Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Defraging software for Mac?

This is topic Defraging software for Mac? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 11-04-2003, 07:24 PM:

I have been getting dropped frames occasionally when capturing to Final Cut on my somewhat new G4 desktop. I have followed the instructions on how to prevent this from the help file but still get dropped frames on occasion. One thing I haven't done is get any defragmentation software for the hard drive. Can any Mac users suggest some? Thanks!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-04-2003, 07:36 PM:

If it is somewhat new, it is unlikely the disk needs defragging. You can defrag with DiskWarrior, but I don't think the current, OS X bootable version has the defragging ability (called PlusOptimizer). Of course John Pytlak will probably be willing to burn a copy of the older OS 9 bootable version and offer it as a warez file and host it on www.kodak.com/pirate/software/warez.html

If you use Mac OS X, then they say that you don't need to defrag because of the way the OS works. Not sure if I believe that. Also, if you are using an external firewire drive to capture your video, that can cause dropped frames as well. No warez can fix that. Using an external firewire drive is a common "dropped frames" problem.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-04-2003, 08:51 PM:

Generally if you have a lot of free space on the volume you won't see to many problems caused by fragmentation.

I bet Kodak will get a lot of hits on their WAReZ (not wares) site today. Network Solutions should point any unregistered domains that appear to be warez sites at Kodak's warez site.

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 11-04-2003, 10:35 PM:

I am importing to the internal drive, a 160g drive that I have dedicated to FCP projects. I forget the brand right now but will check. I dont have problems with short clips or clips several minutes long, but I have problems with clips around 10 to 12 minutes long. Yes that's a long time to capture one clip, but I've done it on my PC (2.4ghz with 512mb of memory) for much longer with no dropped frames. The G4 is about 1 yr old. I've captured about 80 minutes of footage (an old tape I converted from vhs to mini dv) straight to Imovie without stopping and with no apparent sync problems at all. Imovie doesn't warn about dropped frames like FCP does (that I'm aware of).

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-04-2003, 10:41 PM:

What hardware are you using to capture with?

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 11-04-2003, 11:22 PM:

I am using Final Cut Pro 4.02 to capture with.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-04-2003, 11:44 PM:

OK how about the software? [Smile]

I wouldn't recommend capturing such long files anyway. It's not efficient. iMovie breaks things at each scene change usually. Just capture in 5 minute clumps. They can easily be edited back together.

Oh, be sure to run fsck -y and repair permissions. Then try again.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 11-05-2003, 12:04 AM:

Is your 160GB hard disc your boot hard drive (meaning is the OS and other apps running off of it)? I had similar frame dropping problems, even after adding a second 80GB hard disc. A few people here on Film-Tech advised me to attach the new hard disc to a separate PCI controller. That solved all the capture problems.

I've captured clips up to 20 minutes in length without any dropped frames (I haven't tried anything longer yet). And this is on a 1GHz Dell PC with 512MB of RAM running Adobe Premiere 6.0

I apologize if this hard disc issue sounds like a stupid question, but it is one worth asking. There's next to nothing in terms of Macs and PCs sold with second hard discs hooked up to additional hard disc controllers. That even goes for high end packages advertised as video editing solutions. Hardly any video editing web sites make any mention about using separate disc-controller setups for capture either. It seems like a lot of people have to find out the hard way.