Scratch Questions

With the recent migration to my new Mac Pro, necessitated by the death of my G5, the installation to the new boot drive of FCS fresh from the install disks and then updating, resulted in all existing projects being immediately found and available. There were no reconnect issues. Of course the media was on the same FW External drive as before, and some project files as well. However, a project file copied during my User folder migration was equally successful in opening.
Now that I have performed a new capture on the new Mac, I have unintentionally created a situation wherein FCP has placed a newly created "Final Cut Pro Documents" folder within the previously established "Final Cut Pro Documents" folder. I see why this happened, as I did not specify the root level of the HD (but rather the existing folder was named as the destination), and it is not a problem to trash the capture and do over (actually a quality reason to do so). However, if I now specify the root level of this HD, what will happen to existing assets in the existing Final Cut Pro Documents folder. Will FCP find the existing Final Cut Pro Documents folder and add these captures, or will somthing else happen? Could this threaten the existing files?
I can easily specify another drive for future scratch files, but I was not ready to do that. Is this a job now or in the future for Media Manager, or can that be trusted?
Ernie

Jim,
Thanks for the response. After being out for a bit, I removed the secondary Final Cut Documents folder (trashed it) and reset to specify the root level of the drive. This time it put the folders that should be in a Final Cut Documents folder at the root level, and ignored the existing one? You say I can move the project specific folders at will -- like into the existing Final Cut Documents folder?
Ernie

Similar Messages

Starting from scratch question

I have both Carbon Copy and Time Machine backups. I have a question, I want to do a clean start, is it possible to reformat my drive, put in my operating system 10.6.2 from disc and then pull what I want from either back up program. Will it bring over anything from my old operating system? I live in Mexico and was told by a tech at our local Mac place (they fix macs, not an authorized dealer) that because of the slow starting and system hangups I should start from scratch. My original office and other program discs are in the U.S. and I won't be able to get them for awhile. They are all original programs that I own and have them backed up on an external. I just don't want to go through inputing a new operating system and then migrating anything that is causing the hangups back. Thanks for the help.

Before you do anything, you might want to run SMART Utility, just to be sure that your hard drive isn't starting to fail and causing all these problems:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/smartutility.html
You can download the demo and run it several times for free. SMART Utility is somewhat more critical than Disk Utility, and may find impending hard drive failure sooner. If your drive is headed south, then you would want to replace it.
I'm not all that familiar with CCC since I use Super Duper to clone, so I don't know what would be involved in restoring from a CC clone. However, I recently replaced my hard drive, and restored from a Time Machine backup, and that seemed to work well. I had to update the OS, so I feel that I had a completely fresh copy of it.
Hope this helps!

Partition setup suggestions

I currently have a G4 800 running 10.3.9 with this HDs
original 40 GB HD
TEMPO RAID PCI 133
with two 80GB RAID-0
Unfortunately I didn't get the performance I expected ( double ) with the RAID-0, probably because the disks aren't the same model although they are from the same manufacture.
I'm willing to give up on this RAID-0 as its not safe and not much faster then a regular disk.
I know 10.4 has a concatenated RAID set. Does it spread the files all over the discs or does it finishes the 1st first then the 2nd... ( meaning is it much safer then RAID-0 )?
I use this machine at work mainly for Photoshop, and my goal was to use the RAID-0 to increase scratch disk and swap performance.
I would like suggestions as to what would be a nice setup to this configuration. Would one dedicated disk to Photoshop's scratch disk and another to system swap increase performance substantially ? Or should I just concat them all together ?
Thanks in advance

Hi Pedro;
Correct! I saw it after you bumped my nose on it. I was going through so fast the first time I totally overlooked it. Sorry.
I am searching on the Adobe home page for what made me think that scratch was no longer important. So far I have not come up with much of anything.
No matter what the answer is to scratch question, I still say that performance is much better with Tiger and PS CS2. It allowed me to keep running on my G4 all summer and upgrade to the Quad now. On the Quad everything just pops into view no matter what you are doing. I haven't found anything that slow the Quad yet in PS CS2.
Allan

