HD erasure to prevent dropped frames.

I know I am not alone on this dropped frames thing. I have received a lot of great info and areas to consider. Here is my little situation.
I had a HD replaced on my PB G4. I have 2 GB of memmory... I reinstalled all my apps... but my new project is still dropping frames when I try to play it in the timeline. I am backing everything up to a different external Maxtor HD. I am now going to completey erase my LaCie HD which is 2 years old (and thus probably too defragmented thus adding to the dropped frame issue.) I have never used a 3rd party app like Diskwarrior because Mac tech support doesn't provide assistance on it.
Once I complete the erase... does it seem as if it is reasonable to expect this problem to go away seeing as how I have a brand new HD allocated for video projects and use a PCMIA card for the camera? And all the software is up to date and permissions checked???
Thanks for the continued help.
D

Hi(Bonjour) Daryn,
It's always a good idea- in video editing world- to devote one drive (preferably the external one) to media (video, music, still etc) storage.
Your applications must be installed on the same drive that hold your Mac OS system.
Hard disk fragmentation is a major concern when we talk about dropped frame, but HD speed, buffer cache size and connection with the computer are important factors too.
I know that formating a drive (at low level) and reinstall your backed up files and programs is a good way to defrag your drive. But a dedicated piece of software (I use techtool Pro) is a simpler way to go from day to day usage.
One another way to avoid dropped frame is to set FCE to playback file with a lower quality and frame rate settings (realtime capability relies on your mac's own performance and spec).
Try a such test before thinking about formatting your external HD.
Michel Boissonneault

Similar Messages

How to overcome "dropped frame" issues on my project

Hey reader,
I have a MacBook Pro 2.4GHz with 250GB hd (85GB free just now) running 10.4.11, FCE HD 3.5 (and QT 7.5.5) and using a Sony Handycam DCR-HC96 (which is works BEAUTIFULLY with iMovie 08 and 6 and is always used with Sony tapes) and I am not able to "capture" the tape content to my MacBook Pro because of the "dropped frame" issue.
The camera is connected to the external hard drive chain via Firewire cable to the MacBook Pro and I was trying to capture to the internal hard drive. I am in the UK and am still struggling to get my head around the different frame rates but initially I got the dreaded "dropped frames were encountered during the last capture attempt" and it just wouldn't work, so I unselected the report dropped frames tab and abort capture in User Preferences as was suggested on here.
Now I get "Capture encountered a problem reading data on your source tape. This could be due to a problem with the tape. Capture has been aborted and your clip has been saved" but the tape is fine (heads are also clean) as I had to (under time pressure, me) use iMovieHD 6 instead and it worked like a CHARM.
What can I do to use this software?
I KNOW I can import the iMovie footage but the disadvantage is the eternal rendering, I guess. I only ever used it once (because of its difficulties) and that was for pre-existing footage from iMovie and it was OK if not perfect. Just had to have a few hours extra for the constant rendering in preview...
Should I try to capture to one of the external hard drives? I read that the internal might be a problem as it is busy with the operating system jobs.
Please and thank you.

I got some dropped frames last night and posted this before noticing your post:
There can be a number of reasons for getting dropped frames during capture.
Yesterday I videoed a relative's wedding (in HDV) and on getting home late I captured the footage into FCP 6.0.3 only to find in a couple of places I got an abort on dropped frames.
This morning I decided to recapture and did so without a single dropped frame.
Why ? ......... there are several possibilities.
It could be that there was some physical problem with the tape or camera heads but I believe it was most likely caused by my camera's power supply.
Last night I used the battery whilst this morning I plugged in the power connector.
I feel that this provided a more constant supply of full power and helped prevent frames from being dropped. (The fact I was using FCP is immaterial as the dropped frames would almost certainly have also occurred in FCE).
From now on I will always use the power connector during transfer to and from the camera.

Dropped frames or out-of-sync audio

Using Sony HDR-FX1 and FCE-HD is set to DV-NTSC. I've also tried DV-NTSC Firewire Basic. I've been trying various suggestions I've found in the Discussions to cure dropped frames that prevent me from capturing and out-of-sync audio making footage I do capture useless. Mac is running 10.4 with 5.5 GB of RAM and dual 2 GHz G5.
I'm capturing to my main hard drive which has plenty of space - when I'm done editing, I archive old footage on an external drive.
"Abort capture on dropped frames" is currently checked. Lately, this means I can't get more than a few seconds without the capture stopping. This never used to happen, now it happens all the time no matter what tapes I'm capturing from.
If I uncheck it, the audio on the captured footage is out of sync. Over time, as I've been trying to trouble shoot this using the Discussions, my projects remain unfinished and deadlines are looming sooner and sooner.
If someonce could please help me I'd be very grateful.

