Dropped frames frustration

Question

Hi:
I've read hours of posts trying to find something that resembles my problem. Of late, when my G4 is warming up I got 10 dropped frames in a 32 second clip. I notice that the longer I leave the computer on the better it gets. It took 38 minutes of playback for me to get a dropped frame.
I tried coping the clip to a new sequence and that seemes to work.
I have also noticed that when I edit a clip and send it to the timeline, it needs to be rendered. The frequency of these coppupt clips seems to me to often.
I've ascertained that it's not the camera or the Mini DV tape that 's at fault.
Specs are: G4, 867Mhz., OSX 10.4.6, 2mb. L3 cache, 1.5 G Sdram.
The external drive is a recent LaCie 250 G @7200 rpm Fire wire 400.
Are these two problems related? The dropped frame problem was stressing me considerably, and it still needs to be solved. I know that with your help we can do it!
Thanks,
Fred
G4   Mac OS X (10.4.6)   Final Cut Pro 4 HD

Answer 1

This sounds like several different problems.
As far as the "drops frames before warming up" one goes, that suggests two different things to look at. Most hardware components, of course, are digital and have negligible warm-up characteristics. The disk drive itself has some analog functions in the motor and controller which might be a suspect.
You mention the drive (250gb) but don't say how full it is. It's possible that a nearly full disk is more likely to have files in sub-optimal locations on the physical disk, resulting in playback problems. The only reason this would get better, however, would be if temporary files, renders, etc. got written in a less fragmented way.
The need to render almost always results from a discrepancy in the way the clip was captured versus the timeline. For example, if you are going back and forth with 24P material or timelines and inadvertently opened a new sequence as 24P but you're working with 29.97, etc.