HELP, still getting dropped frames!

I'm still receiving dropped frames on my capture, which throws my audio wildly out of sync.
This is an FCP 3.0 running on a 10.4.9 Mac OS X computer, a G5.
I have:
Switched from both Safe RT to Unlimited RT.
Made sure there aren't multiple firewire drives plugged in.
Captured directly to my internal hard drive (as opposed to my external G-Raid)
Switched cameras.
Switched mini-DVs.
(I've also done that thing where you go into User Preferences, Go to Spotlight, Click on Privacy and drag your capture folder into the bin...which didn't work)
I've concluded it must not be the camera itself if two different cameras are both dropping frames, probably some setting in FCP I don't know about.
If anyone can help, I'd really appreciate it, Thanks.

SInce you list an iMac as your computer your options are limited as the usual fix for this problem is adding a second firewire bus and you can't do that with the imac.
But to clear something up, earlier you wrote...
Sorry, I'm running my camera through the firewire device....and capturing all the media to my internal hard drive.
The only hope you have is that you can capture directly to the system drive. To do this, just plug the camera into the computers FW port. Disconnect any other FW devices including the external drive.
If that works you can transfer the footage to the FW drive after capture.
Might also try the spotlight fix again although I don't know how it works if the scratch drive is your system drive.
rh

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STILL getting dropped frames

Upgraded hard drives and memory on my Macbook Pro 2011 15inch:
Hard drives = LaCie 3TB Thunderbolt (external) & WD 750GB (internal). Both are 7200 rpm.
Memory = 16GB Corsair RAM
Editing video files recorded with a Canon T3i (1080 @ 24fps, 720 @ 60fps).
Using FCPX from my internal drive and editing files from my external drive, I still get dropped frames. Anyone have experience with this or know how to work around it without using proxy media, etc.? I was hoping Thunderbolt and increased memory would help me edit smoothly on FCPX. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks everyone.

hi
yes it does matter h264 is NOT and editing codec it is a delivery codec. Dropped frmaes or stuttering do matter when you edit because you cant possibly edit to music if some of the the frames are stoicking for 4 frames or more.
Google h264 and prorez and see the difference between the way they are encoded. Very simply h264 stores a lot of informtion in key frames. if you edit a piece of footage thgat os h264 sometimes these key frames are cut away and they have to be remade on the fly. That is why yo can see dropped frames, or stuttering on edit points.
Some people mistakenly think fcpx cannot handel it, even though Quicktime or VLC can play it perfectly.
ProRez 4444has alpha channel information as well, unless you specifically need this, ie you are compositing layers and need the transparecy information, stick to proRes 422. Dont know why the computers heating up? Maybe its as fed up as you?
hth
adam

When i am logging/ Capturing my mac is telling me that i am getting dropped frames. would i need to get a LaCie Hard Drive?

When i am logging/ Capturing my mac is telling me that i am getting dropped frames. would i need to get a LaCie Hard Drive?

To be honest, I've had 2 Lacie drives crash out of 2 bought. That's not a good track record for me.
Your best bet (I'm a computer professional, for what it's worth):
Get a hard drive case or enclosure that supports firewire 800 and put your own PC hard drive (SATA for example) 7200rpm or higher hard drive into it.
Let me explain a bit more. External hard drive manufacturers often put no-name hard drives into fancy cases to cut costs and that's how they make a profit. I've have had nothing but problems with with these types of drives. (Like Lacie) You are much better off getting some type of decent drive enclosure and getting your own GOOD hard drive. I would highly recommend Seagate, I have NEVER had a problem with a Seagate drive in 20 years of owning PCs and Macs. Western Digital is also a good brand (though I had 1 crash). These are the types of drives you would put in your Mac Pro. You want to get an SATA hard drive.
I have owned several external cases where the case electronics fried, but the hard drives were still in good shape. Take the hard drive out, put it into a new case you're good to go!
For video you want to make sure that your hard drive case supports Firewire 800! This is mandatory.
My personal favorite, (and I own 5 of these) is Vantec's NexStar hard drive enclosure. They accept any SATA 3.5" drive (I bought mine from a company called ComputerStop). I have yet to have a single problem with any of them. They are solid aluminum casing, you can literally throw them into your backback, drop them on the floor and your hard drive is fairly well protected from impact damage (at least you won't break the case with anything short of a sledgehammer). I am currently looking at getting a second one of these:
http://www.vantecusa.com/gl/product/view_detail/173
(My bad, this is an IDE case up to 750GB)
This the one you want:
http://www.vantecusa.com/gl/product/view_detail/354
As far as the hard drive, you can get a Seagate Baracuda drive 1TB at 7200rpm drive for about $60. The case and hard drive together, maybe a few over $100 for the whole thing. With shipping, and tax figure about $150.
Don't let the price fool you. It will rock.
Story: I got an iOmega "raid" case with two Seagate drives in it and the iOemga case fried, but the hard drives were still good. Fortunately, they were in two removable trays. I put them into two "rocketfish" hard drive cases almost 3 years ago and I am still using them every day today.
Moral of this story: It's the quality of the hard drive that matters, not what case it's in.
Is it hard to set up?
Not at all. You put the hard drive into a tray, (with Vantec case), screw it in. It only goes in 1 way. Plug in a power cable to the drive. Slide the tray into the case (carefully, don't munch the power cable!) and screw it in place. You can literally do it in 10 minutes or less. There are, of course instructions, but if you are reasonably clever, you can literally see what plugs into what just by looking at it.
Sorry for the long reply, but I have a lot of experience with external drives and I hope this helps others.
Finally, when you make it to the big time you can spend $400, get yourself a firewire RAID enclosure and you can upgrade to 4 external hard drives in 1 enclosure. Figure $800 for that set up, but you can go up to 12 TB of drive space with that, or up to 3TB if you are running redundant discs. But that's a whole other ballgame...
Peace.

