Problems printing to video

[Jerry Alto]

Julie- This problem has been addressed many times in the forum. The best guess is that it is a firewire issue. The problem being that you are operating two pieces of hardware on the firewire bus at the same time. A quick and inexpensive solution may be to buy and install a PCI firewire card (less than $25) to give your system a 2nd firewire bus. Hope this helps.
Jerry

G5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP5 Studio
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

You should “Mixdown” the Audio for playback before you dub out of FCP, or during the edit, if you have audio/video stuttering, drop-outs, sync-slippage, or freezes.

NOTE: Mixdown has even been demonstrated to help with slipping, skipping problems (or “missing” audio clips) for files being EXPORTED as QT (or similar) files out of FCP.

First, SELECT ALL of your audio tracks (highlight them) on the timeline, then:

Sequence Menu > Render Only > Mixdown.

You should see a dialog box telling you its rendering.

It might seem to make little sense that “Mixing down” even simple audio tracks will “fix” complex video “freezes” or random audio dropouts to tape or export, but it CAN.

NOTE: It does not matter of you only have one audio track, if there are random freezes during output, you should try the Mixdown.

I think that this is one of the functions that is SUPPOSED to take place automatically during pre-processing of “Edit to… Master to… Print to…” but sometimes it may just not quite perform this completely.
I flat-out NEVER use any of these playback “features” anyway. I always just hit “record” on the deck and PLAY the timeline out to tape.

[Julie B]

Thanks Jerry. I must have missed this thread when I scanned through previous posts! I have my drive plugged into the front of my tower, and the deck plugged into the back. Doesn’t this make them on different buses? Sorry I didn’t mention thiis part before.
Thanks again!

Mac OS X Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5, 2.3 GB RAM
FCP Studio, After Effects 6.5, PhotoShop 7

[Julie B]

Thanks Thax. When I saw that it was rendering the audio (after I told it to print to video) I assumed that this was the final mixdown…but we all know what happens when one assumes 🙂 If it still drops frames after mixing it down, I’ll try your second suggestion. I have a feeling it drops frames on playback, though. I have the setting to tell me when it drops frames during playback turned off, but sometimes is “sticks”.
Thanks!

Mac OS X Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5, 2.3 GB RAM
FCP Studio, After Effects 6.5, PhotoShop 7

[Mark Maness]

Nope, they are the same buss.

You really need a seperate firewire card to solve this problem.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Julie B]

Oh. Thanks Wayne!

Mac OS X Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5, 2.3 GB RAM
FCP Studio, After Effects 6.5, PhotoShop 7

[Dan Riley]

Thax,

Hitting record and starting your timeline playback is fine if you are
doing work where no one cares about your sequence timecode.
But MANY of us in the pro world DO VERY MUCH have to provide
our sequence timecode to various people. Like doing a layback
for an out of house audio mix, or masters to a 1-800 dub house
where they need my timecode info to put the 800# on the show
where I want it. Or how about TC windows made on a different
machine for clients to view and then give feedback based on TC.
Your response that this is a “feature” is so over the top.
Outputting to tape and editing to a specific timecode number is a
BASIC part of any professional editing system. And unfortunately
with FCP, it’s always been problematic, and a real reason why
many AVID Media Composer users are reluctant to switch to FCP,
(although her firewire issue is not what I’m talking about).

Off on a tangent here I know, but that comment about “I only just hit record”
got me going.

Dan

[Julie B]

Thanks for your input, Dan. I tried this method too…and dropped frames. The timecode doesn’t really matter on this particular master (it’s a backup that we will hopefully never need to use). However, that won’t always be the case and I do need to have the problem solved.

So far, the only comments that I haven’t tried yet concern the firewire. Does anyone have any suggestions for a PCI firewire card?

Julie

_________________________________________________

Mac OS X Dual 2.3 GHz G5, 2.3 GB RAM
FCP 5 Studio, After Effects 6.5

[Dan Riley]

Pick whichever flavor applies to your system here:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/add-ons-and-hubs/pci-pcmcia-cards

Dan

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Danrnw] “Off on a tangent here I know, but that comment about “I only just hit record”
got me going.
“

Thank you for the kind words.

What is timecode used for in the pro world?