[Steve Courtney]

That’s almost certainly your problem. You should always store your media on a different (usually external) drive, while running your OS and FCP from your internal drive. That way your computer isn’t trying to access the internal drive to play the video files while also trying to access the drive to run Final Cut.

You should also be careful where you save various files, such as Livetype files and jpgs or whatever stills you’re using. These should be stored on the external drive, too, as they will cause random frame drops when the computer has to access items you may have saved to the desktop while you were in a hurry.

I’m betting that if you drag all your video assets to an external drive, and reconnect to their media, you can lay off the project without any further problems.

Good luck.

Steve

[Steve Courtney]

Indeed, but they claim they’re going to offer last night’s ABC television shows as “Podcasts” for $1.99. And music videos direct from iTunes for .99 cents. That sort of content might be of interest to the masses. I mean, I’d probably pay $1.99 to download a few of the better HBO series the morning after they broadcast, since I don’t have HBO*. Perhaps that’s what the future holds.

(*For now, though, I wait for these shows to come out on DVD. So a portable DVD player is the realistic answer if I’m dying to watch ‘Deadwood’ on the commuter train.)

Steve

[Steve Courtney]

[Walter Biscardi] “Maxtor is not a drive I recommend to anyone who is doing serious video work, that is, you’re earning your livlihood from your work. LaCie, G-Tech and WiebeTech are all good firewire drives for A/V work.”

Any specific models you’d recommend, Walter? I still need to buy a replacement drive or two, and don’t want to waste any more money. I was leaning toward the LaCie BigDisk Extreme 500GB. Is that a good use of my resources, or should I get a 160GB and wait for prices to go down?

Steve

[Steve Courtney]

I was having the same problem at one time, and was tearing my hair out trying to figure it out. Then I realized my scratch-disk had been inadvertently set to my main hardrive, the same one that was running the FCP app. D’oh. All my renders were trying to play off the main internal hard-drive. No wonder I was getting playback errors.

Also, you might check on the locations of any stills you might be working with. A lot of times people drag jpegs or picts or whatever onto their desktop, and FCP has to access the main hard-drive to get to the media, while also trying to run real-time video. That can be an invitation to Dropped-Frame City.

Good luck,

Steve
FCTV

[Steve Courtney]

Oh, geez, I just came off a three year period of ‘freelancing’ in the Bay Area, and it was getting GRIM out there. I finally took a nice stable job at a government station in the suburbs, to put an end to the uncertainty and the mounting debts. I’m really, really happy with the decision. Sure,it doesn’t pay what my glamorous advertising gigs used to pay, but it does pay me every two weeks. And the work is surprisingly fun. Without the tyranny of indecisive art-directors, bitter copywriters, and befuddled creative directors, I’m finding my work really flows. I feel like I’m actually doing more creative work for the government station than I did in advertising. Go figure. (Plus they paid me to learn FCP, so what’s not to like?)

I think you may get a lot more out of the midwest job than you expect. Good luck.

Steve
FCTV

[Steve Courtney]

We’ve got three DSR-11s, and they’re as reliable as can be.

That said, I have a DSR-25 on my Final Cut system, and I find the little preview screen is tremendously useful. It’s one of those things, you never knew how much you’d use it until you have it. Now I can’t live without it. (It’s got audio meters, which actually work in capture mode…a timecode display…that sort of useful stuff.)

Steve
FCTV

[Steve Courtney]

Walter, (Wally?)

Thanks for the recommendation. This compelled me to finally download the trial version of Boris Continuum, and I was so impressed that we’re already ordering it for the studio. I just got my boss to squeak it in under the wire on this fiscal year. It’s an awesome deal, especially if you can wrangle the educational rate.

Anyway, thanks for the tip. This basically doubles the number of effects on my system, which means flashier promos, which means happier clients. (I know effects don’t make the editor, but it’s nice to have more bells & whistles at my disposal.) Thanks a lot.

Steve
Foster City TV

[Steve Courtney]

Thanks for the tips, everybody. I do think, however, that it’s okay that we buy the best machine out there, as it took them six years to approve the upgrade for this one. Six years from now, y’all will be laughing at me for still having my clunky old 2.7.

(I did give my paymasters three levels of upgrade options, and they went with the most expensive one. I had expected them to approve the 2.0, actually.)

Steve
FCTV
http://www.fostercity.tv

[Steve Courtney]

Thanks for the response, Walter. Can you explain why I’d want one card over another? I’ll need to justify the change to my boss, and she’s going to prefer to go with the Apple dealer’s recommendation unless I offer a concise explanation. Why is the ATI better than the Nvidia? And assuming it’s too late to make the change, will the Nvidia work okay, or will it give me problems down the road.

Thanks again for the help.

Steve

[Steve Courtney]

Thanks, that’s exactly the sort of answer I was looking for. Thanks for the help.

Steve