Question about Photoshop scratch disk and specific setup

Hi Folks
Thanks for the help in advance.
I'm a novice and need help finding a solution to a new PC Build. (Windows 7 Pro 64bit with Photoshop CS6)
I only recently found out about having a scratch disk dedicated for photoshop (very novice i know ), and was wondering if a 120-128GB SSD would be enough? (Please bear in mind I can't fit large SSD raid configs to my budget, plus I live in New Zealand, so prices are higher for SSD at the moment).
I only edit single camera RAW files at a time around 25mb per file, with no large amount of layers and very rarely do large images i.e. Panorama etc. I have searched the forums but could not find a concrete answer.
My setup was originally meant for a HTPC (I don't intend to overclock), but I will also be using it for light photography projects. Specs below:
CPU: Intel i7 3770
Mobo: Asrock B75 Pro3-M (or Asus P8H77m Pro, depending on budget)
16gb Ram (maybe bump up to 32gb later)
120-128gb SSD for OS and apps
120-128gb SSD scratch disk
2 TB HDD for storage
If anyone knows, the motherboards I've listed have 3x Sata3 ports, Asrock has one Intel chip and two Asmedia controlled Sata3 ports, while Asus has 2x Intel controlled and 1x Marvell controlled Sata3 port. If I went with the Asrock, would it be okay to connect the OS/Apps SSD to the intel controlled sata3 port and have the scratch disk and storage HDD to the Asmedia sata3 ports?
And one more novice question, when I begin to edit my images, is it best to transfer my photos from memory card to storage HDD then work from there? Or would it be quicker opening images direct from a USB 3.0 card reader / USB 3.0 external hard drive?
Thanks again everyone, really appreciate it

priddye wrote:
Just to clarify, if/when I get one 256gb SSD for my main C: drive, I can load the OS/Apps and store some data for the time being (until I get another SSD) and use the 2TB HDD for scratch disk only?
Yes, that's what I meant. You could try putting Photoshop scratch on C: at least temporarily, and watch your free space carefully. If you don't work on big documents or set your history states to be very large, it might be workable. But be careful. The safe "set it and forget it" configuration is to make your HDD the one and only Photoshop scratch drive.
When I do get around to getting the second 256gb, I will look at installing the two SSD's in RAID configuration. If i were to do this, can I load the OS/Apps to the RAID SSD's as well as using them for scratch disks and have the 2TB HDD for storage? I hope that makes sense.
Sounds about right; with 512GB on tap you should be able to run just about everything from C:, as long as you don't keep your entire photo library on there. Realistically, on a big system that's got a lot of apps installed and has been used for some time, Windows and your apps may end up consuming 100 to 150 GB, so that would still leave you a lot of breathing room.
Keep in mind that what you describe may require 3rd party re-partitioning software and/or backup and restoral, or a complete reinstallation of Windows and everything (usually the latter is what is recommended when moving up to a RAID system volume).
By the way, SSDs stay in best working order if you overprovision - i.e., maintain a fair amount of free space. The internal controllers need the free space to keep the data organized well and maintain top performance.
-Noel

Macbook Pro with Dual hard drives. Scratch Disk, Memory 64bit, Raid, Set Up Questions.

Hello, this is my first post.
I just upgraded from the original 2006 17" Macbook Pro to a refurbished 13" Macbook Pro 2.53GHZ 4GB Ram (2009 model).
I bought the MCE Tech Optibay and installed it (if you dont know anything about it, ask me, its amazing.) So now I have 2x 500GB 7200RPM Seagate hard drives installed.
I am running Snow Leopard, CS3, Lightroom 1.4.
I have the main hard drive set up with Snow Leopard and all the Applications. I keep all my files on external firewire 800 drives, except files I am currently working on.
The second hard drive is set up as a scratch disk for Photoshop CS3 and that is it.
I am looking to upgrade to CS5 and Lightroom 3 here within this month or so. Or if I get anxious, tomorrow, haha.
I want to know the best setup I can do with my current set up with CS3 and for my future setup with CS5.
Any info will appreciated.
-Would some kind of raid set up with my internal drives be better? How does raid work with scratch disks?
-If I upgrade to 8GB memory in my macbook pro, would I even see a difference in performance if I didn't have a scratch disk? Since CS5 and Snow Leopard can use more memory in 64bit.
I think thats all I have on my brain right now. I may have more questions, or I can guarantee I will have more later.
Thanks alot.