Shane's stock answers no help on my dropped frames trouble -- desperate!

Hi all you chicklets,
I've been trying to take a series of short videos (totalling 15 mins) that I made using FCP 4.5 for the web and nudging them so that they can go on DVDs for a special non-profit event where people might want to have a copy of the videos to watch on their tvs. I am using DVDSP for this per comments by the apple peeps for a previous question I posted.
Having trouble with dropped audio that is making me nuts. S-O-S!
Here are as many gritty details as I can bear to write down.
Equipment:
A) G4 867 MHz PowerPC, 1.5 GB RAM, 10.3.9 OS
B) I work by using G-Tech Firewire (400) hard drive (500GB) as my system disk.
C) I also have some junk on another Firewire HD (Iomega - 160GB) that I think is used by the G-Tech. Please don't scream! I intend to learn all about media manager to clean up my crap after this event has passed on by.
I'm new to this -- and if elected president, I promise to have a better workflow station system management process ad lib ad nauseum next time, and will not clog up the apple intertubes with my pleas for help on obvious beginner's mistakes.
Actions:
1) I put the videos all into the same sequence. Previously each 'chapter' had its own tab and sequence. Please note that I have burned dvds of these using idvd with no audio drops, no nuthin.
2) I added chapter and compression markers (sparingly) since I do have some effects/transitions that I would like to have come out smooth.
3) I was able to hear and see everything perfectly while playing the timeline with the videos all on the same one. Nothing dropped.
4) My settings in FCP timeline are thus:
a) Safe RT
b) Playback Video Quality: High
c) PLay base layer only (check)
d) Record to tape: Full quality
5) I exported this movie like this:
Export > Quicktime Movie
--current settings
--audio + video
--all markers
--make movie self-contained
6) And then I dropped this movie into Compressor
I used these presets:
MPEG 2 60 Min High Quality Encode
my audio = DVD PCM Audio = 48KHz 16 bit stereo
(don't have dolby as an option here I think)
After compression the video part looks as good as it's ever going to look (I think it's pretty good) but the audio has breaks and even omissions of music in the Background that I can hear perfectly when listening to the thing in FCP.
I went to Shane's stock answers. I even trashed the FCP preferences -- and I don't even know what that means.
I need to get this thing done soon -- can someone, anyone, please please give me a hand? What am I missing other than sleep?
Thanks so much for my long and winding road!
HeirBetty

HeirBetty wrote:
3) I was able to hear and see everything perfectly while playing the timeline with the videos all on the same one. Nothing dropped.
I'm a bit unclear as I didn't see the other thread. To clarify: you want to make separate sequences and output them as separate movie files instead of having them all on the same timeline? And if you do that, you get dropped frames?
You have a very slow machine and running your OS on an external disk and then editing off the same disk is making it even slower. The more sequences, bins, clips, etc, in a project, the more system resources it will take and system resources are a rare commodity on your machine, I am afraid.
So keep things as lean as you can. Consider creating separate projects for, say, every 3 movies or put everything into one timeline and then use the In and Out points to select which parts you want to export each time.

Not rendering - Getting dropped frames when exporting to tape

I am trying to export my project to Mini DV tape. I have been successful before, but am continually getting dropped frames. I noticed that the sections that are getting dropped frames are showing that it is not rendered (red bar). I have tried rendering them several times, but still show the red bar. I am using a PowerMac G5, Dual 2 GHZ processor with 3GB RAM. The footage is on a Lacie Firewire 800 external hardrive and there is almost 200 GB of free space. I do get occasional dropped frames, but not as often as I am now.