Hi(Bonjour)!
Did you shoot in DV or HDV ?
Did you try to capture HDV with Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60 (or 50 for europe)?
Does you downconvert HDV shooted to DV upon capturing from camcorder ?
DV-NTSC 48 kHz is the way to go with downconverted material.
Does your DV audio setting is 16 bit on FX1 ? (HDV is a fixed one).
Michel Boissonneault

Drop-Frame vs. Non-Drop-Frame Capture question

Hi,
I'm using Final Cut Pro 5 capturing 16:9 anamorphic video and removing an advanced 24 frame pulldown from my Canon XL-2. This is for a documentary for which I have captured over 30 full tapes of footage. I've been logging in the clips FIRST, then going back and batch capturing everything afterwards.
My question is this: I have logged everything the same way with seemingly all the same settings. However, when I capture some tapes I get the warning that I'm capturing Non-Drop frame media to a Drop-Frame clip and it could cause problems in the future with relinking. Then some tapes don't give me that message at all. Is there something I'm not noticing about how I log some tapes but not others? Would it have to do with the presets I have Final Cut set to when I'm capturing a tape? I'm fairly positive I've always setup FCP to the proper capture settings before logging anything...but could something else be causing this? Thanks for your help.
-JD

The thing to watch out for, both in logging and in capturing, is when you log or capture multiple tapes with mixed NDF & DF timecode.
There are three or four things that can affect this:
FCP5 and later allow you to set the TC format of the capture preset, such that the Log & Capture window would default to NDF if you are working with NDF tapes.
Otherwise, Log & Capture will still auto-detect during playback when logging, but you have to be sure to play the tape some before logging the clip. If you capture multiple tapes using capture now, You could easily start recording before the time code format updates. This kind of error results in a clip whose in point is the correct "number", but the format is wrong.
During Batch Capture, the device control is not always able to change the time code format. I'm not sure about FCP6, but I am in the habit of grouping my clips in batches according to the TC format. You ma be seeing this alert because you are switching the TC format of the tapes in the batch capture, but device control is "stuck" in DF mode, for instance. This is not an issue during logging, only capture.
I think it may also be possible to override the clip's logged TC format at capture by unchecking "use logged clip settings".
Capturing clips with the wrong TC format can really mess up recapture later. The offset that happens as the format gets converted back increases as the starting hour of the timecode gets bigger.
So basically you can have clips that get logged wrong, and clips that were logged correctly, but captured with the wrong TC. It's easier to miss it when logging, since there's no alert message to pop up. But the other alert is there to tell you there is a mismatch somewhere, preventing you from making the second kind of error. Your only error may only be that you had both DF and NDF clips in the same batch.
There is a trick to get the TC format to switch to the non-default for batch capture - Open Log & Capture and play the tape until you see the TC format update. Now start the batch capture with Log & Capture still open - device control will stay in that TC format now. Otherwise, I think device control switches to the format of the first clip in the batch, but stays there until you cancel and start a new batch.
Hope this helps -
Max Average

IMovie 3,4 and 5 drops frames

Hi Boffs,
iMovie was dropping frames while importing from my Canon DV. Did the filevault thing, unplugged all the other firewire items, no change. My ibook 1.2 Ghz G4 running 10.3.5 was fine though, and if I import on the laptop, burn a CD of the (very small) iMovie file and try to play it on the G3, it still drops frames. Am I simply a victim of slower processor speeds? Surely other people on here have used iMovie on a G3? There is no improvement for other versions of iMovie (well at least 3 & 5)
Thanks if you can help
Tim

OK, you have two problems, one cosmetic and one serious.
The cosmetic problem is playback on the 450Mhz. It doesn't affect the quality of the video itself.
The serious problem is exporting back to tape on the 450MHz. This can be avoided by taking the external FW disk to the iBook.
Your iMac should be able to handle iMovie 4:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93598
You are above the minimum specs.
Are you running anything else but iMovie? Playing music in iTunes? Your Fax app waiting for incoming faxes? iPhoto running? Surfing the web?
How about a little housekeeping?
Prevent Mac Disasters
Eight Simple Steps You Can Take Now to Keep Your Mac from Falling Apart
http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/features/preventmacdisasters/index.php
(Article is in 3 parts, don't miss parts 2 and 3)

Ex. device detecting dropped frames (from tape) and breaking clips!

