[John Fishback]

If both drives are plugged into the Firewire buss at the same time, that could be the problem. Even though you may have a couple of FW ports, they all run off the same buss and FCP only wants to see one device on the FW buss. Using the USB buss for one of the drives (if it contains media) is ng as USB can’t consistently sustain video data rates.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

You could have a bad render or media file. First, trash prefs and repair permissions. If that doesn’t help, use the Render Manager to remove the current renders from your project and then re-render. If that doesn’t work, to find bad media, you want to narrow down where the bad media is in the program. First, export the first half of the program to h.264. If that doesn’t work, break that portion in half and export. If it works, the probem’s in the other half. You keep narrowing down until you find the bad media. This is a pain, so hopefully, one of the earlier methods fixes the problem.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

I’ve never used this camera, but the literature says it records .movs that can be dropped into FCP. You didn’t mention what drives you have. That is where you’ll need some speed – at least a 2-drive RAID. The acid test would be to find some footage from the camera, import it to your system, and see how it goes.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

I used both FCP v4 and v5 on my Dual 2.5 G5. I recall no change in speed between the two FCP versions. I suggest you use FCP 5.1.4. It’ll have the best HD functionality. HDV may be slow on your machine with either version (I don’t know if HDV was doable in v4). I’ve edited DVCPro HD on my G5 with no problems.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

Sorenson Video 3 is not an edit codec. It’s very strange for an editor to use this codec if it’s clear the clip’s going to be re-edited. Ask for a new file in an edit codec: DV, DVCPro50, ProRes (probably the best choice), etc. Also, the audio should be uncompressed 48kHz sample rate.

If getting a new file is impossible, use Compressor to make a ProRes version of what you have. Let your client know quality will suffer if you have to use the Sorenson Video 3 file.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

You should name the 2TB exactly the same as the 500GB and change the 500’s name. That way you may find FCP reconnects by itself without your manual intervention.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

I’ve read some threads that say stressed drives can cause this kind of issue. What kind of drives are you using and how are they connected – FW, SCSI, SATA, etc?

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

For proxies, check out ProxyMill. It might help.
https://www.imagineproducts.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=1

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

Our system is extremely stable. I, too, can’t remember when FCP last crashed. Do a little research on the Cow and you’ll find many excellent recommendations on setup and install. Have at least 1GB RAM per core and a fast external RAID for capture. There are a number of good choices for a capture card/box: Kona, Blackmagic and MXO. Having a beefy graphics card like the ATI 4870 will speed certain graphics processes that take advantage of the GPU.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[John Fishback]

You can create a vignette in both Colorista and Apple Color to do what you want. If you need the vignette to track as the subject moves, Color is the easiest. You can keyframe Colorista, but that can be painful if there’s a lot of movement. Also, in Color you can define the vignette’s shape, while Colorista only gives you a circle/oval or rectangle.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5

Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN