RT dropping frames, slow disk question.
 

Hi.
Every time I try to edit my footage, I get the dreaded dropped frames due to extremely slow disks. However, I have also noticed, that this always happens at the same point during playback.

I am editing footage from the Canon EOS T2i. All the footage is located on an external hard drive. The hard drive has about 60 gb of free space, and my regular computer hard drive has about 65gb of free space.

I don't really understand this message, and I'm completely in the dark as to how to solve the issue. It says: "increase the speed of your disks" does that mean buy a new external? This one is brand new, and only about half full. Any info into this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

What is the drive, what is your computer and how are the two connected?

I'm working with a Macbook Pro. with 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and 2 GB 667 MHz memory.
My external is just a Seagate Freeagent Go with 350 GB. I think they are connected with a firewire on the external end, and a USB on the Computer end.

That connection is not possible. Either it's FireWire or USB. Upon looking at Seagate's poorly designed web site, I see that they offer drives with a choice of optional proprietary connectors. USB is not the best choice for video editing especially HD. It would be best to switch to connecting to the FireWire port on your computer with the proper adapter Seagate offers.

You can edit with USB but dropped frames will be a way of life while editing. The footage is probably fine but your editing experience will be diminished. You can go into User Preferences and turn off the dropped frames messages. To make sure your footage is OK when it gets to the problem point, go frame by frame. If the footage seems OK then it's the drive connection. If the footage shows some sort of digital disturbance, either the footage is unfortunately bad or the process you used to bring it into FCP had a problem.

Ok thanks. I'm looking for a larger external anyway, so I'll make a point to get one with a firewire connection.
I exported and the footage was fine, so it must just be the connection. Thanks for the help.

Are you transcoding to ProRes 422 or simply dropping the MOV files on the timeline? The MBP should happily edit one track of ProRes 422, though 422 (LT) is recommended for MBP.

If you are editing more than one track (i.e. cross fades between tracks etc) then it 'may' struggle, but as long as you have a 7200rpm drive and the transitions are not too long you should still be ok.

If you are dropping the /mov files from the camera on the timeline then you are asking for trouble. Use the EOS plugin to transcode instead.

I used the EOS plugin, and have been simply using log and transfer to import my footage, which I believe automatically converts it to ProRes... I didn't have any crossfades or anything, but I did increase the speed of some of the footage.

ProRes is a little robust for USB2 drives. Your dropped frame was probably at a point where the file is fragmented and the drive couldn't switch sectors fast enough.

Okay, that makes sense. Do you think simply transferring to a firewire based external would be a sufficient solution to this problem?

As long as it's a fresh drive or has a lot of free space, you should not have any dropped frame issues.