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Flickering/Stuttering Playback From Timeline
Houpla Wrote:
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> I get all kinds of suspected causes from
> Digital Rebellion 's crash analyzer to the point
> that they seem meaningless.
If you get all sorts of different causes listed, that's usually a sign of wider problems with Final Cut Pro or your system.
> I have noticed HUGE virtual memory sizes in
> activity monitor. More than 200GB. I am not sure
> but that sounds excessive. The vm listed by
> process do not total more than 10GB. I can not
> say that I know anything about VM but to me the
> math doesn't add up.
Large virtual memory sizes and the malloc errors would indicate that you're running out of memory, most likely due to a memory leak somewhere. I really think this is AJA-related though, as I have seen this a lot and the problem normally disappears when you remove the card.
My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...
I am running the memory test tonight but I think it is my Xserve Raid. There are some big dips in the AJA Sys test graph, below 50MS/sec. I have a backup raid over gigabit ethernet with the same media for my project and I opened that project in FCp and threw everything I could at it , multiple streams, stacked filters and scrubbed the yellow bar timeline without rendering and not a problem, not a crash or hiccup ( all over standard ethernet from a 3 drive raid in my old macpro 1.) I suppose that is the test I needed to convince me to go out and replace my Xserve raid, which has served me well up to now with not a failed drive in over 52,000 hours non stop 24/7.
Anyway thanks for your help, you led me in the right direction and I am grateful.
Best,
Michael
Try to work off a different drive with the same setup for a few weeks. 50MB/s isn't too drastic unless you are running an 8 drive RAID 5 array over eSATA. I have never come across this issue, but I have worked on some SAN configurations that are pretty kookie.
www.strypesinpost.com
I started this thread almost a year ago and we haven't seen any improvement.
We're a small production company running 3 FCP systems of various configurations. All Intel Mac Pros, one of them brand new and we're still seeing this problem on all of them. I've uninstalled the AJA on one machine, another has a BlackMagic card and the third doesn't have a video card at all.
We have 2 Sata RAID drives and the media all backed up on G-Raid drives. Switching between the RIADs and the backups makes no difference and we're still getting this problem.
I did just pull up the Activity Monitor on one system
VM size: 173.97 GB
That's a bit excessive, right? Especially considering I've only got 152GB available on my system drive...?
Also-
I just checked the .app package contents.. only 2.93 GB so I doubt there's any render files going into there.
I figured I'd see something a lot larger if Render Files were directed there... but low and behold, it does look like some render files got directed into the MacOS folder within the contents... inside MacOS:
*Constant Frames
Final Cut Pro (Unix Executable File)
Plugins
*Render Files (inside has about 2.4 GB in old render files and a Constant Frames Folder)
*Thumbnail Cache Files
I should be cool to trash the files marked with * Right?
Doubt this'll solve the issue totally, but ought to help alleviate some memory usage, correct?
I ran the memory Diglloyd stress test and had no errors/problems. I am currently on a backup raid (over ethernet) and editing along with an occasional crash. (User Interface or Effects rendering in Crash Analyzer). I did get an "out of memory" error once before a crash. I am getting a new 12 bay raid in the morning. My next step is to pull the AJA card. I am still wondering about a memory leak. I tries malloc debug but it crashes every app I try to launch with it.
Any thoughts?
danajstrom Wrote:
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> I figured I'd see something a lot larger if Render
> Files were directed there... but low and behold,
> it does look like some render files got directed
> into the MacOS folder within the contents...
> inside MacOS:
> *Constant Frames
> Final Cut Pro (Unix Executable File)
> Plugins
> *Render Files (inside has about 2.4 GB in old
> render files and a Constant Frames Folder)
> *Thumbnail Cache Files
>
> I should be cool to trash the files marked with *
> Right?
> Doubt this'll solve the issue totally, but ought
> to help alleviate some memory usage, correct?
Yep, delete all of the ones marked with a *. I'm intrigued as to why there is also a Plugins folder when the MacOS folder should only contain executable files.
But this is unlikely to solve your memory issues because only executable files and resources are loaded into memory. Having render files in your app bundle makes no difference.
My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...
Danajstom, Are you editing XDCAM EX? I am mixing XDCam EX and Prores and I don't think FCP likes it. I only seem to crash or have problems with the XDCam footage. I have tried everything else. It seems that FCP is happy to ingest anything whether it works or not. I just called Apple FCP support and they dismissed me somewhat as using the "old" FCP and there as not much support they could offer other than reinstall everything and see if the same problem exists. I did export my project to Premiere Pro CS5.5 and did not have any problems. So go figure. FCP7 is EOL anyway. Time to move on.
>I'm intrigued as to why there is also a Plugins folder when the MacOS folder should only contain
>executable files.
Yes it should. But do you know that you can put plugins in that folder too, and they work just fine?
FCP putting render files in the app package baffles me, TBH.
>I only seem to crash or have problems with the XDCam footage.
Are you editing in an XDCAM timeline or a ProRes timeline? FCP isn't too happy with XDCAM EX, but I have done multicam on XDCAM EX, even mixed XDCAM EX and HDV and it didn't crash that often.
www.strypesinpost.com
We did shoot XDCam a few days so 2 out of three of our projects is using XDCam material... but the problem is not exclusive to those projects.
