Please help with DVC Prp HD Playbayck with FCP 4.5

Can any one help ? I'm working with DVC Pro HD in FCP 4.5 for the first time and having problems playing back in the viewer and canvas windows. I captured using FCP's preset for DVC Pro 720P60 and my sequence settings are the same. When I play back in the viewer, I get frozen and jumpy playback of video but audio plays, when I drop a cut in the timeline I get dropped frames and stopped playback. When I quit FCP and play the clips in the quicktime player, it plays back fine and beautiful. Heres another weirdness, I captured a new set of tapes that were shot at 720P24, set up a sequence with that preset and everything plays back great. What can I be doing wrong with the 720P60 footage ????? any help will save this gig for me. All the footage has been captured to my internal sata 250 gig drive and external firewire 400/800 lacie 250 gig "big disk".
Thanks
Randy

System: dual 2.5 gig G5, 2 gigs ram, internal 160 system drive, internal 250 gig video drive, external firewire 400/800 lacie 250 gig drive, external firewire 400 lacie 250 gig drive (older drive)

are you viewer and canvas windows set to "Fit To Window"?
check the "percentage" pull down menu top of viewer/canvas

nick

Thanks Nick but they are both set to "fit to window". I tried changing the percentage all the way down to 25% still no change. Just for grins I hooked up my drives to my 1.67 G4 powerbook launched the project and the exact same problem on 2 different computers???? Did I capture the clips wrong, or are they to big (avg 10 min approx 7 gigs), or could the frame rate be screwy on the original tapes, they were shot with a panasonic Varicam. and I captured 720p60. I'm still having NO PROBLEMS with the clips captured and shot 720p24... This HD Stuff Is picky is'nt it!

Any answers out there????

Thanks
Randy

What's your external playback device set to? Are the playback problems spotted on an external NTSC monitor, or in the Viewer and Canvas alone? Have you tried disengaging all external devices (eg. decks, cameras) and then playing the footage in FCP with External Video turned off? It's fairly rare that something would play back fine in QuickTime Player but won't play in the Viewer. Sequence Settings aren't the culprit if your clips won't even play back in the Viewer.

Also, as unlikely as it is, have you made sure no effects have been applied to the master clips in your Browser -- eg. Motion, filters?

I might also put down exactly what was in your DVC Pro HD capture preset -- all the details. Might help with diagnosis.

thanks to all... but the problem still exists. I have turned off all external devices. The capture preset was dvc pro hd 720p60 and the project and sequence is the same. I did try exporting a clip to quicktime movie at 720p30, opened a new project with those settings and it seemed to playback fine, but the picture looked a little degraded. Do I need to recapture at 720p30 ???? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Randy

HEHE NICK~!!! de man!! i had the same problem ... and voila! just set Canvas to FIT TO WINDOW ... pheeeeeeeeew! ... what appeared to be a MAJOR processing problem was such a simple facade missetting!

glad to be of service.. :-)

Randy..
are you using a FW800 conection?
FW400 might be too slow for those files.

nick

Thanks to all with your helpful suggestions. Although none of these suggestions worked, I did figure out the problem. And the answer might help others. GET THIS... I am using FCP 4.5 running on OX 10.3.9 (Panther), silly me downloaded and installed quicktime 7 thinking this would be a good thing. Guess what Quicktime 7 and FCP 4.5 only play good together with DVC Pro HD If you upgrade to TIGER... WHY DON'T THEY TELL YOU THAT ????. Any way, I downloaded the quicktime 6.5.2 reinstaller, restarted my computer, and poof, everything plays back fine. So if you are working with DVC pro HD 720p60 DO NOT I repeat, DO NOT install quicktime 7 unless you upgrade to Tiger. I hope this info helps, I wish I had known this and saved me 3 very frustrating days and almost lost a client client.

Randy Stuart