PAL, NTSC, 16:9 and 4:3 footage in same sequence, suddenly insert editing impossibly slow

I am editing a 90 minute doc. Of which about 1/2 the footage is PAL, 1/2 NTSC, 1/2 16:9, 1/2 4:3. I was editing into a Pal 4:3 sequence, which of course required a lot of conversion rendering. the project is getting huge, I have 3 Lacie 250 GB hard drives pretty full, though I leave a lot of extra space in them. Everything was fine, but suddenly, any time I did an insert edit, closed a gap,or anything other than an overwrite, each action took about 5 MINUTES (instead of instantly). In trouble shooting, I found it works OK if there is only one Video track. But of course, with titles, etc, that is not the case. As a work around, I copied the whole sequence into an NTSC 4:3 sequence, and this was working OK, except that now, sometimes clips just disappear from the sequence (this can be either video or audio clips), and every now and then there is a momentary flicker in the footage. I am working on a PowerBook G4 1.67 Ghz processor with 1.5 GB DDR2 SDRAM. I have trashed the preferences twice. I didn?t reinstall FCP 4 because I connected the harddrives to a desktop with FCP 4 and the same thing happened. So it seems not to be the computer, not to be FCP 4 itself, but a problem with the project or sequence. Any ideas on how to get it all working normally again?

You're basically trying to do standards conversion at the same time as editing. I probably would have conformed all footage to one standard (PAL, NTSC etc.) before putting the footage into the timeline. Daisy-chaining three Lacies doesn't help the issue.


www.derekmok.com

I am going to have to agree with Derek on this one...

Convert all footage to ONE medium then import the footage into FCP and set your timeline accordingly.

(you can use compressor if you choose, just make sure to deinterlace your footage when you convert to 25p or 29.97)

You can mix aspect ratio's of you want. But I would suggest to choose one and stick with it.

If at first you don't succeed, keep ****ing it up 'till it works!

OK, thanks,i'll try redoing everything, converting before
putting into
> timeline. Is it fine to convert by exporting to Quick time
movies, which
> seems easiest, or would you suggest using QuickTime
Conversion,and if so,
> how should I set the settings? Also, is it preferable quality
wise to use a
> PAL sequence? And if the final product is to be 16:9, should
the sequence be
> 16:9? I ask this, because I was thinking the sequence should
be 4:3 and I
> should convert the 16:9 footage to 4:3 rather than vise versa
because it
> seems better to scale DOWN 16:9 than to scale UP 4:3, as far
as quality
> goes...And for now, I'm stuck with the 3 daisy chained hard
drives...