Is there anything else I can do? When I get the Warning - Dropped frames, it suggests turning off "Unlimited RT", which I have and set to "Safe" because I was getting dropped frames. Will this affect the quality when exporting? I have set the Video Quality to "Dynamic" and Frame Rate "Full" and Record "Full Quality". Do any of these settings need to be changed? Lowering your compression data rate (I'm not sure what that is), Closing open sequences (which I've done), Lowering the preference for real-time audio tracks (how do I do that and again will it affect the quality?), Increasing the speed of your system and/or disk drives and/or network connection (Is there a way for me to do that?)

Help Please? Dropped frames during capture!

Hello everyone, I am capturing from a mini DV camera to FC Express HD using a fire wire. I've been doing this for a year and all the sudden I'm getting a "dropped frame during capture" message.
I have read many many discussion boards and tried all of your suggestions...
Using different camera's, different tapes, different firewire cables. I've uninstalled and reinstalled FC EX HD and Quicktime. I tried turning off my external drives and using the internal drive to capture to and created a FC project within the internal drive. I have plenty of space on all drives.
Does anyone have any other ideas? Nothing seems to be working. I appriecate your help!!!!!
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9) final cut express hd

maybe you switch off the warn dropped frames during
capture option... after that watch your clips... is
there any problem still?
I'm really worried now. I turned off the "warn dropped frames" option. After capture, when I playback, I get a warning that there are dropped frames, and then picture freezes. Help! I don't know what to do!
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Captured video is OK but getting dropped frames in Canvas

I've read through the posts about dropped frames, but can't find a solution. Please help!
When I capture video and play it back in the viewer, it looks normal. But when I pull the video into the Timeline and edit it, the video on the Canvas looks choppy and frames appear to be dropped. When there's fast movement in the shot, it looks "ghosty". I've fully rendered everything as per the user manual, but I'm still having issues. Even when I export the project to a QuickTime movie and burn it on a DVD, the problem remains.
As per the scratch disks tab of system settings, I'm capturing and rendering on an external FW800 drive with 13.5 GB space left. But when I look at the item properties of each clip, the "source" says it's on my internal system drive. Is this normal and if not, perhaps this is a source of the problem?
-2 GHz IMAC Intel Core Duo
-OS 10.4.11
-Memory 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
-FCP 5.0
-DV footage
-Cache files are saving to system drive
-Playback settings: safe RT, high quality, full frame rate, pulldown pattern 2:3:2:3.
-QT version 7.5
Please help!

You said you had about 13GB remaining on the drive. How large is that drive altogether? Also, how large is this project? How much space does all the content take up and how long and complicated is your timeline? The answer to these questions may not get you the answer you're looking for, but it's a start in the right direction. If it's a feasible length and size, you shouldn't have any problems as far as RAM or processing power, so you're good on that. You might also want to change the specs you have. Apparently you've updated your OS since filling it out.

Help needed with drop frames

Hello everyone,
A few weeks ago with the help of some of the participant on this panel I change my settings and move my scratch disk from my internal HD to the external one.
Since then it seems that I have a lot of drop frames on the video as well as on the audio: and it seems that the problem is worsening.
Any suggestion to try to remedy to this problem will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much.
Guy.

I guess I have a problem with my external drive (LaCie 250 GB). I was working this afternoon and I noticed that I had a lot of dropped frames in a clip in the viewer and when replaying the same clip the drop frames were not at the same place.
So my question is : what's a good external drive?
This one is about 2Yrs old . Is that an average life time for this kind of material ? or was I unlucky?
Any suggestion on what I should do or try would be gretly appreciated.

Running 35' FW cable from deck to G5 for capturing, getting dropped frames

I am capturing from a JVC BR-DV6000 deck to a Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5, but the Firewire800 cable connecting the two runs up and through a ceiling, over some ceiling tile, and actually close to a fluorescent light fixture, then down through the wall and out of an opening in the dry-wall.
Does a 35' long firewire400 cable cause dropped frames?
Or could the fluorescent light fixture be causing some sort of interference?

iirc, the IEEE 1394 (aka firewire) standard specifies 5 meters as the maximum length of a firewire cable without a repeater.
Very high quality cables may get you farther, but you are pushing it
x

Still having dropped frame problems in 720p

This situation will not go away. I can play 1080i all day but try to play a 720p sequence and frames drop
every few seconds. In the browser and in the timeline. Doesn't matter if the media is on an external SATA array or on the internals. The playback stalls. This has gotten extremely frustrating. Any help the the folks in the know?
Best,
Tom

I agree with Tallguy. It's either the higher frame rate, the type of compression or both.

