difficulty playing clip

Hi,
I am working on a Mac G5 and I have my video files stored on a 500gb hard drive. I have several clips that are 15 minutes long that I am trying to edit. Each is about 2gb size. When I bring the file to the timeline, if would take a while for the color wheel to spin, play for 2-3 seconds and stop. I tried setting the preference to safe instead of unlimited but it is not working. I also delete user preferences and reinstall final cut pro. I have a 160 gh hard drive that final cut pro HD is installed, but it is nearly half full. My computer is a dual drive, pretty decent one. Could anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong?


Thanks!

Kar

How is that drive formatted? With files about 2GB, it sounds suspiciously like it is formatted FAT 32, which is a PC format. For media to play back properly, the drive needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended, Journalling off.

Thanks for the qick reply Shane, although it's a bit above my head.

We shot on DVCam at a studio and brought a blank 500 GB Lacie. Told the studio guys who transfered it that we would do the editing with a G5. They have PCs but also work extensively with a Mac G5 (2.5 watercooled ?) so I assumed they knew what they were doing.

Is it that a Mac OS won't accomodate such large clips? Was that the tip-off?

Should I go back and have them take a look at their work? What do you think (and thanks again).

Some Hardware Overview data:

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1 GHz

The Mac OS can handle the clip size fine. If the Lacie was off the shelf, it needs to be reformatted before use. They might have done this, but the 2 gig thing is a warning flag to us because this is the exact cut-off size of an incorrectly formatted drive.

Another warning is the fact that 15 minute clips should be more like 3 gig.

Do you have files on the drive that end in something weird like .av?

Thanks Jude,

I think the clips may be more like 10 minutes each upon reflection. There are 10 clips ranging from 1.63 GB to 2.15 GB.

We had them save for us because we were having trouble capturing at home.

No funny extensions that I can see.

Check the file formats. Just because it has a QuickTime icon on the file name doesn't mean it's properly formatted. As Shane said, check the drive yourself -- click on the drive icon on the desktop and press APPLE-I to check the drive's formatting. Then check your clip formats by selecting one of them in your Browser in FCP, then pressing APPLE-9.

PC guys often make a lot of assumptions about Macs -- for example, they see on paper that FCP can handle AVIs, and they hand you a bunch of media that was convenient for them to create, but a nightmare for FCP to handle. Bottom line is, you can't trust them to do it right until you've verified yourself.

Ahh - cool - the clips over 2 gig show that this is not the problem.

Sadly, that means you've got another problem...

Do your sequence settings match your clip settings? Get the specs of your clips and compare them to the specs of your timeline - if they don't match then FCP is having to convert something on the fly, which could cause your problem.

Tyr and tell us more about the problem - anything you can think to throw in might help us figure out the cause.

Hi,
Thanks! I will look at your suggestions. I also tried to capture clips using my DV Cam just now and it is having trouble capturing as well. A box pops up and says dropped frames were reported durng capturing. Maybe it is something I am doing wrong with the software setting...

What do you think?

Hi,
I did the APPLE I and it says format: MAC OS Extended (journaled)

Hi Jude,
how do I get the specs of my clips and specs of my timeline?

I did the APPLE I and it says format: MAC OS Extended (journaled). Should it be un-journaled? Can I convert to unjournaled NOW, or must the footage be re-captured?

How can I check the specs to compare the specs of my clips and specs of my timeline? Nothing weird about the clips that I can see.

I have G-5 dual stream 10.3 FCP Academic. 160 GB internal (80 used). Using a 500 GB Lacie external that contains all clips (20 GB total).

Can't capture and can't even seem to play most clips I have. It gives me the "dpopped Frames" window with a list of suiggestions that we have followed (dump preferences, etc...).

Can the 'journaled' / 'unjournaled' issue be causing all of this?

We have edited half a dozen projects on this system successfully this year.

Any ideas or creative heckling welcomed.

Here is my standard answer. Look at the link provided, as it has LOTS of suggestions...

#12 Dropped frames on capture/playback

Shane's Stock Answer #12:

[docs.info.apple.com]

1) Do not capture to your main system drive. Since it is busy reading the operating system and application files, it will intermittently drop frames during capture.

2) Do not under any circumstances run any anti-virus/filesaver software. Including Norton and Virex. Sure, Apple doles out Virex for free, but FCP doesn't cooperate with it very well.

If you absolutely feel you must keep Virex installed on your system then use Kevin's script to shut it off before you use FCP:
[www.pistolerapost.com]

3) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. It should be Mas OS Extended, jornalling off. If it isn't, copy your files from it and re-initialize it. If it is any other format, you will encounter problems. If not at first, then eventually.

4) Trash the FCP preference file:
Home/library/preferences/FCP user data/Final cut Pro Preferences

Shane

> I did the APPLE I and it says format: MAC OS Extended (journaled). Should it
> be un-journaled? Can I convert to unjournaled NOW, or must the footage be
> re-captured?

Kar, don't be too alarmed. While it's advisable to use not journaled, many of my own external drives are also formatted as Journaled, and they've never given me problems. It's not necessarily the end of the world. You can't reformat a drive without destroying its contents, but before you reformat your
drive, let's exhaust our other options first.

> How can I check the specs to compare the specs of my clips and specs of my
> timeline? Nothing weird about the clips that I can see.

Re-read my previous post where I posted the method: Select a clip in FCP and press APPLE-9 to see the codec, frame rate, file format and so on.

> Can't capture and can't even seem to play most clips I have. It gives me the
> "dropped Frames" window with a list of suiggestions that we have followed
> (dump preferences, etc...).

Sometimes dropped frames on playback are not an issue; what you should make sure is that your captured clips didn't drop frames.

> Can the 'journaled' / 'unjournaled' issue be causing all of this?

Possible, but not that likely in my own experience.

A couple of things to check in addition to Shane's list:

a) Don't chain a capture device to a FireWire drive;
b) Don't use waveform displays in the timeline, which cause substantial hangups;
c) Don't use a display size in the Canvas and Viewer larger than Fit to Window;
d) Also avoid putting render files into your system drive;
e) Don't have too many real-time audio mix tracks.

""My computer is a dual drive"" You mentioned that your primary boot drive is 160 GB but what is the second or dual drive? Is the second drive internal or the FW 500 GB that you are referring to?

You may or may not have experienced editing from a Firewire drive in a previous edit session but if you can copy the files to an internal SATA drive, you will most likely have a better experience.

Hi,
Shane, John, derekmok, Jude, BIG HUGS and Thanks to you all for helping. I took your advise and read the

[docs.info.apple.com]

one part talks about choosing hard drives for FCP

"Be aware that if you use a FireWire hub to increase the number of FireWire ports available to your computer, it is possible that the FireWire hub may impact the performance of high-speed data transfer between your computer and any FireWire hard drives. Connect drives directly to eliminate (or test for) this possibility if performance in Final Cut Pro is affected."

It's my FireWire hub, everything is connected to this cheap $10 hub that's causing all the problems. I have connected the drives directly to my computer and FCP is working smoothly now.

Thank you for all your time and knowledge. I am going to start editing now.

Yours,
Kar

Huh, a hub - I never would have thought to ask about that. Thanks for letting us know what the cause was. Glad it's working well now