FCP3: Digital "Noise" @ The 9 Minute Mark
 

Hi, folks - Hoping someone here can help me:

Running FCP3 on a dual processor 800 G4 tower under OSX Jaguar. My problem is that every FCP Movie I output after capturing ends up with this intermittent digital breakup - loads of boxy colored pixels - after the 9 minute mark of the movie. The sources I captured -- two, each 30 minutes in length - went into FCP fine, play back fine in the timeline and when viewed in the canvas and an external monitor. It's when they become FCP movies that there's a problem. My settings have not changed since I've been using FCP (I recently upgraded from FCP2): DV-NTSC/48k audio. I also trashed my FCP Preferences and increased memory to no avail.

Any clues?

Thanks in advance,

Jay

What OS are you running, 9.2.2 or 10.2.6?

I betting OS X Jaguar. Pay up. :)

Anyway try exporting to the camera by simply playing the movie on the timeline after rendering, since it seems to have no problems there. Or are you saying the you export FCP Movies to your hard drive and that file itself has the breakup even when viewed with Quicktime Player?

>>I betting OS X Jaguar. Pay up. :)

Heck, I hope not!

>>Anyway try exporting to the camera by simply playing the movie on the timeline after rendering, since it seems to have no problems there. Or are you saying the you export FCP Movies to your hard drive and that file itself has the breakup even when viewed with Quicktime Player?

Yes, that's just it. The FCP Movie itself has the problem when viewed with Quicktime. Things are fine until saved in the FCP Movie format, which is what I need in order to drop it into iDVD2.

Also, now that I remember: this also happened last week while I was still doing everything in OS 10.1, so I doubt it's a Jaguar-related problem.
FCP Movies under 3 minutes in length come out fine. It's in longer ones where the problem occurs.
The destination drive (external FW 7200rpm) is large enough and, as stated in my first post, FCP3 has been given plenty of memory to do its thing.

Jay

What kind of external firewire drive are you using? I don't think the only issue is rotational speed. Recently I have been using Maxtor 160 GB drives with the Oxford 911 chipset (I have 4) and they seem to be fine. However I have an "Acom" external 7200 RPM drive that exhibits the sort of problems you describe. How full (eg: fragmented) is the drive? As you start to approach its capacity you may have problems, or at least I have had some in the past.

Also, remember that FCP3 is not really optimized to run under OSX. I find that I have less problems running it under MacOS 9 personally. On powerbooks it seems to be particularly sensitive to these firewire problems under OSX. And 10.1 was not a good version at all from my experience, so that could very well be your problem. Can your machine boot into MacOS 9? If so give that a try and see what happens.

OS9 handles firewire drives better than OS X. Some people get dropped frames when using firewire drives with FCP, which is why apple doesn't support their use with FCP.

The 9 minute mark (around 9:26) is also where DV files hit 2 gigabytes. Any drives not formatted in HFS+ do not support files larger than 2GBs. I don't think this is your problem though since your file seems to be larger than 2GB.

I'd be happy to try to help, but I need to know the version OS your using and FCP. Check to make sure all your drives are formattted HFS+.

I'm using an OCS 120 gig FW drive. Once again, though, I have to state that this problem occured when I was running everything under OS 10.1 and now that I've updated to OS 10 (X) Jaguar it's still there. I can't do any of the work I need to in OS 9 because there's that 2 GB limit when using FCP in OS 9 (i.e. it won't let you make a file larger than 2 GB). So OS 9 is useless to me in this repect.

The drive was defragged a week or so ago. It had minimal wear as I remember. I'll try defragging again on Monday.

Thanks again for your posts. Here's hoping something comes up!

Jay

>>I'm using an OCS 120 gig FW drive.

Sorry. That should be "OWC 120 Gig FW drive".

<<<-- Originally posted by Jay Veela : I can't do any of the work I need to in OS 9 because there's that 2 GB limit when using FCP in OS 9 -->>>

I don't think this is true. I have been running FCP3 almost exclusively in MacOS 9.2 and have just finished a big project with lots of files larger than 2GB. I think Glenn may have hit on something though: is your drive formatted as HFS+ (MacOS extended)? For that matter, is it even formatted for the Mac? Many drives are preformatted for the PC but will mount on a Mac anyway.

I'll check on this Monday. Not sure of the top o' my head if they are formatted to HFS+.


Jay

Jeff, Jay posted his OS in the very first post. :)

Jay, I know this kind of sucks, but try this workaround:
After you are finished editing, export out to tape. Then recapture the entire thing as one big clip. You should be able to drop that clip into iDVD.

Ted, if you mean his reference to Jaguar, there are seven official versions and two beta versions floating around. Some versions have known problems with FCP. I have a feeling this is a drive problem and may relate to one being HFS+ formatted and the other not being HFS+ formatted.

<<<-- Some versions have known problems with FCP. I have a feeling this is a drive problem and may relate to one being HFS+ formatted and the other not being HFS+ formatted. -->>>

Thanks to all who replied.

I reformatted the destination drive to HFS+ yesterday -- it had been in Standard after all - and tested it out by making a 10 minute FCP movie. It turned out fine! Thanks all!


Jay