I am using a Panasonic mini-dv camcorder to capture footage with on Final Cut Pro and the camera is being pretty sensitive to any glitches/dropped frames and is messing up capturing clips. When I try it multiple times it will sometimes not stop/find glitches, but this is very time consuming (have about 80 hours to go through!). I have gained some access to a mini-dv deck and that is working, but I also need to use the camera due to deadlines.
Is there a way to make this sensitivity in capturing turn off? Any suggestions/tips? (I've already gone into User Preferences and deselected 'Abort Capture on Dropped Frames' and that didn't change it).
Thanks!

#12 Dropped frames on capture/playback
Shane's Stock Answer #12: Dropped frames on capture/playback
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58640
1) Do not capture to your main system drive. Since it is busy reading the operating system and application files, it will intermittently drop frames during capture. Capture to a separate internal drive, or external hard drive (firewire and eSATA for example).
2) Deactivate any anti-virus/filesaver software, including Norton and Virex. For some reason these programs think that the large files created when you capture media are in fact caused by some sort of virus, and they try to prevent this.
3) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. It should be Mac OS Extended, journaling off. If it isn't, copy your files from it and re-initialize it. If it is any other format, you will encounter problems. If not at first, then eventually.
4) Trash the FCP preference files. Use FCP Rescue available here:
http://www.fcprescue.com
5) Make sure that the hard drives you are capturing to are fast enough to handle the footage being captured to it. A regular firewire 400 drive cannot capture uncompressed HD, or even uncompressed standard definition. A RAID array of drives might be in order for these formats.
Shane

Final Cut Pro 'dropping frames' problem

Hi. I have a macbook, version 10.6.8 - I am trying to use Final Cut Pro version 6.0.6 and am having problems with the 'dropping frames' issue. I know you can get rid of the message, but does anyone know how to solve the problem, as when it comes to exporting the film I won't be able to? Is my mac too small/old to use this version of FCP? If so, is there anything I can do to rectify that? (that doesn't involve buying a new mac!)
Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks.
Vicki

#12 Dropped frames on capture/playback
Shane's Stock Answer #12: Dropped frames on capture/playback
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58640
1) Do not capture to your main system drive. Since it is busy reading the operating system and application files, it will intermittently drop frames during capture. Capture to a separate internal drive, or external hard drive (firewire and eSATA for example).
2) Deactivate any anti-virus/filesaver software, including Norton and Virex. For some reason these programs think that the large files created when you capture media are in fact caused by some sort of virus, and they try to prevent this.
3) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. It should be Mac OS Extended, journaling off. If it isn't, copy your files from it and re-initialize it. If it is any other format, you will encounter problems. If not at first, then eventually.
4) Trash the FCP preference files. Use PREFERENCE MANAGER to do that, available here:
http://www.digitalrebellion.com
5) Make sure that the hard drives you are capturing to are fast enough to handle the footage being captured to it. A regular firewire 400 drive cannot capture uncompressed HD, or even uncompressed standard definition. A RAID array of drives might be in order for these formats.

Dropped frames with HD

Is it possible to edit HD with final cut HD and not have any dropped frames?
It is impossible to get a smooth slow-motion clip let alone one in real time.
If there is a fix or some technich to prevent this?
thanks-
Jake
Mac Book Mac OS X (10.4.7) 2 GHz intel Core Duo. 2 GB RAM

Well, there are lots of things that can cause dropped frames, but I think it's pushing the envelope to be doing HD on a MacBook. Don't take this the wrong way - I think MacBooks are great machines. But HD requires a lot of computing power and even though the MacBook is qualified for FCE-HD, given the MacBook's Intel GMA video processor/shared memory and 5400rpm HD, I wouldn't be surprised to get dropped frames with HD material.
On the other hand,
-how full is your system HD
-are you using an external hard drive by any chance
-have you rendered your material or are you relying on RT effects
-have you mixed down your audio
-do you have any other apps running at the same time as FCE

Drop frames capture

i have a macpro 2.0 xeon 3 gb ram and the last final cut and quicktime. during the capture i have drop frames (i trying to edit a concert with multicam 4 cameras) importing from a dvcam deck i have drop frames, from a samsung minidv i have drop frames, i am using a internal SATA drive for scratch only for fcp. what's wrong?
(with a old vaio with vista and vegas 8 i have made a cature 4 hours of video entire tape at once to internal hd and edit of multicam with no problems....this is ridiculous....)

