scrubbing slows down and becomes unbearably slow

I have recently upgraded OS from Panther to Tiger and have kept our final cut pro 4.5 HD.

Here is the problem:
When you first load a project and digitize the footage; scrubbing is virtually instant from
anywhere to anywhere; but as you edit the footage by razor-blading it; the scrubber
becomes more sluggish until it reaches a point where it will bring up the hourglass
(or whatever that Mac spinning ball is called).

To migitagate the situation I have upped the cache for thumbnails and RAM in the prefs
but this has not helped at all.

closing the sequence tab and re-opening the sequence will temporarilly mitigate the
situation; but again it will become sluggish again.

I have checked the FAQ Farm and found nothing (nothing on Apple either)

Here is my configuration:
Mac OS X
10.4.10
Power PC G5 Dual 2.5Ghz
2 GB Ram
Dual Channel UL4d SCSI controller
to 2 Huge 1.2TB drives
aja io for SD
aja kona 2 for HD
final cut pro 4.5 HD


please help!!

Do you have audio waveforms showing? That can slow things down.

Scott

it doesn't matter if audio is displayed or not; this is a creeper
issue that popped up with the addition of OS X Tiger 10.4.10


Scott Taylor Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Do you have audio waveforms showing? That can
> slow things down.
>
> Scott

Well, it does matter if it's affecting you. Even knowing for sure that the change in operating system is the problem doesn't make it go away. Try turning off your waveforms in the timeline.

Turn off Thumbnails too. And yes, using Waveform display in the timeline is a wasteful thing to do. Just edit your sound in the Viewer. Having viable Audio Scrubbing means you'll need the waveforms less anyway. Also, try dumping your render files. And make sure none of your drives is filling up.


www.derekmok.com

derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>o. And yes, using Waveform
> display in the timeline is a wasteful thing to do.
> Just edit your sound in the Viewer.

Speak for yourself...I would consider having to double click every clip to send it to the viewer a wasteful act. But then again, I am editing on an 8-core system with 8 gigs of ram.

"Never underestimate a kick to the nuts"
Bas Rutten

Again; as I clearly said in the message.
This slowdown occurs with both waveform display
disables AND the thumbnails disabled!

I am hopefully looking for a solution to this issue.



Jude Cotter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, it does matter if it's affecting you. Even
> knowing for sure that the change in operating
> system is the problem doesn't make it go away. Try
> turning off your waveforms in the timeline.

I didn't see that anywhere in your messages, Mark. All I saw was that you'd upped the cache.

It could be that something is awry with your system, but that's pretty hard to figure out from here. I'm on the same machine and I'm not having any trouble. Perhaps try pulling out ram until you get back to 2 gig, and diagnose in stages from there.

Another thing I can try is a re-install of FCP; as it was adding through the
archive and install function from Panther to Tiger.

I was hoping that this issue was more common and an easier solution
could be found.

Thanks for the help


Jude Cotter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I didn't see that anywhere in your messages, Mark.
> All I saw was that you'd upped the cache.
>
> It could be that something is awry with your
> system, but that's pretty hard to figure out from
> here. I'm on the same machine and I'm not having
> any trouble. Perhaps try pulling out ram until you
> get back to 2 gig, and diagnose in stages from
> there.

[Another thing I can try is a re-install of FCP; as it was adding through the
archive and install function from Panther to Tiger. ]

They occasionally remind us over at MacFixit that reinstalling software is the number one most-effective fix to knotty problems with performance.

I'm curious, does your timeline contain complex nests-- and have you perchance bladed into any of these, perhaps to lift out a section in the middle of the nest?

Doing so duplicates the entire nest, and its memory requirements and if you do enough of these you'll drag your system down to sludge, with the SBBOD (spinning beach ball of death) until you eventually get "out of memory" errors.

Another memory/CPU hog occurs when you slo-mo video and you also slo-mo linked audio. Oh,yes.

HTH

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:
Set Video In & Out separate from Audio with Control I & O !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Loren Miller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >
> They occasionally remind us over at MacFixit that
> reinstalling software is the number one
> most-effective fix to knotty problems with
> performance.
>
> I'm curious, does your timeline contain complex
> nests-- and have you perchance bladed into any of
> these, perhaps to lift out a section in the middle
> of the nest?
>

No nesting whatsoever;
just standard clips with fade to and from blacks.
It seems that as you add edits; so does the speed
slow down; but if you close the sequence and re-open it;
it will temporarily be fast again; until you start adding edits.