First the scratch. Like you said, most everyone has a different take on scratch discs but I'd guess you're wasting one heck of a lot of hard drive space using all 500 GB for Scratch, did I read that right? If I did read it correctly YES, partition it and get some use out of it!!
I've got a unibody MBP 2.93GHz, OS 10.5.8, CS3 & PS 5 (running in 32bit mode), and 8 gigs of ram. I've partitioned the one 300 GB drive so 50GB is scratch, the other partition is for OS, & Apps, and documents (images).
I use LR 2 first than export to PS 5 to finish up. My photos get to be 300MB to 500MB in size and both versions of PS work on this setup just fine. Using PS 5 in 64 bit mode is faster opening files but NON of my plugin's are 64 bit yet, that's why I'm still stuck in 32 bit mode.
Not knowing what size or kind of files you work on makes giving advice a bit tough but try setting the status indicator (don't know the right name for it) in the bottom left corner of any PS open file to "Efficiency" and watch what happens when you process your files. I rarely see mine drop below 90%, I've got the usable RAM in PS Prefs set to it's max suggested, cut way back on History and Cache.
Can't wait for NIK and others to offer their plugin in 64 bit, later this year is what I was told.
There used to be an old "rule of thumb" with old version of PS about Scratch disc size. I don't remember exactly but it may have been 3 to 5 times the size of your biggest file??
Good luck, Alan

Scratch Disc Questions using Firewire External Drive & Imac

Hello. I've read through the existing questions regarding scratch disc and Photoshop, yet can't seem to find an answer to my questions. I would greatly appreciate any tips/advice. Here is my setup and situation:
I am running an iMac with a 2.16 intel core 2 duo processor, 3 GB memory, and running OS X version 10.6.4. I am currently using versions cs3 and cs4 of Photoshop, but plan to upgrade to cs5 soon.
The problem I am having is when running Photoshop, my computer becomes very slow. After reading about possible reasons, I came across a couple of sources (including Adobe themeselves) mentioning that the scratch disc should be a designated drive seperate from the drive containing the operating system. Since I am using an iMac that only allows for one internal drive, my only apparent option seems to be an external drive.
Many people say don't use an external drive, but if you are going to; use an eSATA or firewire. The imac does have firewire 800 capabilities. Should I consider this?
Now I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to purchase a macbook for my next computer (what I wanted to do) because it will also only have one drive, not allowing for a seperate drive for the scratch disc. Any thoughts? I've read around the net but haven't found any definitive answers.

Designer,
Photoshop benefits greatly from having a scratch disk on a separate physical drive, not on the boot disk or on another partition of the boot disk. It's almost not worth connecting via Firewire 400 because the transfer limitations don't allow much performance improvement. But using a Firewire 800 connection gives excellent performance.
Running Photoshop on a one-drive machine is a little frustrating due to the performance hit without the separate scratch drive.
Rich

Best practice question re. importing and scratch drive

Hello:
Will be editing .mov files primarily (Panasonic TM900 files wrapped as ProRes 422HQ - via ClipWrap). I'm using an external scratch drive.
Questions:
1. is it best to "copy" the files to the project as is the default check mark or uncheck and save disk space?
2. on the scratch drive, I currently have the original .mts files and then a new folder with the wrapped files. Is it better to keep these on the main HDD or is it ok to be on the scratch drive as well. Thnaks.
Steve

Yes read your manual to understand more but here is a clip:
Create proxy media: This option creates video and still-image proxy files. Video is transcoded to the Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy) codec format, which provides high-quality files useful for offline editing at the original frame size, frame rate, and aspect ratio. Final Cut Pro creates medium-quality (one-quarter resolution) proxy versions that increase editing performance. Video proxy files take up considerably less disk space, which often means you can work on a portable computer instead of a desktop computer that has significantly more memory and processing power. Still images are transcoded to either JPEG (if the original file doesnʼt have alpha channel information) or PNG files (if the file has alpha channel information). Still-image proxy files facilitate faster processing and rendering when the original image is very large.
Note: When transcoding files, Final Cut Pro always retains the original media for future use. For more information about where to find original media, proxy media, and transcoded media files, see Where your media and project files are located.