Don't know how new you are to FCP so have a look first at one of Shanes Stock Answers
Shane's Stock Answer #12: Dropped frames on capture/playback
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58640
1) Do not capture to your main system drive. Since it is busy reading the operating system and application files, it will intermittently drop frames during capture. Capture to a separate internal drive, or external hard drive (firewire and eSATA for example).
2) Deactivate any anti-virus/filesaver software, including Norton and Virex. For some reason these programs think that the large files created when you capture media are in fact caused by some sort of virus, and they try to prevent this.
3) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. It should be Mac OS Extended, journaling off. If it isn't, copy your files from it and re-initialize it. If it is any other format, you will encounter problems. If not at first, then eventually.
4) Trash the FCP preference files. Use FCP Rescue available here:
http://www.fcprescue.com
5) Make sure that the hard drives you are capturing to are fast enough to handle the footage being captured to it. A regular firewire 400 drive cannot capture uncompressed HD, or even uncompressed standard definition. A RAID array of drives might be in order for these formats.

Apparent dropped frames

I recently purchased a LaCie 200G external hard drive with only one firewire port. Having only one firwire port made it impossible to "daisy chain" my Canon ZR45, and so, I purchased a Belkin 6 port firewire hub. Everything seemed to run fine at first. I started copying all my Final Cut Pro Documents to the LaCie, I had device control over my camera deck - so I started capturing footage. When I started to synch sound (I am shooting film) I found that the captured video footage would run smooth for a minute or so then would skip over several, if not more, frames, throwing the synch out of control. The video skip, which I assume is dropped frames, happens more than once in a given captured video clip. I have FCP set to "abort capture when dropped frames detected" set so I am confused as to what exactly the problem is. I have been working on this project for some time and never had a problem before the LaCie, which I recently purchased. The external hard drive runs at 7200 rpm, the speed which was recommended to me to avoid this very problem. If the problem is a slight delay in communication between FCP and the LaCie what can I do? As always, any information you can give me is greatly appreciated and I patiently await your response(s).
Thank you,
Tayman Strahorn

Tayman,
Right off the bat you have a few things working against you:
1. using a Canon camcorder for capture. Due to their lose implementation of the Firewire standard, Canon gear doesn't always play nice with FCP. While they work fine for shooting, if at all possible, use some other device for capturing.
2. using a Firewire hub. Not a good idea for video editing purposes.
3. having your DV device (camcorder) and external Firewire drive on the same Firewire buss. Purchase a PCMCIA Firewire card for the laptop. This will create an additional Firewire buss on your Mac. Connect your DV device to the built-in FW port and the drive into the port on the PCMCIA card.
Apple has never officially blessed the use of external FW drives as scratch discs for FCP although many, many people use them successfully. It works best to have the capture device and the captured material's destination drive (in this case, ext FW) on separate busses to prevent throughput errors when editing.
As for the skipping problem; are both the Canvas and Viewer window set to "Fit to Window" or smaller? Also try turning off any overlays on those windows (wireframe, title safe, excess luma, etc).
-DH

WARNING - DROPPED FRAMES - FCP 7

i keep getting this message -- playback stops and i get the popup that lists solutions but -- i'm not sure how to:
---"lower your compression data rate"
or:
--- "increase the speed of your system and/or disk drives"
can anybody advise..?

#12 Dropped frames on capture/playback
Shane's Stock Answer #12: Dropped frames on capture/playback
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58640
1) Do not capture to your main system drive. Since it is busy reading the operating system and application files, it will intermittently drop frames during capture. Capture to a separate internal drive, or external hard drive (firewire and eSATA for example).
2) Deactivate any anti-virus/filesaver software, including Norton and Virex. For some reason these programs think that the large files created when you capture media are in fact caused by some sort of virus, and they try to prevent this.
3) Check the format of the drive you are capturing to. It should be Mac OS Extended, journaling off. If it isn't, copy your files from it and re-initialize it. If it is any other format, you will encounter problems. If not at first, then eventually.
4) Trash the FCP preference files. Use FCP Rescue available here:
http://www.fcprescue.com
5) Make sure that the hard drives you are capturing to are fast enough to handle the footage being captured to it. A regular firewire 400 drive cannot capture uncompressed HD, or even uncompressed standard definition. A RAID array of drives might be in order for these formats.

