[Christopher Mcdonell]

Jerry, too bad you had to bite the bullet. But I’m sure you’ll be better off for it. I’m not yet convinced my problem is hardware related. But can’t think of anything left to try… I agree with your last paragraph – should be a reason provided if FCP is suddenly going to take away the ‘High’ quality setting. Just knowing it’s been ‘intentional’ instead of ‘accidental’ on my part would give me a great deal of comfort…

Good luck,

Chris

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Jerry, I’m both thrilled that you’re having the same problem, and sorry for you! I have not solved it yet. I’ve posted also on the Apple FCP Discussions page and was given a few suggestions. You might want to look at my posts there as well, and see what some had to say. Just search for my name I guess.

I’ll get back to you later tomorrow night if I can with more details and, yes, maybe we can solve this together! Just have something else pressing for my time at the moment.

I live in Vancouver, Canada.

Talk to you soon!

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Hm. I had that problem too after reinstalling FCP and my OS. I recall seeing things exactly as you describe and discovering that under View/External Video – All Frames or Single Frames was checked. It seemed to be the default until making the changes described above. Now I can’t even replicate your problem. Sorry I can’t be of any more help…

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Interesting. I might use this as well. Does it allow you to fly in, move around, etc., and save as a QT file ready for import on an HD formatted TL?

Chris

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Simon, I’m not sure if you’ve solved your problem. I’m just seeing this post now. My solution to the same thing was to open System Preferences/Keyboard & Mouse, and to then change the keyboard shortcut for Dashboard (which defaults to the shortcut used in FCP) to something other than command/F12 – such as simply F12. Then, in FCP, under View, set External Video to Off – not All Frames. Then set Video Playback to Digital Desktop Preview – Main.

Now you should be able to hit F12 and watch your stuff in full screen. Then use ESC to return to the timeline. And back and forth as you go. This is what works for me.

Hope this helps…

Chris

[Christopher Mcdonell]

So I now have 350 GB of free space on my 1TB Lacie Drive. I’ve repaired permissions on my mac, verified disk (including the 1TB which is fine), trashed FCP’s prefs… and still NO HIGH QUALITY setting. Processor is set to high in energy settings, put disk to sleep unchecked… what else is there to do?

As for read/write speeds, here’s what I’m getting now (only marginally improved):

128 MB file size:
DV 25 – W:55.7, R: 61.5
1920*1080 8 bit – W: 69.5, R: 78.9

1GB
DV 25 – W: 52.8, R: 62.3
1920*1080 8 bit – W: 69.5, R: 79.1

If this is slow, what should it be reading? My previous drive tested about the same and was working fine for me before my kernel panic.

Any other ideas?

Chris

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Really? What should I be getting? I’m clearing up space now and will re-test and repost later.

THAT SAID… why would FCP still default to medium settings when I open a brand new project (as a mere test) setting the scratch drive to Macintosh HD – with no external drive attached, no media imported, just an open timeline set to my desired HDV 1080p30 setting? This after trashing the prefs of course. I did the same thing at the apple store with a new imac and the high setting was indeed available.

Chris

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Thanks for sticking with me on this David. I just ran some tests using the AJA app on my external media drive. Here’s what I’m getting:

file size: 128 MB
NTSC 25 – Write: 51.5 MB/s, Read: 59.0
1920*1080 8 bit – W: 68.4, R: 78.9
1920*1080 10 bit – W: 68.5, R: 78.9

file size: 1 GB
NTSC 25 – W: 51.3, R: 59.4
1920*1080 8 bit – 69, R: 78.8
1920*1080 10 bit – W: 69.1, R: 80.4

I don’t know how to interpret this though. I’ll start copying stuff back onto my HD to clear up some space.

I tried changing RT Playback Frame Rate to Dynamic. High is still greyed out…

Chris

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Hi David,

All my media is on an external LaCie d2 Quadra 1 TB drive hooked up to my PowerMac with 800 FW. (It was previously on a 750 GB, same make). I’ve backed up most of my G5 files here, so the storage currently reads – Used: 753 GB. Available 178 GB. There is nothing currently daisy-chained to it.

Keep in mind that I get the same results with the ‘High’ being greyed out whether trying to play media from this drive, the previous one, or by simply opening a brand new project on my internal drive (160 GB) without a single clip in the timeline.

The RT drop-down menu by the timeline shows the following checked:

Safe RT
Scrub High Quality
Playback Video Quality: Dynamic (with Medium or Low available, High greyed out)
Playback Frame Rate: Full (all available)
Record to Tape: Full Quality (both available)

Chris

[Christopher Mcdonell]

Thanks for getting back to me Kevin. I would love to upgrade my rig but that is not possible at the moment. I hope your other suggestion is correct. One of the apple guys suggested I reinstall leopard, then fcp, and open a project before upgrading anything. I\’m in the process of doing that now. If I can get high quality back for hdv, to then upgrade one software at a time and keep testing. Perhaps I upgraded to an os firmware or something that is now preventing my computer from performing in fcp as it had previously. This is my only hope at this point. I\’ve reseated the ram, reset the nvram and pretty much ruled that out as a culprit. What else can I do? I\’ll post back with my results.
Chris