Photoshop scratch disk question

Hi All,
I do a lot of work with photoshop elements, and currently have an external drive with a 2GB partion as my scratch disk - connected via firewire.
However I am beginning to find this set up a little annoying as it means I am stuck to one location unable to move when using photoshop.
I was thinking about partioning the internal hard drive on my PB instead and so having the scratch disk available wherever and also the transfer speed would be by the Gb instead of 400Mb. (am I right?)
Is it a good idea to partion a hard drive on a portable? is it worth all the hassle of reinstalling and also has anyone had any problems after partioning? like battery life decreasing?
Thanks in advance,
Naj

you seem have to put this question in the software session but fine. well, actually, you don't need to specifically partition you drive for photoshop and just let it choose your start-up disk or other connected drive you choose. but, for external drive, you have to connect while you start up you system. if not, your ps will always switch back to your start-up disk when you start your ps.

Questions on Open file/Quicktime format/Scratch Dish Unavailable

Hi there,
I’m brandnew to Premiere CS4 and following a video training program, but I’ve got several problem at the start :
1.       Cannot open a Premiere File in the Exercise Folder which have been copied on my desktop. I’ve also tried another approach by moving it into «My document \Adobe\ Premiere Pro folder », unfoturnately, it didn’t help. Every time, when I double click «a Premiere File », it prompted me to a window asking to « select » a file. On the top of the pop-up window noting « Where is the file ‘30 second keeper.mov ? ». then I got thoroughly lost on way there. (see image : 0_open file_question)
image: 0_open file_question
2.       No Quicktime Option Apears In the projet setting dialogue when creating a new project. In « the new project dialogue »- General ->Capture -> Capture Format /the pull down menue only shows « DV » and « HDV » but « Quicktime » not listed, although it has been installed in my lenovo T61 laptop runing on Windows 7 with Quicktime pro 7.6. Besides, there’s no « video/audio/advanced » choises on the right hand side of the pull-down menue as I saw that it’s showing in the Video Training Program which is done on a Mac OS. (see image : 1_In Training Prgm & 2_In My Computer)
image : 1_In Training Prgm
image : 2_In My Computer
3.       Quicktime file cannot played in Pr CS4, after importing. On the display screen, the messege showed « Media offline ». What does that mean ? (see image : 3_Media offline)
4.       Scratch Disk Write protected / unavailable. Is it obliged to creat a « Scratch Disk » ? For what purpose ?
Since I was fowlling each step of the training video to set up a Scratch Disk, but when I reopen the file, it prompted me to the dialogue window (see image : 4_ScratchDisk_protected_unavailable/ 5_if i click_yes/ 6_if i click_cancel).
image : 4_ScratchDisk_protected_unavailable
image : 5_if i click_yes
image : 6_if i click_cancel
Sadly I cannot continue to following my lesson without having a solution.
Thank you all in advance.

Hi,
I’m thinking of buying a Thinkpad w701 (WorkStation) in order to run all the new features and the great stuffs of Adobe Cs5 (AE & PrPro …).
What I need:
Object Buffers / Longer RAM Previews / More Persistent Caches, so as to avoiding “Unable to allocate image buffer” errors.
My question is:
How much RAM should I have to achieve the requirement?
Thanks,
ThinkPad W701ds laptop
Processor
Intel Core   i7-720QM Processor (6M Cache, 1.60 GHz)
Operating system
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
Display type
17"   WUXGA RGB-LED-BL + 10.6" WXGA LED-BL
System graphics
NVIDIA   Quadro FX 2800M 96-core CUDA parallel computing processor 1GB (dedicated)
Total memory
2 GB   PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (1 DIMM)
Pointing device
Ultranav +   Number Pad + Fingerprint Reader
Primary Hard Drive
320 GB   Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
Optical device
Multi   Recorder Optical Drive (12.7mm)
Battery
9 cell Li-Ion Battery
Bluetooth
None
Integrated   WiFi wireless LAN adapters
ThinkPad bgn Wireless

