Gigantic files being created

Here I am in the woods, supposed to be having a ball of a time digitizing 150 hours of footage I shot in Russia. I arrived with a big smile and 2.5 terabytes of drive space, but I am having a bit of a problem and wondering if people have advice.

As I am capturing footage- usually at about minute 6, or 8, the whole thing freezes- the pinwheel spins, and I have to force quit out of FCP to do anything else.

So I finally figured out that for some reason, FCP is creating a file that is the exact size of ALL of the hard drive space I have available, regardless of how much it is. When I click "capture now"- it sometimes spends 10 seconds 'allocating disk space.' So I saw the reason that then it freezes, is that I only have 640 MB of drive space left.

But that is bizarre- it is creating enormous files of less than 10 minutes worth of video. When I set the scratch disk as one new G-drive, after a few minutes of capturing, it froze- I force quit, and saw it has created a file that was 868 GB.

So I thought maybe it was a problem of that particular drive, and set the disk as another brand new one- and it created a file that was 931 GB. Again, for about 8 minutes of video. When I thought for some reason FCP wasn't reacting well with these new G-drives I have never used before, and maybe they were formatted incorrectly (though I just plugged them in- Extended Journaling) I tried an experiment to capture to my computer's hard drive, and then it did the same thing- freezing, and creating a file that was 27GB- the exact amount of free space I have on my lap top.

Does anyone know why this is happening?
I keep looking at the Capture settings, at the Audio Video settings- is there something I just am not seeing?

I shot on the DVX in 24P- the settings for my sequence are 2332 advanced pulldown. . .

Thanks in advance for the help. I can only get on the internet here once or twice a day but eagerly await any advice that can get me back on track.

Capture Now has this issue because, by nature, it doesn't know how long you're going to be capturing for. It tends to try to hog a lot of space before you even begin the capture. So one way to fix this is to use Batch Capture. Are you using hour-long tapes? If so, and if you don't want to do proper logging, then just "speed-log" the tapes (In point at the beginning of a tape, Out point at the end) and use Batch Capture. Even better, log every 10 to 15 minutes as one clip, which will be much better for media management as well as system performance in the long run. Your footage seems likely to be documentary, not event shoots, so you really should be working with shorter clips for optimal performance.

There's also an option in System Settings you have to set -- "Limit Capture Now to". Never leave this unchecked, or FCP will try to eat up all of the space available on your Scratch Disk in anticipation of super-long captures. Set it to 60-75 minutes (I usually set it to less -- 30 minutes). Also make sure "Minimum Allowable Free Space on Disk" is set to a reasonable number, at least 1000MB. With your 1.5TB drive, you actually have to make sure that at least 150GB (10 per cent) is always free or you'll start getting problems.

> I shot on the DVX in 24P- the settings for my sequence are 2332 advanced pulldown. . .

2:3:3:2 Advanced Pulldown removal on the fly is only good if you shot on 24pA. Did you? If it's 24p, you should be capturing in normal DV NTSC 29.97fps.

And make sure you dump those very large files, in every location where you had created them. By virtue of eating up all your free space, they can cause other problems.


www.derekmok.com

#10 - Capture now makes large file, Beachball

Shane's Stock Answer #10: Capture now makes large file, cursor becomes a spinning beachball

ISSUE: ALLOCATING DISKSPACE

1) Set a limit on Capture Now. Set it to 60 min if you want the whole tape.

2) Deactivate any anti-virus/file saver software, including Norton and Virex. For some reason these programs think that the large files created when you capture media are in fact caused by some sort of virus, and they try to prevent this.

3) Do not capture to your main system drive. While this works for some, it doesn't for many and really is not the best way to capture and store your footage. Get a good external hard drive. Firewire or eSATA are good options.

4) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. Typically if you buy a hard drive that is pre-formatted, it is formatted as FAT32, a PC format. For best results it should be formatted Mas OS Extended, journaling 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.


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what version of final cut/qt are you on?

Hi everyone- I am using 4.5- I have a G-drive terabyte formatted extended journaling off, am not saving to my main system drive, have limited capture now but was setting ins and outs anyway in the beginning and still getting the problem at about minute 8. . .

Any more advice? Happy to try anything!

What version of Quicktime? 7.3? 7.4? Those are not compatible with FCP 4.5.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]