09-23-2010, 07:50 PM

I am editing video on a Duel Quad Core Mac Pro with a 512 mb Nvidia card and my video play back studders like crazy whenever there are a series of cuts. Sometimes it will just stop playing. I even exported my project as a quicktime movie and still the same terrible performance. The same goes for HD and SD. Initially I thought it was the fact I only have 2gb of memory but I took the same HD .mov file and played it on my Core Duo Mac Book Pro with a 256 card and it played back perfectly. I only have 2gb of memory on the Mac Book Pro too.

So I am totally stumped why I am getting better playback performance from my Lap Top. Please Help. Thanks in advance!

Oh and FCP and Quicktime is completely up to date version wise.

09-23-2010, 08:27 PM

What else might you have running in the background? Honestly, 2 Gig really is a small quantity in a 8 core Mac Pro, but it should still play back video - does it pop up any kind of warnings on exceeding capabilities on real time playback?

09-23-2010, 08:43 PM

Originally Posted by Nethfel

What else might you have running in the background? Honestly, 2 Gig really is a small quantity in a 8 core Mac Pro, but it should still play back video - does it pop up any kind of warnings on exceeding capabilities on real time playback?

Nope nothing is running in the back round. No Warnings come up, just the color wheel and after it hangs for a bit I try to restart it and again it hangs or skips. Now its even crashing.

I took the quicktime into Avid and video is playing fine in there. Idk much about AVID but I believe its a separate format. Could this be a quicktime specific issue? Could it have gotten corrupted somehow. What can I do to trouble shoot?

09-23-2010, 11:16 PM

Well, you could try to import more video - either log and transfer with footage from an AVCHD camcorder or log and capture from a DV/HDV camcorder and see what how the footage works out.

I assume (hope) you're using a drive separate from your boot drive as a scratch drive (you shouldn't be using your boot drive for media capture/scratch/etc.). If you are using your boot drive and only have 1 drive in your MP, get another SATA drive and put it in one of the other bays, initialize it, and set in Final Cut to use that as a scratch drive.

Another thing you can try is to play the video in Quicktime itself.

There is always a possibility there is an issue with FCP (corrupted install or something), if there is your best bet is to do a full uninstall and re-install the software.

09-24-2010, 04:39 AM

You may want to run Activity monitor to see what resources are being used. Perhaps that will give a hint at a problem.

I'd also check the logs via the Console.app.

09-24-2010, 05:48 PM

Thanks guys. Well I fixed the playback issue. Kind of weird. When I Export a quicktime file to my startup disk drive then it plays back terribly but when I export it to an external HD its okay. I know you shouldn't use your startup as a scratch drive but I didn't know it can corrupt exports?

I am still having the Final Cut issues. When I try editing I get lots of color wheel lag. It seems to get worse since I upgraded to Final Cut 7. Does FCP 7 require more memory then 2gb. I know 2gb is very little for such a powerful processor, but I have just been delaying buying the memory because I never had a issue as I just edit and dont really do a lot of multi tasking btwn FCP, AFX, and etc. I just dont want to order the memory and find out my entire computer is messed up...What do you guys think?

09-24-2010, 06:16 PM

I'm wondering if maybe there is a problem with your hard drive?

How full is the drive? Also, have you run fix permissions on it lately?

FCP 7 only requires (for sd material) 1gig, min 2gig for compressed HD material, but if using uncompressed HD footage, 4gig.

09-24-2010, 07:01 PM

My drive has 80 gigs free. I am editing uncompressed HD. WHen u say min isnt it better to go a little above that. Maybe I should go up to 6 gigs. I will try to edit SD and see what happens.

How do I run fix permissions?

09-24-2010, 10:40 PM

Originally Posted by vodoochild81

I know you shouldn't use your startup as a scratch drive but I didn't know it can corrupt exports?

What makes you think you are getting corrupted exports. I highly doubt that.

Originally Posted by vodoochild81

How do I run fix permissions?

You run Disk Utility in the Applications/Utilities folder.