Scratch Disck Question

I have a 150 Raptor 100000rpm 16 cache
500gb 7200rpm 16 cache
and 1Tgb 7200 rpm 32 cache
My questions wich one I should use as my main hard drive, and wich one I should use as my Photoshop Scratch Disck ?
Thinking to have better performance with photoshop CS3.
My operating system,: windows Home Premiun 64bit, Q6600 2.4, 8gb ram,
Thanks in advance--

> unless you want the entire 150G to be scratch.
Nothing wrong with that. I have a 25% full 160 GB data disk as primary scratch and PS uses what it wants.
I don't like partitions!

Scratch Disk Question

In the past I have had 10 GB partitions of the main hard drive to use exclusively for a scratch disk for Photoshop and all the other Adobe Suite apps because I had heard it wasn't a good idea to have the scratch drive the same as your main hard drive.
Just recently upgraded to an iMac (a nice, new, white one with the high quality matte screen) which has a 250 GB internal drive. I didn't bother to repartition this one and have been using it as my scratch & main disk for the last 2 months. Which means the system is on this drive and I am opening and saving to it regularly.
My question is, would it be worth it to create a separate partition just for a scratch disk? Does it really make that much of a difference? I haven't noticed any problems up until now but was wondering about it.
As you can see below I have a 2.16 Core 2 Duo with 3 GB of ram, HD currently has 108.3 GB available, 124.2 GB used. I mainly use Adobe CS3; Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign always open and in constant use and switching between them.
So should I repartition for a dedicated scratch disk or is it not necessary? Well, obviously it's not necessary since I've been working fine without it for 2 months, but will it improve performance of the Adobe apps and/or prevent possible directory corruption? And if I should how big should it be?

Hi! If it's doing what you want I wouldn't mess with it. The biggest bottleneck is probably if you were at a near full disk situation. As long as you keep 15-20% of free space you probably won't have problems. One other thing you can consider. You should have a bootable clone backup for emergencies and using an external firewire drive works good for that so if you get one you could always partition it to use as a scratch disk as well as a bootable backup clone. The internal disk speed is going to be faster that firewire so as long as the setup you are using is working well I'd stick with it but give serious consideration to a bootable backup solution. Tom

Scratch disk and other setup questions

Hello, I am a long time Premiere user but have never been involved with the setup. I have decided to start doing personal video editing on my gaming computer and have run into some questions.
The biggest one I have is with the scratch disk setup. I've read the help doc about 10 times and googled every combination of terms I can think of but am still unsure how I should set these for my setup.
I have Premiere Pro CS5 installed on my C:, which is a 128 GB SSD
For storage I have 4 1TB drives in Raid 5, so 2.72 TB total storage.
How do I want to set up my scratch disks for best possible performance?
Question 2: This might be related to scratch disk setup, I'm not sure, but something I have always wondered. Which disk should I save my projects to in this configuration? Does it matter? Then, do I want to render my final video to that same folder or to another disk?
Question 3: I currently have a GTX 460 graphics card and am enjoying the benefits of CUDA acceleration. I have been looking at adding a second in SLI for gaming purposes, but have read that the Mercury Playback Engine is not compatible with SLI. Does this mean that it will still just work with one card and I will see no benefit in premiere, or that all CUDA acceration will cease?
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the help.

