

Hey Kevin,
Thanks so much for getting back to me. To begin, I’d like to be fully open and admit that I am completely new to Multiclip. And I am fairly new to Final Cut too, so please forgive me if I seem a little behind the curve. With that out of the way, okay… I got my 500GB Lacie Big Disk Extreme working and loaded all my footage onto it. This has RAID 0 and is running firewire 800, so it’s a much beefier drive than my little 250GB Lacie 400. Then, I redid my multiclip in 9up. The same problems occured. So, I tried 4 cameras. No better. Stutters, and whenever I change cameras, it freezes. This makes me believe that I have messed something up in my settings somewhere that is making things stick and work improperly. Is this possible? I did mess around with the lesson from the book and changed some settings, so maybe that’s it? In which case, I’m not sure how to reset the settings to where they should be to operate properly. To recap for you, my footage is low res DV, black and white. I am running ten minute clips of Quicktime Movies which are fully contained movies that run around 2GB a piece.

I am committed to getting this multiclip working no matter what. Right now, you guys at Creative Cow are my best bet. Is my computer just too slow? Or is it as I suspect that I mucked around with settings and confused the program? Please please please let me know what I can do to solve this very annoying problem. This is my first set of posts on this board, but everyone’s been real cool so far. Thank you in advance.

Best,
Dave

[Jerry Hofmann]

Check the formatting of the scratch disks… should be Mac OS Extended. Many LaCie drives come shipped ready to work on a PC…. which will slow down performance on a Mac.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D

[Keebsone]

Hey Jerry,
I clicked “get info” on the Lacie and it says its format is Mac OS Extended. I had that formatting problem earlier with the 250 Lacie which was formatted as FAT-32 and split my Quicktimes into two files. I had to re-import my files and make new Quicktimes. As a result, the files are Final Cut Pro Movie Quicktime files which is what I exported them as. Should I have exported them as some other kind of file maybe? Or do you think it could be something that I mucked up in my preferences on the program when trying to get this to work? It seems strange to me that I can’t even get a 4Cam clip working on my system. I mean, I got a 4Cam working on my friend’s Mac Mini working off the Lacie 250 and my system is much faster than his.
Thanks,
Dave

[Keebsone]

Hey guys,
I finally got it working. I think I was compressing it incorrectly. That, and I set my playback settings to Lowest and Quarter and now it works fine. Thank you for all your help and patience.
Best,
Dave

[Kevin Monahan]

It won’t work in Unlimited RT and Dynamic?

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com
Pres. SF Cutters

[Keebsone]

Hey Kevin,
I tried it in Unlimited but I keep getting the “Warning Dropframes” pop up. In Unlimited, the program will let me change my playback settings to either Medium or Half (but not both), so this is a slight improvement. If I go beyond that, the Warning pop up comes in almost immediately. If you have any other ideas how I might improve the quality, I’d appreciate them. If not, it’s cool. This isn’t a deal killer for me. I can operate at the lower settings. I’m just happy I finally got the Multiclip working!
Best,
Dave

[Pat Defilippo]

I just got done doing my first multi-clip edit last month. It was only three cameras and it dropped frames all over the place, and you can see (below) the system that I have.

What I did was, when I was done editing in Dynamic mode and simply stopping and starting the timeline, was save the final tracksheet. Then, I duplicated the tracksheet and did a full render on it.

This completely got rid of all of the dropped frames and looks great. Unfortunately, it made the multi-cam mode inactive. That’s what the un-rendered copy of the timeline is for. One is un-rendered and multi-cam-able and one is rendered and dropped-frames-less.

Although this is late, I hope this helps.
-Pat

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