[Dan Lacloche]

After reading all the posts, I’m betting that it’s limitations of the system, be it the processor or the hard drive. I’m editing another project with a sequence that has 2 video layers, and all is well.

I kinda thought, if everything was green-barred in the timeline, that it meant it would play back without issues. Does it help to turn down the resolution in the Program window? That used to help in FCP 6.

Also, because using a laptop to edit is part of my business model, would a laptop with PCIe-based Flash Storage be a better choice?

A big thanks to everyone for responding to my post. I’m on my way to pay it forward, right now in the AE forum 🙂

[Dan Lacloche]

I noticed that my internal HD is only 5400rmp, so I moved the project and footage off my desktop to an external LaCie Rugged Mini Thunderbolt. This drive also spins at 5400rpm, but I have a year of work on there and never had a problem. Things were looking good, but it froze again running off the LaCie drive.

[Dan Lacloche]

Hi Sam,
Thanks for asking. I wasn’t sure what perameters I should include in my original post…but, to answer your questions…

Footage was shot on a Canon DSLR, T2i, so QuickTime with H.264
The footage is in a folder on my desktop.
I was running OS X 10.9.4, I updated to 10.9.5, last night, hoping that might help, but no difference.
No red bars in sequence. The video footage is always yellow when I bring it in, but I like to render my timeline often, during a project, for smooth playback (especially during video transitions)
This issue only started on my latest project, which isn’t that crazy:65 second timeline with
4 video tracks, 5 audio tracks, some After Effects animations that were rendered out of AE as QT,Animation, RGB+Alpha.