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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy system keeps clogging up

  • system keeps clogging up

    Posted by Ken Pugh on October 6, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    Not sure what forum this is… FCP, AJA or Apple… so apologies if I’m lost.

    I have a new apple system running FCP with Kona Lhe. Editing XDCAM EX over f/w 800.

    Every so often – about 3 or 4 times a day – the system slows down to a crawl – and I get the dropped frame message. The timeline plays for a second, then freezes again. Nothing I’ve tried clears this – except a reboot – upon which everything runs smoothly, no dropped frames.

    What concerns me is that if the f/w 800 is too slow and is causing the problems (and xdcam is only slightly heavier than dv – 35 vs 25 no?) then why does the system behave for long periods?

    Any ideas most welcome!

    Best,

    Ken.

    Apple 3.2
    4 gigs Ram
    Aja LHe
    OS latest
    FCP latest

    Don Greening replied 17 years, 7 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Don Greening

    October 7, 2008 at 7:36 am

    Do you have any other FW devices on the same BUS as your media drive?

    – Don

  • Ken Pugh

    October 7, 2008 at 8:05 am

    Occasionally I’ve had a deck on the f/w 400 – but assumed this was a different bus to the 800.

    Otherwise nothing on the 800 chain except a couple of drives.

    I’ve also had this problem when running off the internal SATA drives (I have 4 x 500). But I keep media to the non-startup.

    Ken.

  • Don Greening

    October 7, 2008 at 8:14 am

    [Ken Pugh] “Occasionally I’ve had a deck on the f/w 400 – but assumed this was a different bus to the 800.”

    Unless you have a PCIe FW 800 card (I’m assuming you don’t) then the 400 and 800 connections share the same BUS. Try disconnecting everything other than the drive you’re editing with and see if that solves it. Sometimes FW drives sharing the same single BUS and especially cameras and decks will fight for control of the interface and cause major headaches. That’s why they make FW cards with multiple connections because it gives you another FW bus independent of the computer’s own FW setup.

    If this doesn’t work it could be a number of things, from a bad RAM stick, A KONA board configuration problem, etc. It becomes a process of elimination. The fact that it also happens with your internal SATA 3 drive array setup is also cause for concern.

    Have you ever tried trashing the FCP preference files? Just a thought.

    – Don

  • Ken Pugh

    October 7, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    Thanks Don,

    No, I don’t have a f/w card with this computer (had one for my old G4), however still get the problem with the deck disconnected. Next time I get a dv project I’ll try editing without the Kona card – see if this helps. I run activity monitor now most of the time, and I notice when the computer starts to slow down, one of the processors activity bar fills up – even after I’ve quit all programmes it still stays mainly blue. Logging in and out doesn’t free it up either, only rebooting.

    Best,

    Ken.

  • Don Greening

    October 7, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    [Ken Pugh] “and I notice when the computer starts to slow down, one of the processors activity bar fills up – even after I’ve quit all programmes it still stays mainly blue.”

    I’d be getting someone to do a hardware test. Sounds like there’s something amiss with that processor.

    – Don

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