Spinning Color Wheel?

[Jeff Carpenter]

The color wheel is the same as Window’s hourglass. It pretty much means “wait, I’m thinking.”

It’s normal to see it a little bit. Do you think you’re seeing it a lot or is it lasting several seconds when you do see it? If so, there might be something wrong. But if it’s something that pops up for 1-2 seconds every now and then I wouldn’t worry about it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I had 3 thoughts about things for you to check:

1) Go to System Preferences in the Apple Menu. Select “Engergy Saver” and look through there for the processor performance pull-down menu that contins the words ‘automatic’ and ‘highest.’ Set it to ‘highest.’ (I think this is still on the quad machines…I might be wrong.)

2) Make sure you’re not capturing any video to the system drive that Final Cut is on.

3) Repair Permissions. Restart the computer with the OS X CD in it and hold down the “C” key the whole time. It will bring up the re-install OS X screen. Just look in the menu for disc utility and repair permissions. Once done, quit the installer and start the computer again.

Those are 3 things I thought of that might be causing extra rainbow wheeling.

[Bryce Whiteside]

Excessive spinnig is explained at The Spinning Beach Ball of Death

HTH,
Bryce Whiteside

Don’t worry Mr. B. I have a cunning plan…

PowerBook 1.67 Ghz ATI 9700 128 MB 2 GB
Final Cut Pro HD
DVD Studio Pro 3
Motion

[Kevin Jones]

I notice it usually after a period of inactivity.
I assume the Hard Drive is spinning back up to speed.
It never spins more than about 10 seconds.
Thanks for the info!

Kevin Jones
2.5GHz Quad-core PowerPC G5
4GB DDR533 NON ECC 4X1GB
2X500GB Serial ATA-7200rpm
16x SD DL(DVD-R/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GF 6600 256 SDRAM
Final Cut Studio

[Joe Murray]

You’re correct, this is most likely your hard drives spinning back up to speed. It can get pretty annoying and slow you down. The way to get rid of it is, in the Energy Saver settings part of the System Preferences, uncheck the box that says “Put hard drives to sleep whenever possible.”

Joe Murray