> Doing so duplicates the entire nest, and its
> memory requirements and if you do enough of these
> you'll drag your system down to sludge, with the
> SBBOD (spinning beach ball of death) until you
> eventually get "out of memory" errors.
>
It is all 100& true speed footage

> Another memory/CPU hog occurs when you slo-mo
> video and you also slo-mo linked audio. Oh,yes.
>
> HTH
>
> - Loren
> Today's FCP keytip:
> Set Video In & Out separate from Audio with
> Control I & O !
>
> Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
> Now available at KeyGuide Central.
> www.neotrondesign.com

I developed the same problem with my new project. Tried all the suggestions here. Brand new 2 x 2.66 dual core, 10.5.1, 4GB RAM. I uninstalled, reinstalled FCPS2. Long process indeed. Created a new project. Placed video in timeline and discovered the presets would change to a high MB per second and seriously slow the scrubbing. I'm in the process of redoing a new project just to test why the preset would change for my project after I created it. Any suggestions? BTW. I had a project done that I didn't erase, 720x480 SD and when I returned to it I had no problem scrubbing. I shot the footage on DV and imported it as SD 720X480.
I'll keep you posted on the preset change problem after the project is created.
Thanks!

Update:
Made sure the sequence presets were set to
720x480
NTSC DV (3:2)
NTSC-CCIR 601/DV 720X480

Imported footage from Digital Juice at 720X480, 29.97, Animation, NTSC-CCIR601, it was 720X486 and that didn't change. No problem with the scrubbing at this setting. Lots of slow down with other settings that are not 720X480. Don't know why.....

Groverguy,

We upgraded one of our FCP suites to 10.5.1 to see how well it worked, one strange thing that I did discover was that it indeed changed some of the preferences in the system settings diolog box. when it did it slowed down and became "sticky."

To fix this I changed the Gamma Correction in the playback control from the default Accurate to Approximate. I'm guessing its a bug, something to do with Apple's Gamma being 1.8 and the rest of the planet being 2.2. This obviously didn't fix anything but the performance of the system improved greatly.

It been a bit quirky so we're dropping this machine back to 10.4.11.

I'm using FCP 6.0.2 and I just tried changing the gamma correction from Accurate to Approximate and the canvas and viewer windows went buggy. Muliti tabed layers in both windows! I double clicked the clip in the timeline and the canvas returned to normal and when I scrubbed the playhead in the timeline the viewer returned to normal. Never seen that one before and I've been using FCP since 1.2.5. The scrubbing did work better, I'll have to say. I don't have the option to return to 10.4.11 but I'll look into it.
Thanks and I hope the fix is out soon!!!!

Which graphics card do you have?

I have the x1900. For me this just felt like a display issue which is how I found the bug in the display tab of the system setting dialog.

After switching from Accurate to Approximate I can switch back and it will start behaving better until I restart.

I use the X1900 also. I'll try the restart routine you mention. I just opened the test project and it scrubbed fine. I haven't added transitions yet because I'm going to send it to Motion. I may discover a whole new set of problems when I do that. I will try today multi video tracks to see what happens then. When you say display issue, are you thinking it's the card or the software?
Thanks!

Interestingly it doesn't matter how many video layers or transitions are in a sequence, the performance would be crappy with just one clip. After switching from Accurate to approximate it worked. Occasionally I'd get the error message about changing RT settings but I'd ignore it and all was OK.

Then once the sequence was complete I'd render and switch back to Accurate.

It's definitely the upgrade to Leopard, everything was great before that.

Another strange irritating thing is when I have a clip set to the very same settings as the sequence settings I still have to render it when I drag it from the canvas to the timeline. I don't remember that happening. I would get the same error message you got too but could not figure out why. I traded the scrubbing problem for the render problem when I reinstalled it seems. I'll march on from here and see what happens.
Thanks!

> Another strange irritating thing is when I have a clip set to the very same settings as the
> sequence settings I still have to render it when I drag it from the canvas to the timeline.

This is likely to be unrelated to the Scrubbing issue. More likely that you missed something about matching Sequence and Clip settings -- frame rates? Audio settings? Anamorphic setting?


www.derekmok.com

I checked to see and the clip settings match the preset. There is a gamma shift. I'm still getting the duplication of my upper tool bar and the clip properties in the browser as a multi tabbed display in the viewer and canvas. Double click the clip in the timeline and move the cursor in the timeline and both return to normal. I agree it's not related to scrubbing. This is just a quirk I'll work around.
Thanks everyone. Can anyone duplicate what I'm seeing?

Has anyone figured this out? I'm also getting progressively sluggish performance on my timeline in FCP6/Leopard.

I found that changing ANY timeline setting brings back performance and then, over time, slows again.

meaning:

dumping render, changing timeline options, doing the above gamma switch, etc.

thanks
fp

The only way I was able to solve my grief was to switch from FCP 4.5 to
FCP 6x; and the problem went away. But I am running Tiger and now I
know of potential issues with 10.5; I think I will wait for all the bugs to
be ironed out!



Groverguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I checked to see and the clip settings match the
> preset. There is a gamma shift. I'm still
> getting the duplication of my upper tool bar and
> the clip properties in the browser as a multi
> tabbed display in the viewer and canvas. Double
> click the clip in the timeline and move the cursor
> in the timeline and both return to normal. I
> agree it's not related to scrubbing. This is just
> a quirk I'll work around.
> Thanks everyone. Can anyone duplicate what I'm
> seeing?