Dropped Frames on a MultiCam Edit using MacbookPro

I'm doing my first MultiCam edit on a new (December 2010) 15" MacBookPro not my first MultiCam edit but my first on this machine. I'm getting a Dropped Frame Alert and playback stops often when switching between the angles. (I did not experience this on my previous machine.)

FC 7.0.3
OS 10.6.6
2.66 GHZ i7
4 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512
7200 RPM 500 GB HD (2 partitions) 1 partition for video scratch

I have 2 streams of DV (on a DV timeline)
4 Tracks of audio (2 tracks have audio from Cam 1 and 2 tracks from Cam 2 that are from a control device to later time the presentation slides to)
Playback is set to Dynamic
I have tried both Safe and Unlimited RT
1 Sequence open

It's getting frustrating... any suggestions?
Steve

Steve

FCPX
FCP 7.0.3
Premier CS6

MBP Retina 2.6i7 16GB / iMac 27" 3.4i7 16GB

Sounds like you need a dedicated scratch disk, not a partitioned system drive.



www.strypesinpost.com

Strypes,

That's what I was thinking...but it's odd that it works fine on my older machine set up the same way with a 5400 rpm drive. It's tough to edit with an external on an airplane.

Steve

FCPX
FCP 7.0.3
Premier CS6

MBP Retina 2.6i7 16GB / iMac 27" 3.4i7 16GB

Run the system test from aja to test the speed of yourself partition.



www.strypesinpost.com

Another option would be to only have 1 track of audio, from time to time when editing a 4 camera multi on an older MBP and I get dropped frames. I output a single audio track and use that to my edits, and the dropped frames go away.

Audio also takes up bandwidth.

Interesting.... Using the Aja System Test... the video partition does a Read/Write test at a consistent 55 MB/s while the main partition with programs etc., is around 111 MB/s.

I did move the project to my older machine... it was worse.... never mind... maybe I'm on acid remembering that it worked on that machine.... maybe I was editing off of an external.... I was hoping that having the 7200 rpm instead of the 5400 would have made a difference. A good amount of my editing happens on the plane... and we all know how much room there is...

Steve

FCPX
FCP 7.0.3
Premier CS6

MBP Retina 2.6i7 16GB / iMac 27" 3.4i7 16GB

That's what I hate about partitioning. The first partition is fast, the next one, depending on the size of the first partition, can be quite slow. An average of 50 MBs is good for dv, but all this happens on the system drive. I may turn off spotlight profiling on the media drive.

Why not use a portable FW800 drive instead?



www.strypesinpost.com

You could always get a G-Raid mini which is bus powered and takes up very little room.