Drop Frame Alert

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
I keep getting a Drop Frame prompt when I am editing. Last night I got so many in a short period of time that FCP ended up quiting on me!

I had 8 real time audio tracks. I took 2 off and I am down to 6 real time audio tracks.

I am in RT (safe) mode, high quality playback I believe.

I have never ran into these issues on other projects until now. I will say that the current project has a lot of effects and transitions in it.
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

How's the size of your scratch disk? Filling up? Could need a defragin and maybe a repair permissions.

Anytime FCP starts to get slow I repear my permissions. Seems to work. Don't use Norton to defrag your disk. I use TechTools.

Good luck,
CaptM
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

is that something that I would have to buy or I could get it online (techtools)? Nope my HD is normal...not filling up to the point my G5 should be running slow. It's still quick and all I just don't know why I am getting the prompts so much. Is it okay to Defrag the HD right in the middle of editing a project though?
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

TechTools Pro 4 seems to be one of the better mac fix-it products out there. Norton has been deleting files ever since OSX came out. I'm not even sure defragmentation should help here. I mean, most of your files are gigs and gigs, right?

I'll still get dropped frames here and there, but not to any extent that I'm getting p'd off at it.

Are you asking FCP to up convert any of those audio files, or are they ALL in 48k? The high quality playback only effects audio when it isn't native 48k. That might be where your problem is. But if nothing else is changing from your other projects I can't understand why you'd be getting this this often.

Good luck,

CaptM
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

I'm getting a weird thing, I only get droped frames if I have Audio and Video going through Firewire, If I have vid to cam and audio through a M-audio 410, also firewire, everything is OK..
And, some of my clips have a 7fr diference.. any Ideas..

FCP4.1.1, G4 Dual 867, 512 Ram, DVX100a (TRV22 to capture) 2 300 lacies...

Please help..

Should I upgradeto HD and os x.3.??

Thanks in Advance..
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

I hate to rub it in, but I'm running FCPHD on a 1.33GHz 17" powerbook on 512MB's of RAM and have never experienced the dreaded dropped frames.

I have recently (since upgrading to HD??) seen an error saying something about the data-stream and then the capture will abort, though it still saves the clip at whatever point it hit the wall.

Really sounds to me like it's got to be something with your sequence settings not matching what you're bringing in, as the Captain said.

Chico
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

On my 2.0 G5, I get dropped frames like crazy when I first fire up FCP HD...For some reason, I have to take a clip, put it in the viewer, then scrub it a few times before the timeline will playback with no dropped frames. This is very annoying, but once I get it working, it hums along with no further dropped frames. Just weird. It's almost like you have to warm the application up.

Just my experience lately...

Andrew
Crystal Clear Media
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

sounds like the hard drive is not keeping up, although they should be plenty fast. If you've scrubbed the clip in the viewer, maybe some of the data is buffered in RAM. Also, I wonder if setting the playback quality to high could be aggravating the problem.
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

Yeah I sorta thought the same thing... However, it can be any old clip that I load up and scrub.  Once I scrub it a little bit, then my sequence starts working fine (even one that doesn't have the clip that I scrubbed).  I also thought about the high quality setting...Just don't understand why once the dropped frames stop happening, I can go hours without it reappearing.

Since this only happens when outputting through firewire, I tend to believe maybe there is a lag there when it first gets initialized by FCP.

Not too big of a deal. Just odd.

Andrew
Crystal Clear Media
 
Re: Drop Frame Alert

I've been struggling with this firewire issue for the last couple of weeks. One thing I did to test was to connect the camera to my Mac running FCP, set it in camera mode, set capture to noncontrollable device, and record video directly to computer. When playing back the clips, I noticed that there were skipped frames where the motion suddenly jumps, but I was not getting any drop frame alerts. I switched firewire cables and it seems to have improved. I'm suppecting the firewire connectors are the reason to many problems. From now on, I'm just going to buy the best 24K gold plated, super duper cables I can find, and try not to plug and unplug so much.
 
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