[Nick Meyers]

if you ask at the apple developer site, you will definitely get your answer.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

FCP is holding a lot of info about those stills in RAM.
there comes a point where it runs out of RAM for that particular task.

you can try going into your user FCP System Prefs (Shift Q), Memory & Cache tab
and up your RT allocation for stills.

it still might not be enough.

i do a fai bit of work with subtitles. i get the same thing: subs play fine for a while with green render bar,
then they gum up with the orange render bar.

the trick is to turn the earlier ones OFF.
actually i have a separate tracks with visibility tuned off, and the real trick is to bump the earlier subs UP into that track.

that alone doesn’t fix the later subs,
they too have to be turned off, and back on again. this forces FCP to “re-think” them.

you might have a lot of dissolves, making bumping chunks up a track difficult.
in which case turning them off with control B is the go.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

honestly, there will be no need to relink just for a screening.
your client will not be able to see a difference.

the real benefit of the higher data rate come in when you need to do a sophisticated GRADE on the footage.

LT looks fine.
i know, i have cut a few features in LT, and we have had screenings in full-size cinemas.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

these seem like they may be fairly simple projects.
have you tried editing with the native format?

and i wasn’t being too facetious about FCPX
it might be worth trying.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

does it really have to be that small?

look into ProRes Proxy (one of the SD flavours).
or one of the Off-Line RT formats.

you can always “roll your own” format (like a smaller frame-srize Prores Proxy) but you wont get much RT support.
you wouldn’t get that with your H264, so i guess you are used to that.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

yeah, by working in FCPX!

seriously FCP7 does not like H264.
if you want to continue in FCP7, you really need to convert to ProRes

“I don’t care about quality here as I’m going to online the footage back to native format at the end”

if the native format is H264,and if you plan to on-lin in FCP,
then an off-line on-line approach could be problematic as FCP7 does not like H264, (did i mention that yet?)
so convert to something that is good enough quality to be your master.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

what format is the clip?

FCP does not like H264, prefers ProRes.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

another thought, (if you want to go ahead with this)

media managing the tapes into smaller chunks may be a better bet,
you will preserve the original metadata that allows you to run DV start-stop detect.

media manger can be tricky when reducing tapes into smaller chunks as you have to leave a 2 frame gap between adjacent grabs, otherwise MM will not split them.
you will get 1 frame back after the MM! i cant remember if it;s on the head or the tail

if you need every frame, you have to Media Mange every second chunk
so you’d do the “odds’ then come back and do the “evens”

nick

[Nick Meyers]

maybe you need to re-install?

[Nick Meyers]

i think the OP is using the DVDs as an *archive* medium.
backing up 4.5 gigs of DV at a time.

i suspect DV tapes would have a better chance of long-term survival than DVD disks.

nick