Actions stall in all FCP functions

All actions in FCP 7 now stall for 5 to 10 seconds, with spinning ball, until they engage. My drives are less than half full (1 and 2 TB) and I am using a MacPro dual core Intel. Any ideas?

OS X 10.6.8
FCP 7
8 GB Memory

Checked your system drive yet?


www.derekmok.com

Derek: I am not sure what you mean by "system drive". Can you expand on that just a touch? Thanks.

The system drive, where all your applications reside.


www.derekmok.com

Duhhh! Understood. It's early and I have not had my coffee yet. SYSTEM HARDDRIVE. Got it!

Derek: I checked the system harddrive. It is a 1 TB that has almost 700 GB, so I would assume that it can't be a problem with space. I have run diagnostics on it (Dick Utility and Disk Warrior) and I still get the same stalling in FCP. Again, the stalling occurs in nearly every function and occassionally, as the cursor moves over the timeline in "play" mode, I will get a sudden freeze frame for two to three seconds, then it moves on. Any other suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.

"Dick Utility" !

;-)

How long is your timeline, how effects-heavy (including lower thirds if any)?

I ask because this sounds like a "look-ahead delay" common to FCP on long timelines with effects or many many shots to housekeep, OR--

-- if you've accidentally switched your project to 10-BIT MODE COLOR PROCESSING. Check your Sequence Settings (Command-Zero), click the Video Processing tab, and see if you've checked "Render all YUV material in high-precision YUV" which is only for 10-bit or higher codecs. The look-ahead delay on 10-bit in FCP 7 can be intense and crippling.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Advance to next/previous keyframes in a clip with Shift/Option-K !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Lauren: Thanks for that. However, the timeline I am currently working on is tiny (2 minutes with 10 clips and ten dissolves) when compared to an 80-minute full blown documentary film I worked on several months ago (200 clips and over 100 effects) without the problem. Also, I checked Sequence Settings and the "Render in 8-bit YUV" is checked, so that cannot be the problem. Anything else I might be overlooking?

The problem here is that the problem is too generic. Do all projects exhibit the same lag? Have you tried unplugging your media drive? Trashed your preferences? Disconnected all peripheral devices?



www.strypesinpost.com

What is the procedure for trashing the Preferences? I am pretty sure I know but I don't want to trash anything important. That might be the problem. Also, "yes", I am getting the same problem with past projects that used to run perfectly. Thanks.

[www.digitalrebellion.com]

If the problem persists on more than 1 project, we've ruled out project file related issues. Trash your prefs, repair disk permissions, and check again. To make sure it's not a permissions issue or corrupt prefs (although permissions are a bit shite since Lion). Then disconnect all external drives, drop in a clip in a new project to see if the problem persists. If it does, then probably a re-installation of FCP. If it doesn't, then the problem is drive related.



www.strypesinpost.com

you can trash prefs manually, too

[www.lafcpug.org]


in moders versions pf OSX, they've made it harder to get to your library.
hold Option while you click on he Finder's "Go" menu to find a path to it.

i drag my Final Cut Pro User Data folder into the side bar.
makes is easy to get to


nick

i was having a similar problem recently,
turned out it was a bad drive.

we figured that out by trying to play the same clips in QuickTime player, where the problem persisted,
so it wasn't FCP,
and the same files played on on our duplicate drive.

i swapped my drive for the dupe, and my FCP was working fine again.


nick

Yup, gotta be the drive, all things considered.

I've used exclusively Hitachi for SATA internals, without issues over three years of medium to heavy hammering. I may have to switch to Seagate now that Western Digital has acquired Hitachi. Not certain.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Advance to next/previous keyframes in a clip with Shift/Option-K !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

I recently had a very similar sudden onset of the SBBOD. Turned out to be nothing to do with FCP. It was actually caused by Safari overdosing on disk chatter.

Mike

> It was actually caused by Safari overdosing on disk chatter.

The last time that happened to me, it was an early symptom of my system drive dying on a PowerPC G5. Might want to make sure all your backups are in order.


www.derekmok.com

I had a similar experience with my Mac Pro a few years ago. Only a couple of minutes after a fresh boot, I would be getting the SBBOD no matter what application I was using. I was on the phone to AppleCare (so glad I had it!) and at one point he wanted me to go into Disk Utility and do some things. First thing I noticed was a message next to the entry for my boot disk, in red: This disk is failing. I had never seen such a message, but its meaning was very clear. Fortunately, even though it was nearly useless as a working drive, it was healthy enough to be able to do a full backup of it before I replaced it. So I suggest a look at Disk Utility (now and on a regular basis).

derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The last time that happened to me, it was an early
> symptom of my system drive dying on a PowerPC G5.
> Might want to make sure all your backups are in
> order.

Thanks Derek,

Yes - I'm well backed up. I run Time Machine at least once a day and also regularly copy my project files onto other drives altogether. Can't really be bothered with hourly TM back-ups - they just seem to slow everything down too much.

The SBBOD was not on my home G5 (which is still humming along just fine !), but on a machine at work - a 2 year old 2.66 quad Xeon Mac Pro. After a bit of forum grazing it seemed the way to fix the chatter was to reset Safari. It seems to have done the trick. Whereas Activity Monitor was previously showing constant disk writes when Safari was running it's now flat-lining sweetly.

And Scott - thanks, but Disk Utility has nothing to report. DU and permissions repair is usually my first port of call for this type of bizarre behaviour.

best,

Mike

Quote
Mike said:
it seemed the way to fix the chatter was to reset Safari.

I've had Safari be the culprit too. How do you do this "reset" thing - are you just talking about trashing Safari prefs?

Scott Taylor Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've had Safari be the culprit too. How do you do
> this "reset" thing - are you just talking about
> trashing Safari prefs?

Trashing Safari Prefs doesn't seem to do much.

You will find "Reset Safari" in the main Safari menu. You can choose to only reset certain things. If you go for the whole lot, it's a bit of a drastic thing as you'll lose all your Top Sites and automatic logins to sites such LACPUG so make sure you've got all usernames and passwords handy before you do it.

Mike