Alright, so I have the hdd's in the case and am setting up where to place everything, but each of my drives is different, so I am hoping someone can suggest best practice on which drives should hold what. I can rearrange any drive to suit any purpose you guys would suggest, but here is what I currently have set up:
C: - 128 GB SATA III SSD
D: - 150 GB 10k VelociRaptor
E: - 250 GB Caviar Black
F: - 4x 1 TB Spinpoint F4 7200 RPM in RAID 5
Here is how I am currently planning on using these drives:
C: - OS, Programs
D: - Media, Projects
E: - Previews, Exports
F: - Pagefile, Media Cache
When I am finished with a project I move the exported file onto my media server, so that is why I set the export onto the smaller drive and media cache onto the RAID.
Does this look good or would you guys suggest a different orientation for better performance?
And one other question, this time regarding RAM. I currently have 6 GB of DDR3, 3 x 2 GB. I have been reading all about how moving up to 24 GB would be very beneficial, and since it really isn't all that expensive, I am planning on doing so. My question is that, I have watched the task manager while rendering and exporting my videos and I've only ever seen RAM usage hit 1.8 GB. I wondered why it didn't get close to using all 6, but didn't worry about it too much. But now that I am hearing 24 would be helpful, I am wondering if I have something set up wrong that is stopping Premiere from using all my RAM?
Thank you guys so much for the help.

Newbie Question - Learn FrameMaker from scratch

Hi All,
First of all, apologies for the cheesy screen name
I am an IT developer at an MNC in India and want to move to technical writing. I do have a brief formal technical writing experience before and have published an engineering course ware book too. I have good MS Word authoring skills, but I have never worked with FrameMaker.
Now I want to learn FM, from scratch!.
Can anybody here point me to a good source for a complete FM newbie? (with good Word skills)
Any good book
Video channel on youtube (highly needed, since in the day time, I have my job and I only have 26 days left for the trial )
Any other online resources / PDFs etc
I have started by looking at this link: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/using/index.html But it seems like it is for FM experts / intermediates. Frankly, I thought learning FM would be easy, but as I browse through the questions in this forum, I realize it's a sea not a pond / puddle as I had initially thought of
Any sort of help would be highly appreciated. I am using the latest version, FrameMaker 12.
Thanks in Anticipation
- Navin

Hi Navin,
You can check out some of the videos on the AdobeTV TechComm Channel at http://tv.adobe.com/channel/technical-communication/
The best reference book currently available is "Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11" by Matt Sullivan and Sarah O'Keefe. For an ePub see: Books - Scriptorium Publishing or order the book from Amazon: Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11
There also is the Adobe Classroom-in-a-Book series that has a version for FM11 by Barb Binder. For an electronic version see: Adobe FrameMaker 11 Classroom in a Book (don't get the Kindle version, the layouts are hard to read/use - the PDF is much better).
There's an online training course available from lynda.com. See: Watch the Online Video Course FrameMaker 10 Essential Training
VTC has a FM9 training video series available at: Adobe FrameMaker 9 Course Online
The basics don't change, so even FM9 training is quite valid for FM12,
Note: all of these refer to using FM in an unstructured mode. If you want to learn Structured FM (DITA, XML or even SGML), then you'll still need to understand the basics that unstructured FM provides.

My MacBook Pro randomly froze during a sync to my iPhone and started making a scratching noise by the power button. I shut it off then turned it back on and it won't take me to the desk tops it will just flash a folder with a question mark in it. What do

My MacBook Pro randomly froze during a sync to my iPhone and started making a scratching noise by the power button. I shut it off then turned it back on and it won't take me to the desk tops it will just flash a folder with a question mark in it. What do I do?

You have a HDD problem (hopefully you have a backup). Start with the information on this support article:
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1440
Ciao.

My probably 10 year old MaycBook died. It won't start. When I press the power button, it gets power, but it only lights up and a scratching noise starts like something is spinning. A file folder with a question mark periodically flashes... Help!!!

My probably 10 year old MaycBook died. It won't start. When I press the power button, it gets power, but it only lights up and a scratching noise starts like something is spinning. A file folder with a question mark periodically flashes... Help!!!

You don't have a Macbook if you are running OS 9 and it's 10 years old. The first Macbook is an Intel Mac that came out in 2006 running 10.4.x. You most likely have a Powerbook. Try posting in the Powerbook forum.
A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac

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