Final Cut Pro – LAGGING
 

We are editing a project on FCP 4.5 with a Dual 2GHz powerPC G5
OSX 10.3.9 with 3.5GB RAM. The project is pretty simple, 13.3mb file size, SD, 16:9 timeline.

When we start up it's fine but after a while the program starts to lag. If we quit the program and re-launch, it is ok for a while but eventually starts to lag again. Any advise would be helpful.

Hi Michael, and welcome to DVinfo! Are you using an external drive as a scratch disk? Is it filling up, or are there lots of small files which might fragment it? That could cause a problem like you describe.

However when I used FCP 4.5 I also would have issues exactly like this during long editing sessions. The only solution I ever found was quitting and starting up again as you describe (I would usually re-boot the computer). But I was working on a Powerbook G4, which is a little different....

Macjanitor ( http://www.versiontracker.com ) may help as well...it does the cleanup stuff that restarting does for you...without having to restart.

Generally, the /tmp directory will fill up with stuff as well as log files in /System/Logs ...in terminal, you can also do a top -u to see what's currently running (or open the activity monitor...but terminal makes you look cooler)

lsof ( LiSt Open Files ) will show you what files those programs are keeping open. You can limit it by process ID (pid) too using a -P [pid] flag (the square brackets indicate that all 5 of those characters are replaced by the number you get from either top or ps below.

ps -auxww will show you what programs are currently running, their memory useage and cpu time (as well as their process IDs and tons of other info you probably don't need). The auxww are options that give all kinds of extra information that may or may not be useful to you, but it's there...this is a harmless command, experiment with it...if you want more info on it:

in terminal, you can look up instructions on these programs/commands by typing:
man top
man lsof
man ps

man=Manual

Thanks guys. We are working with an external lacie 500gb drive and it's just about full. Ill look into all those possibilities. We only have about a week of editing left before it shows and it started to become almost impossible to edit. Thanks again for your help.