Playhead delays at each cut when playing back timeline

[Tom Wolsky]

“I have no trouble transferring the video files from the SDHC card to my External drive, importing them to an FCP project, and playing back the clips in the viewer.”

Please explain your exact procedure for doing this. Are you using the log and transfer window to ingest the media?

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Will Wickert]

Tom,

Thanks for the response. I tried the Log and Transfer method initially before but the Log and Transfer window would not let me select any files or folders. The files themselves were all faded, and if I tried selecting the whole folder, I would get a Warning message saying:

“100SANYO”(or whatever the name of the folder containing the media is) contains unsupported media or has an invalid directory structure. Please choose a folder whose directory structure matches supported media.

I then copied all the files onto an external firewire drive and tried Log and Transfer off that to import the files and still wasn’t able to select any files or successfully select the folder.

So I just did a standard import (File>Import) from the external drive and the files imported into my browser panel just as any other media file and they all playback with little to no hesitation in the viewer when I’m setting my in and out points. It’s just after inserting all the clips onto the timeline and playing the timeline that I get a 1-2 second delay at each cut.

I’m all new to this MPEG-4 AVC/h.264 work flow and have been finding that all the clips may need to converted to a more FCP friendly format such as Pro Res before bringing them into the editor. The strange thing is, I can edit these clips and play back the resulting time line in iMovie 09 just fine, no delays or hang up whatsoever. Of course, I’d rather use FCP to edit because it’s generally much faster and more fun to edit with, given the keyboard shortcuts, more traditional GUI, and all the other capabilities it offers.

-Will

[Will Wickert]

Ok, I actually just batch converted all the clips to Apple Pro Res with MPEG Streamclip and reconnected my clips in the timeline to the new Pro Res files. Unfortunately the Pro Res files are now taking up 16 GB of space on my hard drive vs the 1.3 GB of space the original files are taking up altogether, and now the time line needs to be rendered before it will even play back at all. According the the render progress box, it will take the 10 minute time line here between 1-2 hours to fully render, just to preview my rough cut.

Oh well, so much for the convenience of tapeless media with a small lightweight handheld. I just don’t have the time to to do all this conversion, recompression, and rendering just to be able to edit some small little AVC/h.264 clips together in FCP. Looks like I’ll have to rely on iMovie to make my edits on these types of clips and start shopping around for a small hand held that produces tapeless media that is more efficient with FCP or just revert back to a tape recording camera. Even logging and capturing from tape was a faster work flow than what I’ve been dealing with here with these AVC clips.

[Scott Biggs]

Uh, yeah. Me too!

I’ve been experience the same problem: during playback the video stalls for about a second at each and every cut, making editing…pointless. Sound plays fine.

By changing the playback setting to “low” helps, but the hanging still sometimes happens, although with much less of a pause.

I’m using 1080i video shot with a Canon D7, my computer is a brand-new iMac (recently switched to the mac from PCs and Premiere, so I am still learning the fine points).

Scott Biggs
Sleep Furiously Studios

[Scott Biggs]

Hey, I just tried something that seems to either have worked, or helps a LOT!

On the Canvas window, in the right-most pull-down menu make sure that “show overlays” is unchecked. Mine was on. I turned it off, and now I’m no longer seeing the transitions.

Don’t know what fcp calls an overlay yet, hope it’s not something terribly important.

Good luck,
-scott biggs

[Scott Biggs]

Sorry, the previous posts were only temporary fixes. The damn program delays just as much as before.

Help!

Anybody, anybody? I’m beginning to think that working with Premiere wasn’t so bad.

-scott

[Scott Biggs]

Another day of tweaking.

I’ve made a test that does NOT have the hesitations/pauses at each edit.

I stopped using my brand-new 4 TBytes firewire800 external hard drive. By moving all my files to the main drive of my iMac, I no longer see a hesitation.

Perhaps playing with the cache??? Hmmm. The firewire SHOULD be quick enough–didn’t occur to me before.

Please let me know if anyone else has experienced anything like this.

-scott biggs

[Matt Edwards]

I am experiencing the same problem, playhead delaying at each cut visually but audio is fine. My media too is coming from an external hard drive. connected firewire 400-800. I’ve done this in the past (although 400-400) and haven’t’ had this problem. Do I really have to transfer all this media onto my internal drive?

*edit* I just transferred all the media onto my internal drive and it’s still delaying. Ugh.

Thanks for any other suggestions.

[Scott Biggs]

Okay. It seems like we have NOT figured out the rub of this problem. I have been working on other projects (not editing), so I’m no longer fresh on this topic.

What we need are new eyes and new ideas here.

-scott biggs

[Matt Edwards]

I’ve discovered that the playhead delay problem is happening using mp4 h.264 file types. My external hard drive handled .mov fine.

Is this a known issue with h.264 – i am using these because I I can control the bit rate and keep the file size small enough to handle on my system. other wise I’m cutting onto multiple 7+ GB files that just clog my system and slow me down/crash.

Anyone have any tips?

thanks!