jmac1163

Q: Final Cut Express 4 Playback problems on El Capitan

Hello,

 

I have been using FCE 4 for many years, and it's worked flawlessly until i upgraded to El Capitan.  Now, when I have more than 2 video timelines concurrently/overlayed in use (i.e., 3 or more), the post rendering playback becomes useless: i.e., choppy, dropped frames/packets, etc.  Prior to El Capitan, I could use FCE "System Settings" for "Playback Control" set to:

 

Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 7.27.11 PM.png

 

However, now, in order to get any sort of useful playback, I have to use:

Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 7.27.55 PM.png

 

Ok, this gets me moving forward again, but this is really annoying.

 

I have a reasonably beefy machine (and again, no issues prior to El Capitan):

Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 7.28.50 PM.png

 

I've read through the discussion here and there seems to be mixed results with El Capitan and FCE, but they all seem to center around either:

  • Import
  • Just generic application launch and use.

 

My install is "working" fine, just the rendered playback does not.  Is it possible that its something besides an incompatibility between FCE and El Capitan?

 

Anybody have any ideas or thoughts?

 

Thanks

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), 27", Late 2012, 24G, Core i5 @2.9GH

Posted on Jan 26, 2016 4:33 PM

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Q: Final Cut Express 4 Playback problems on El Capitan

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  • by Russ H,

    Russ H Russ H Jan 28, 2016 6:19 AM in response to jmac1163
    Level 7 (21,770 points)
    Quicktime
    Jan 28, 2016 6:19 AM in response to jmac1163

    My first  thought would be that the playback has more to do with your drive being able to keep up with the demands of your sequence than with the OS version. Where and what is your scratch disk? For best performance it should be on a fast non system (external) drive with a fast interface – USB3 (not USB2) or Tb (or FW 800,  although that doesn't apply to your iMac).

     

    In any event, I would change the RT setting to Unlimited. (I'm assuming the options in FCE 4 are the same as in FCP 7.)

     

    BTW, did you have any issues installing the application?

     

    Russ

  • by jmac1163,

    jmac1163 jmac1163 Jan 28, 2016 10:54 AM in response to Russ H
    Level 2 (195 points)
    Jan 28, 2016 10:54 AM in response to Russ H

    Russ,

     

    That is an outstanding suggestion.  In fact, my setup WAS originally scratch disk on an external FW 800 disk, but thinking this may be the issue (because it was happening with this configuration), I just moved the scratch area to the internal system disk.  BUT...my external FW 800 disk is actually a daisy-chained system of 3 FW 800 disks.  I have recently physically moved these disks around, and its possible that i setup them back up in a slightly different configuration.  i.e., it's quite possible that my scratch disk is not the one closest to the machine on the daisy chain.  With FW 800, that's not supposed to matter, so this may be a red herring.  But for sure, this evening, I am going to be playing around with this configuration.

     

    I had no issues installing, because i didn't install.  I installed under some previous version of OS X, and have simply upgraded the OS since.

     

    Thanks a million for your suggestion, i'll post my results here later.

     

    John

  • by jmac1163,

    jmac1163 jmac1163 Jan 29, 2016 5:49 AM in response to Russ H
    Level 2 (195 points)
    Jan 29, 2016 5:49 AM in response to Russ H

    Russ,

     

    Unfortunately, I found no relief here.  I tried the following:

    1. Removed external drive all together and had scratch on internal
    2. Added just a single external drive (FW 800) and moved the scratch to that

    Neither of these seemed to help the playback issue.   I did also change the RT setting to "Unlimited", but it still froze.

     

    thanks again for your help.

  • by jmac1163,

    jmac1163 jmac1163 Jan 30, 2016 5:54 AM in response to jmac1163
    Level 2 (195 points)
    Jan 30, 2016 5:54 AM in response to jmac1163

    An update...

     

    In keeping with the theme of scratch disk, I revisited:

     

    2. Added just a single external drive (FW 800) and moved the scratch to that

     

    I had mentioned earlier that I use 3 external FW 800 drives in series and for my experiment above I simply added 1 of these drives, and had no relief.  Well, i changed which external drive was connected, and this DID provide relief, at least initially.  I thought for sure I had pinpointed the issue as being the particular drive I was using for scratch, but eventually I had the playback issues again.

     

    This is a brain scrambler.

  • by Russ H,

    Russ H Russ H Feb 1, 2016 11:31 AM in response to jmac1163
    Level 7 (21,770 points)
    Quicktime
    Feb 1, 2016 11:31 AM in response to jmac1163

    Sorry. Didn't see your latest posts.

     

    What kind of clips are you working with?

     

    Russ