One project was 100% ProRes 422 HQ and I was taking special care to not allow any JPEGs, MP3s, H.264 etc- as I thought the mixed formats may have been causing the issue. Still getting problems.
That being said, it seems to be that when you're playing back a lot of unrendered footage (even if it's green for real time) that brings the problem on. So if you're bringing a lot of XDCam footage into a ProRes environment, you could just be causing the same issue inadvertently.
We've muscled through 5 projects in the last year wrestling with this issue. The best thing to do it try to keep as much of the timelines rendered as possible... this, of course is a big hassle too, since renders crap out half the time with Out of Memory errors.
I'll usually just do a restart every once in a while, then go through and render small sections manually.
Try switching your sequence render settings to 8 bit YUV. It defaults to high precision YUV. For some reason I always found FCP to be more responsive when it is in 8 bit YUV (which usually results in more full RT previews). The only issue I have with lots of unrendered footage is that the audio may slip out of sync on playback occasionally but that only happens on a long enough edit, and yea, then I had only 2 gigs of RAM (those days of 2 gig RAM)...
www.strypesinpost.com
For what its worth I have installed a new 24TB raid and have not had one crash today. I have mixed media, stills, filters, XDCam, etc. I am thinking my problem is solved (knock on wood, or at least something that looks like wood)
Thank you Strypes for having me check my raid speed as it was wacky. It makes you think about how many people out there are having FCP issues that can be remedied by improving their storage speed and reliability.
Michael Brassert
My 2c regarding the exact same issue shown by the video:
In the last couple of years this has happened to me on several Mac Pro machines, in different production houses and different setups. Currently I'm on 10.6.8, FCP 7.0.3 running on Quad Xeon 2.8 with 8 gigs, however the configuration doesn't seem to matter, neither does the footage type. I've had this with ProRes 422, HDV, XDCAM, whatever.
In my case the bug is often, but not always, accompanied by the wrong clip thumbnails appearing in the timeline and display bugs in the Project windows's list view (especially when scrolling with a mousewheel).
After reading all of the above posts, I've also discovered render files inside the app package. After deleting them, they reappeared on restart. They only vanished completely when I changed the Render Files destination to another drive (and no, it wasn't the internal HD to begin with...)
After two months without any issues, all of this madness started yesterday. The *only* thing I did to the project is start viewing folders in Large Thumbnail view in the project window. That's it. On an older project, I also had corrupt thumbnails appearing in that view, but currently it only shows up in the timeline thumbnails. By "corrupt" I mean a washed-out look, very similar to what you get when using YUV channels as RGB.
I'm starting to get the feeling that displaying folders in Large Thumbnails view has serious consequences, namely corrupt projects. I don't expect Apple to fix this (or anything else), but you might try avoiding that in new projects and see what happens.
Just my 2c, like I said.
Best of luck.
OS-X 10.6.8
2.8 GHz Quad Core Xenon
12GB RAM
FCP Pro 7.0.3
AJA LHi 8.0.1
We had very similar flickering/stuttering frame problems in our FCP machine. Gritty playback and you couldn't stop it. The Canvas view is one thing, but the output serial digital video looked like that, too.
It responded to a software update from AJA. We went from 8.0.1 to 10.1 and it seems all the unstable frame problems vanished, or at least all the ones I experienced.
I'm setting up to do a videotape layoff now, but those problems are normal tape format interchange problems, not bad video.
Koz
Hi,
Currently I'm on 10.6.8, FCP 7.0.3 running on Quad Xeon 2.8 with 12 gigs, I have my media stored on a 4 TB G-Raid, (at least 2.12 TB are available).
The problem is occurring with my multi clip ( 3 cameras, on the timeline) even just in playback mode.
The footage I am editing is 1920 x 720, @ 59.94 fps , codec is Apple Pro Res 422.
I have plenty of room on the main hard drive where FCP 7 is on, and I have plenty of space on the scratch disk
(G-raid 4).
I have set the RT setting to Safe and the viewer window to 50 %. The only thing I can guess is that I might need more Ram on the main hard drive? I am running 12 GB on it now. I could maybe add 8 (based on affordability).
But before I purchase any more RAM, is there any thing else I can do?
Your prompt response would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Luis
I've had the same issues for a long time, but my system is different. The only constant is ProRes. I have the 8 core late 2010 with 14 GB RAM, 5770 vCard and the original BM Extreme HD card.
I have asked the same questions here with no real solution, so when the usual flickering or out of memory show their ugly face I just restart FCP7.
Just last week I upgraded to Mountain Lion and so far no mayor problems other than the previously mention wish are still there.
God Bless,
Douglas Villalba
director/cinematographer/editor
Miami, Florida
[ www.DouglasVillalba.info]
[ www.youtube.com]
[ vimeo.com]
I don't suggest investing in more RAM for FCP7 if you are not running intensive apps in the background.
I have not come across this issue with ProRes, but I have seen it with XDCAM ex and cutting multicam. A restart usually fixes that.
www.strypesinpost.com
I've had this problem on and off, I've got an 8 core. Thing is it stared today, and I did a preference trash recently.
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