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Playback delay
Dear All
At certain points in the day, I get a strange delay in playing back from the Timeline or Canvas. I press play, and I see the ‘spinning beach ball’ for a few seconds or much longer. The Timeline doesn’t have to be very long or very complex for this to happen, and it’s not an issue I’ve had before. It’s sometimes cured by trashing preferences, but the really the best cure is a Restart. Not ideal. This delay can occur on DV footage with 1 video layer and no rendering required.
I have a 3.0 GHz Mac Pro Xeon with 4GB RAM. Internal RAID 0 across three Seagate 7200RPM drives. FCP and the project file or an a separate internal drive (the HD). I would have thought this to be quite a capable configuration.
I’ve changed the Energy Saver setting so that the hard disks are not put ‘to sleep when possible’.
any thoughts much appreciated
Aldo
Aldo Palumbo
http://www.aldopalumbo.com -
7 Replies
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Aldo,
Sounds like a system issue to me. Have you repaired disk permissions lately? (Either using Disk Utility or Disk Warrior etc) If some system permissions are incorrectly mapped, this can cause no end of stress even on high spec systems.
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Simon’s got a good idea. There are many subtle things that impair the Finder or system level activities such as disk access. Do you have issues with any other intensive applications like Motion?
Little apps like MacJonitor (free, see versiontracker.com) can make the OS10 maintenance tasks painless. Totally benign.bogiesan
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Many thanks Simon and David. I have this morning used Disk Utility to Repair Permissions with no improvement. I will look into MacJanitor tonight.
I haven’t been using Motion, but Compressor is hanging indefinitely on Submit. It may be related.
Both the FCP and Compressor tasks involve reading data across disks (RAID 0).
best
Aldo
Aldo Palumbo
http://www.aldopalumbo.com -
[Aldo Palumbo] “I haven’t been using Motion, but Compressor is hanging indefinitely on Submit. It may be related. “
There’s a trick to fix that. Look up Jeremy Garchow and Compressor on this forum. he has listed it quite frequently.
it works sometimes for us and sometimes not.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Many thanks, Walt: I’ve noted Jeremy’s postings for the future. As it happens, I managed to solve the Compressor issue once I’d completed the following two fixes (not sure which was the solution though):
1. delete Compressor’s .plist file in the Home folder
2. Compressor > Reset Background Processing…
Re the Hang:
I have now used the install disk to Repair Permissions on the HD drive, and use MacJanitor to clean up the System files as suggested by Simon and David. Let’s see how the day goes.best
Aldo
Aldo Palumbo
http://www.aldopalumbo.com -
Dear All
I’ve cracked it.
None of the above solved my Playback hang issue, but what I noticed today is that this problem only arises during hourly Time Machine back ups. When I turn Time Machine off, there’s no problem. If I manually start a back up, the problem returns.
My configuration is to by Airport to a remote 1TB Time Capsule.
If anyone here knows how to improve this, I’d be very grateful to know. In the meantime, my Time Machine will be off during cutting time.
best
Aldo
Aldo Palumbo
http://www.aldopalumbo.com -
Thanks Aldo, this fixed it for me too.
I ejected my time machine disk and I also cancelled a transfer that was happening to my media drive (a USB1 flash drive that was transferring about 8mb a minute!! Who knows this may have also impacted it) and now instant playback.
Philip Johns
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