Unable to capture files into external hard disk because of 'drop frames '

I haven't been able to capture footage from my DV camcoder thru firewire to an external hard disk in FCP because i get a message saying 'drop frames were detected'.
This happens when i selected this external hard drive as the scratch disk in FCP.
When i deslect it and select my user hard disk as the scratch disk, the capturing works perfectly. But i just want to capture all my capture files into the external hard disk, not my user hard disk.
The external hard disk's speed is 3500 - could that be the problem? Is it too slow? Its connected thru USB and it is Mac Os Extended Journaled. Its got 250gb of space, so that's not the issue.
Can anybody help me?
Thank you.

No, its a Panasonic gs180, a really good camera.
The camera itself is connected to my computer through firewire. Its the hard disk enclosure that is connected to my emac through USB. Anyway, i'm sure that's not the problem, casue like i said, the capturing works fine when i use my user hard disk as the FCP scratch disk.
The problem i have is when i try to capture footage from my camera to the external hard disk enclosure. When i press 'capture now' and press play, the playback stutters and a messsage appears saying, "drop frames detected" and the capturing stops.
I feel like i need to adjust something in FCP itself - like a preference or something - just not sure what.
Thnx for your suggestion though and if you know what i should do, please let me know.

Export Quicktime = stalling / frame rate / dropped frames

Firstly this issue isn't news. It appears it has existed since 2002 at least on these forums and Apple has done nothing.
Exporting to Quicktime:
1) Keynote makes up what seem to be consistent random frame rates on export
- Codec doesn't matter. Photo JPG, Intermediate, 8bit 422, H264
- You can set the frame rate in export / custom / settings it doesn't matter
- Having no video on a slide or having video on a slide doesn't change the problem...
- The last two items do have more information to complete their story
- If you do have a video on slide at say 25fps and export (at same rate) the random will stabilise
but it will stabilise to something bizarre, such as 23.69.
- So Keynote can wreck your frame rate it will drop frames, or even add frames while dropping
others. It is deeply sophisticated in how it destroys stuff on export.
Result
- is a stuttering output if embed video on a slide with a wrecked frame rate
- and a random frame rate if you don't have a video embed
2) The video stalls between slides
- Keynote seems to play a trick by making a single frame span multiple frames
- At the start of the first slide this seems to vary. The first frame can be between 7 and 33
frames depending on some strange internal logic only known to Keynote
- Between slides it will hold the last frame of the exiting slide usually for 7 frames and hold
the first frame of the entering slide for usually the same amount.
- No amount of change to settings such as transition delay, adding a transition, self play etc
will effect this stalling from what I can tell.
- You can analyse the reality of the issue by dropping the resulting file into Quicktime 7 and
changing the video window "time code" display to frames by clicking on it and single framing
through the video. I have Quicktime Pro for the record.
Notes:
- I have every update installed and am running 10.6.2
- I have tried it on two machines, one a clean build, server or client
- Playing the presentation direct in Keynote does not present any of the noted issues
- I have spent the better part of two weeks on the issue trying all sorts of combinations
- Video of different frames rates, sizes, codecs. All useless, don't bother.
Outcome:
- Keynote is completely useless unless you just want to play a presentation in it
- Dropped frames, stuttering video, stalling, mangled frame rates, fake frames
Solutions that aren't:
- One suggestion for video embeds is to enter a strange custom frame rate. For example a
24fps original turns into a 23.69 export, if you up the frame rate to 24.3 the resulting export
is 24fps.
This is a truly hit and miss affair and will require a lot of testing to nail it. Unfortunately I
tested the resulting video frame count in Quicktime against the original video and...
The amount of frames is not the same. Part of my assumption is that the stalled pad frames
are being considered by Keynote and it drops some frames to fake the same length, that at
least -seems- to be part of the result, but it doesn't account for all the lost frames.
- I have also tried just having one slide and exporting that. The same things happen regardless
How Al Gore managed to make "inconvenient truth" using Keynote is a complete mystery. Maybe on Tiger with some old version it used to work, yet from the forums it would appear it has never worked. This piece of software is a clear case of "it just doesn't work"
I hope you find this and stop hurting yourself trying to make this. I might hurt on a bit longer yet.

