TIMELINE IS NOT PLAYING WELL

[Debe]

I’d start with more RAM.

How many MB are these PICTs, and how many do you have strung together in a row? Compare that to how much RAM you have, knowing the FCP likes a whole gig to itself under “normal” circumstances. You are then adding these huge files…and the OS needs some of that RAM…

Not knowing how large your PICT file sizes are, it’s tough to know if I’m barking up the wrong tree or not…

debe

[Debe]

Oh, and in the meantime, you could try trashing your FCP preferences and repairing your OS permissions.

Repairing permissions is done in Disk Utility usually located in [main hard drive]>Applications>Utilities.

For info on trashing prefs, look at this site…

https://www.lafcpug.org/trashing_fcp_prefs.html

The following is a nifty little program that stores and trashes prefs for you. Just be careful backing up the first time. Make sure you’re backing up clean prefs.

https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/

debe

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

It goes without saying (so I’m TYPING IT) that you need to FULLY RENDER everything on this timeline.

And…

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 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.

[Mark Chadwick]

hello,
Its a complex project. The files are around 1.5 all the way up to 40mb. The show will consist of around 75% of picture content. Reducing the size of the picts is something we don’t want to do because it is going to be
shown on a globe projection screen 1600×1200. The G5 has about 1.5gig of ram. You think I should up the ram?

thanks for your help everyone.

mark

[Debe]

Yes, I really think upping the RAM will help. At least to 2 gigs for FCP alone, 3 GB or 4 GB if you plan on having Motion, LiveType, Soundtrack and/or Photoshop open at the same time.

If you can keep the photos to only as large as they need to be to accomplish your effects, that will help as well.

And play around with the different playback options in the Render Control tab of the Sequence Settings. Until you have your timings set, you’ll save a lot of time rendering in a lower resolution.

debe