Sweet. Having just put up an extra $1200 for the Z1 (that I don't really have), I didn't know where another $350 was going to come from. However, I may have no choice now. FCP is constantly dropping frames on the very small sequences I have in there. I can't imagine what it will be doing when I have a 45 minute video made up of 7 or 8 sequences in there...

Really, I don't know what the deal is. I have a 1GHz PowerBook, 1.25GB RAM, 320GB external drive which hosts the project and the movie files, and all necessary software updates. RT is on safe. Memory usage is 100%. I've dumped all of the junk off my harddrive and run a utilities disk repair. The only thing I can think of is that I need to set my scratch disk to another harddrive (it is currently on my PowerBook at 9.5GB, min. allowable free space 2047MB). But would this even have an effect? The scratch disk is primarily used for capturing, right?

If I understand you correctly your scratch disk is wrong, it should be your external drive which I assume is firewire? The system drive should just have your os while your external drive should have everything else (media files and all that jazz)

Yes, something is setup wrong. I also have a 1ghz 15" aluminum powerbook with 1.25GB RAM. Last summer it was my only computer in Argentina where I was doing that PAL project with my Z1 and FCP 4.5. It worked great with a couple of external 160GB firewire drives.

As Nate says, you need to set the firewire drive as you capture disk (I think it's called scratch disk in the prefs). A few other ideas too: reformat the external drive if you can to reduce any fragmentation. You don't want a lot of files on the drive you're capturing too, it's best to dedicate it to just video since that will be a relatively small number of large files. Also, if your version of MacOSX supports disk journaling then it should be turned OFF when you reformat the drive. From what I've seen, this may not affect capturing but it will probably affect "print to video" which can be very finicky about drive speed.

Finally, you might want to get a firewire PC card. Plug the camera into the PC card port and the external disk directly into the computer port (or vice versa). This can help with firewire issues. I found a card at Best Buy last year for $30, just make sure it's Mac-compatible. Firewire 400 is fast enough. You will also find that this speeds up copies between two firewire disks by quite a bit.

Like I said, you have basically the same setup I had, all by myself in a foreign country for several weeks cranking out a lot of stuff on tight deadlines and it worked fine for me :-) Now if you want to edit HDV then you might find that system a challenge though...

I'm currently editing HDV on a 1.25GHz eMac with 768MB of RAM. It's working great! I have three 250GB Lacie Firewire 400 drives hooked up to store the media. I have had no problems to date running the three drives plus a Sony Z1P camera off the same firewire bus. So, I wouldn't think you should have too much trouble editing with a Powerbook.

I did have a lot of trouble when I initially set up the system. The way I solved it was to reinstall OSX (clean install), update everything (including 3rd party drivers), get the latest version of Quick Time and then install Final Cut Studio. Upgrading Mac OS to Tiger, and updating Quick Time with FCS already installed seemed to cause Final Cut Studio a lot of grief.

I changed the scratch disk, waveform cache, thumbnail cache, and autosave vault to my external drive. The difference is noticeable, but not perfect. I am still experiencing some dropped frames (about 1/3 of what I was before). Any other preferences I can switch over to the external, or other things to check?

As per my note above: "A few other ideas too: reformat the external drive if you can to reduce any fragmentation. You don't want a lot of files on the drive you're capturing too, it's best to dedicate it to just video since that will be a relatively small number of large files. Also, if your version of MacOSX supports disk journaling then it should be turned OFF when you reformat the drive."

Also, how fast is the external drive - is it 7200RPM? If it's slower then you're likely to have trouble.

Reformatted the disk and it hasn't seemed to help any. I don't know how fast my external drive is. It is a LaCie 320 GB, but "Get Info" and "Disk Utility" didn't provide any extra information.

The dropped frames only occur on playback (which I have set to medium quality). Capture does not appear to be affected.

I suppose the next step is to reinstall my OS. I'd like to get Tiger and then upgrade to FCP Studio, but it seems counter-intuitive since I'll probably be getting a MacBook Pro some time within the next year, and nothing I purchase for this computer will work on the new processor. Just trying to make it through this project without having to spend any more money than I already have...

What is your canvas window set to? Make sure it is on 'fit to window' or it may not play back smoothly. I forget that all the time, mind you I'm not using the calibre of machine or software you guys are talking so maybe this won't help.

Cann't downconvert my project from HDV to DV
 

I work a project with FCP 5.1 HDV and when I finish I try to downconvert to DV using a VCR HDR M10N, I set up the VCR to i.link On and downconvert in Letter box, when I try to print to tape, I only can see on frame...the audio is Ok but in the image I can only see one frame...like a still image ..but the sound is running. Maybe is something wrong in th settings of the final I on't know...somebody have any idea...