FCP 4.5 Glitch

I am running FCP 4.5 and the program is acting very screwy. When I have footage in the timeline and press the spacebar to view the footage, the studio monitor won't play the footage. Then, a few moments later, the footage is no longer visible in the canvas window. Here is a breakdown of the events . . .

1. After hitting spacebar, footage is no longer visible in studio monitor.

2. Then, audio meters start acting up, whereby the left channel starts to fade, eventually dropping out completely. Followed by the right channel.

3. Then, footage freezes up in the canvas.

4. But, the time code displays keep rolling (in the canvas and the timeline) as if the footage is still playing normally. Image stays frozen though.

Please help, I don't know what to do!

Thanks so much.

Play the footage in QuickTime Player. Do all those issues disappear? I'm assuming you've already checked the tapes and the problems aren't there. Is your footage captured to an FCP-friendly format? I'd also check your external devices, all connections, and make sure Canvas and Viewer sizes are set to Fit to Window. If all those are in order, try the usual dump preferences/repair permissions.

Have you tried the ol' power down and restart?

Shut everything off, let it sit for 30-60 seconds, until all fans have stopped, etc.

Power up (what you have) the external monitor, deck, external drives, external accessories, & computer monitor before you start the computer.

Give that a try and post back if it doesn't help!

You didn't give us enough info. Computer? OS? Amount of ram?

Sounds like a classic case of over loaded hard drives. No hard drive should be more than 80% full including the system drive. I personally never go over 70% full and because of that I never have many of the dropped frames etc. that many others report.

Your not daisey chaining external firewire drives together are you?

good luck!

evin



"A problem can never be solved by the same consciousness that created it"
Einstein

Trashing the preferences seems to have worked. Does this make sense to you all?

Well, trashing fixed THAT problem . . . but, now there is a new glitch.

When I try and digitize footage, I get a prompt saying, "the operation could not be completed as there is no video." I have never seen this before. And, yes, there is video.

Trashing preferences will reset Audio/Video Settings, Capture and Sequence Presets, and User Preferences. Did you reset them? Perhaps the Device Control isn't set right.

How much room is on the hard drive that holds your scratch disk? How big is your scratch disk?

kevin



"A problem can never be solved by the same consciousness that created it"
Einstein

The scratch disk has 72 of 80 GB available.