I can't answer in detail (I started with version 6, which I haven't used in years, so don't know what v5 did) but... a general comment
Software that old is very likely going to struggle trying to edit a VOB/MPG file copies from a DVD
If you are digitizing by playing the DVD through a conversion device you should end up with DV AVI which should edit well
Just what kind of files are you trying to edit?

How do I read the number of dropped frames in a 1394 session?

I'm using a C program to acquire image data using the imaq1394 library. I am dropping frames at 30FPS and want to use the imaq1394GetAttributes call with the IMG1394_ATTR_LOST_BUFFER_NB parameter to read the number of dropped frames. I am doing this at the end of the acquisition before the camera is closed. The value always comes back as 0. What is wrong? Here is the line that makes the call:
imaq1394GetAttribute(Sid, IMG1394_ATTR_LOST_BUFFER_NB, (unsigned long *) &lDroppedFrames);
Thanks in advance...

Hello spcmicro,
Thank you for the email.
For the IMAQ 1394 driver (version 1.0), the lost buffer attribute does not work properly.
- The issue is not known to the developer lead, and it will be investigated for the next release of the IMAQ 1394 driver.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions,
Alan Hagler

Dropped frames issue on a G5 2.7DP w/DV footage

Let me first tell you my setup:
G5 2.7 DP
8 GB RAM
WiebeTech TrayDock eSATA 4-bay drive enclosure w/Sonnet 4+4 eSATA PCI Card
(2) 400 GB Seagate Barracudas in the enclosure RAIDed in a striped config using Apple's Disk Utility
10.4
FCP 5
At seemingly random times, playback from the timeline will stutter and stop, thus throwing up the dropped frames dialog box. If I re-play from the same point, it will normally play. This has happened on several current projects in which I'm working in DV. I've also worked on a project in 8bit uncompressed using my Kona LS card with the same drives, and had the same error.
I've had this issue ever since I setup this system--from the first install of FCP5 to the most recent update of 5.0.3, as well as from 10.4.2 to 10.4.3. I've tried turning off the internal Airport card in the G5, and quitting all other programs.
There is a little utility that came with the Kona card to test data rate of your drives. I'm getting well over 100 MB/s Read, and slightly less write rates, so it seems like drive speed isn't an issue.
What is the weak link here? WiebeTech was nice enough to send me a replacement eSATA PCI card, and the issue hasn't gone away, so it wasn't a bad card, although I guess there could be some flaw inherent in all of the cards.
What other steps should I take to try and isolate/solve this problem? This is kind of embarrasing that I can't play DV footage on the timeline without the possibility of dropping frames--even when working with only one layer of video.
I'm capturing video to the eSATA RAID, and my project files/graphics reside on an internal SATA drive in G5 (not the boot drive--I added another seagate 250 gb). Seems like there should be enough throughput in this thing to handle basic edits, but I'm beginning to have my doubts....
Your ideas?????

Clay,
Regarding your statement "My thinking initially about my workflow was to not keep them on the same drive as the footage because my feeling is that the RAID isn't as "safe" as the single 250 GB drive I have inside the G5".
I store all of my media, GFX and project files on whatever FW drive I happen to be using for a project. I NEVER have media for a specific project on two or more drives. For safety's sake, I ALWAYS have my Autosave Vault set to my internal drive, with a relatively high save rate (every 10 min). That way if the FW drive ever failed completely, I'd at least have a recent copy of the project file to work with (even if I have to redigitize the footage or redo the GFX). All I can say is keep all of your media (per project) on one drive - it's been kind of the Bible in this industry for years, and as far as I know it hasn't changed.
As far as RAID's go, I'm no expert. But if I remember correctly, back in my old Avid days we also used to avoid having the media on different striped partitions - something else you may want to try if you're media is spread across a few stripes.
It seems like I've run across more than a few posts here regarding the same problem happening on Dual 2.7's. You may want to do a more thorough search here to see what you come up with. All I can say is I'm running FCP 5.0.3 on a G5 Dual 2.0 with only 2.5 meg of RAM and have had no dropped frame issues.
Try Matt's suggestion of playing some footage off of your boot drive (NOT recommended for everyday use!). If it works then it's got to be a problem with your RAID and not FCP.
Good Luck!
jeff

HD erasure to prevent dropped frames.

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