Still more Dropped Frames during playback

i imported an iMovie project into FCE HD. I rendered several minutes of video, including several edits from the iMovie project. none of the windows overlap. i have Safe RT, low quality, 2 audio tracks, etc. etc. i.e. all the lowest, least demanding settings i can think of for my system. still, i get only a few seconds of playback before stuttering to a halt.
in the warning screen, it says something about lowering my "compression data rate". i don't see anywhere to change that.
i've maxed out the ram on my machine (1GB).
any other ideas?
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 667 Mhz

how to convert a .dv file to a Final Cut friendly
one
Let me quote from Simons i5m site the instructions
for doing what you need, using QuickTime Pro:
- Open your iMovie .dv file in Quicktime Pro.
- Extract the audio track
- Export the audio track as a Quicktime Movie, Linear
PCM format, Channels Stereo (L R), 48kHz, 16bit
sample size
- Delete the audio track from the .dv file
- Open the exported audio file, select all and copy.
- Select All in the .dv file
- Add the exported Audio file using Add to Movie
- Export/Save As the .dv file as a self contained
Quicktime Movie
- Import this movie in FCE
I already used this procedure and works well. The
main point is to create a separate PCM audio track in
the file, as expected by FCE. This avoids the audio
rendering. Video is already in the FCE native form
(DV) and does not need any processing.
If you do not have QuickTime Pro (strongly
recommended though) another possibility is to first
import the .dv file in FCE, then render audio at item
level, then export/QuickTime Movie - Self-contained,
and finally import the new file into FCE for
editing.
Piero
I've done my own version of these instructions which take advantage of QT Pro 7's ability to directly export an AIFF soundtrack. If anyone has any issues with these, let me know.
One other thing is the instructions seem to imply the output file will still be a .dv file, but it is .mov, which made me think I was doing something wrong at first.
Exporting an iMovie file to a Quicktime .mov file for Final Cut:
1. Right click (or control click) on your iMovie project, chose "Show Package Contents," open the Media folder then open the .dv file enclosed in the Media folder.
2. Choose File > Export from the pulldown menu and chose "Sound to AIFF." Click the Options button, then the following options Format: Linear PCM, Channels: Stereo (L R) (or Mono, depending on your project), Rate 44.100 kHz, Quality: Normal, Sample size: 16 bits.
3. Choose Window > Show Movie Properties, select the Sound Track, then click on the Delete button.
4. Open the exported soundtrack .aif file. Choose Edit > Select All, then choose Edit > Copy.
5. Click on the .dv file's quicktime window to make it active. Make sure the play head is at the very beginning of the track. Choose Edit > Select All, then choose Edit > Add to Movie.
6. Choose File > Save As. Click on the Save as a self-contained movie button. This will save as a .mov file, not a .dv file. This file can then be imported into Final Cut.

After 2.1 update still getting dropped calls

After 2.1 update I have dropped at least 15 Phone calls , the signal strength is usually on 5 bars 3g , the calls drop without warning (doesnt break up or destort voice), It also seems if I look at email while on a call it drops the call about 20 seconds later, another odd thing is the improved reception at my desk at work , used to get 1 bar on EDGE or no service , after 2.1 update I got 5 bars on 3g and the internet was pretty fast in the same spot but only during the morning time , I went back into the office about an hour later the bars dropped to 1 bar on EDGE/no service and the internet wouldnt even work , and now today when talking with my girlfriend (who has the same phone) the call quality has dropped , the speech sounds like she or I are talking through a voice changer where the words become incomprehensible or the sound totally drops momentarily and then returns to normal , so now im finding myself asking are you there over and over , do you think this phone will ever exhibit excellent voice quality and call reliablity or should I just go back to my old company?

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<pre><nowiki>
<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="Off"/>
</system.web>
</configuration></nowiki></pre>
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<pre><nowiki>

<configuration>
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Is it possible that a setting or extension or external software is blocking some data that the site expects? You might check the cookie settings per this article:
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Hello,
I have recieved over 500 emails from this forum in the last couple of days. I have set all of my preferences to NO. I do not know how to stop the emails. Can someone contact me with some information.
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Hi Karen,
I've branched out your request and will repost in the mods forum to get admin's attention.
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Troubleshooting dropped frames on playback FCP 5, Tiger G5

for some reason i keep getting dropped frames on playback after upgrading everything to tiger and fcp 5...
i'm working off of a lacie d2 firewire 800 drive on a dual 2.0 G5 with 2.5 GB of RAM..
even when i change the playback settings to dynamic or even medium and half resolution ... i still get dropped frames during effects like variable time.
has anybody else had this problem? perhaps i'm missing some optimization i should have done in tiger??
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thanks.

thought i'd post some of what i found out...
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2) turning off adobe version cue also seemed to help

HELP, still getting dropped frames!

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