Colour Correction - Canvas\preview monitor both 'jamming'?

FCP 5 (pre-Intel). Colour correcting. Using Range Check. Everything goes fine, then suddenly the HewlettPackard HD LCD preview monitor goes white, and the FCP canvas window (on the main HP HD LCD monitor) no longer registers the changes I'm making. If I run the clip on the timeline the canvas DOES show the alteration, sometimes the HP monitor even kicks in (sometimes stays white). But it's very erratic. I reboot FCP and everything is fine for twenty minutes. The monitor freeze often happens when I'm adding an effect plug-in, but not always, sometimes just happens.

I've trashed prefs, I've re-installed FCP (it's FCP Studio, I just re-installed FCP), fixed permissions, run MacJanitor.

At a loss...


Ben

That sounds like one of our machines when the operator fills up the System Drive. Do an INFO on all your drives. No drive in a video system should be over 90% full.

Do you get the Spinning Beach Ball Of Death?

Koz

I've had this happend once on Intel and I closed the canvas window and reopened it and no more problems. I don't know if this helped.

Also try View > Refresh A/V Devices. I sometimes get a similar thing with complicated timelines on my old G4, and this normally wakes everything up.

Thanks gang,


I'm trying all of the above. Things are a bit smoother ... I also created a new project and dragged over the clips\sequences from the old project.

Still getting the occasional freeze up. No rainbow wheel spinning. FCP is still functioning. But canvas and preview window giving problems. Less now. I'm employing all of your suggested techniques. Seems to help to keep the work flow going ... less reboots.

Thanks X 10,000

Ben

Another source of instability is the 3 AM periodic tasks, but MacJanitor takes care of those.

Hmmm.

So you covered all the easy ones, lets get global.

This machine did this straight out of the tastefully white, Apple packing box, right?

Or was there some event? If you boot the machine from the install System CD (put the CD in and hold "C" when you start the machine), what happens if you run the disk first aid tools: Verify Disk and Verify Permissions? You need to do those tools from the install CD because the tools will not check software that's running.

We don't know a lot about the machine. Introduce us. G5? Number of drives and connections? QuickTime Version? Tiger?

Koz

Hi Koz,

I replaced the Quicktime 7.x App. I make doubly sure the canvas window isn't sized improperly. I plugged in another preview monitor (HP).

I'm exporting finished sequences to a 'different' drive, than the one which contained the original media (which seems somehow to have solved the problem of being unable to actually export anything successfully).

Because this last problem, a major one, seems to be corrected, I'm heading back to color correcting .... we'll see if the freezing windows problem has been ameliorated. I'll let you know. I'm wondering if the Quicktime App hadn't become corrupted.

Thanks for your help, I'm certainly going to try what you suggest if I continue to have problems.

Regards,

Ben

Hi Koz,

G5 Tower dual 2.5 G with 4.5 Ram and a terrabyte and a half of memory. Latest versions of all software (5.0.4 for FCP Studio). This is my client's setup. We're at the completion end of a feature docu (104 minutes) and I don't want to propose we cross grade to the Intel version of FCP.

Preview monitor and canvas window still freezing up. I've got two Apple Monitors coming today, maybe that will solve the problem. We've been using HP 23"HD monitors. Which I've never used before.

Otherwise I'm going to re-install the Os. I've re-intsalled FCP. And Quicktime. Doesn't seem to help.

I'll do a diskcheck as you propose. If any other ideas pop into your head.

I can now export as a straight Quicktime (Pal HD). But Compressor is not working properly. It's producing files that are flawed ... no Quicktime Icon, will not open when double clicked, will play when started from Quicktime, but very faulty, sticky movements etc.

Something is connected here, but can't figure out what it is.

<<<Something is connected here, but can't figure out what it is.>>>

There is something common. You have an unstable machine. Be careful not to search for a forest fire with a magnifying glass.

*DO* the Disk Verify and Permissions Verify. Boot from the install CD when you do it. Inspect all the attached drives, too.


Do you have Photoshop? Close everything. Open Photoshop and select a really large still. 2K by 3K or larger. Do a Gaussian Blur and crank the settings all the way up. Let it cook. I bet it doesn't make it. That test exercises all the memory and processor(s) and possibly the hard drives, too.

You can create all sorts of problems with attached drives. Disconnect *everything* but the internal drives and see if it all settles down.

Without digging through all the posts, you do have at least 10% free space on each and every drive, right?

Are you daisy-chaining FireWire drives?

Koz