FCE4-Disappearing timeline+canvas & Dropped frame help!

[jaykingfunk7239]

Hey all, sorry about putting 2 questions together and not sure if this is the right forum for this but...

Q1:

In FCE4 if I close the time line or canvas windows I can't get them back!

Shortcuts don't work and if I go through the window>arrange then click standard they don't come back and they're grayed out on the window menu!

Only way I can get it back to normal is by restoring the project and loosing changes, its very frustrating, I've searched the net but can't find an answer!

Q2:

When trying to capture I keep getting the 'dropped frame(s) occurred during last capture attempt' message.

I work in a school and we run 27 macs. Its only happening on the aluminum and white iMacs. Running Leopard 10.5.8 and one is running 10.6.2. I've un-checked the box to abort capture during dropped frames in preferences and it still happens. It's never happened on any of them until last week! Theres is plenty of hard drive space too??!

Any help would be very much appreciated! Thanks, J.

 

[spinnerlys]

Q1: What happens if you double click on a sequence or clip in the bin?

Q2: Where do you capture your videos to? External HDDs? And what format do you use to capture?

Have you looked at Disk Activity in Activity Monitor?
Maybe try Aja Kona Speed Tes to test your HDDs:
http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_System_Test_v601.zip
via AJA KONA System Test Version 6.0.1 on http://www.aja.com/support/kona/kona-3-3x.php

 

[jaykingfunk7239]

Hi Spinnerlys,

thanks for your help, clicking sequence worked for the time line and canvas.

The hard drives are all just the internal ones and we've been capturing DV footage.
What should I look for in the activity monitor? I've not really used it before!

 

[spinnerlys]

It would be best to use external HDDs, just one that doesn't have the OS and applications on it, which you're running.

But DV shouldn't be that much of a problem, as it only writes with 3.125 MB/s to you HDD.
I once used an iBook's internal HDD with 4200rpm, and I had no problems capturing to it.
But it would be better performance-wise to use dedicated scratch disk to capture to.

 

[Ahabdune]

Losing your windows: I believe in the window tab of FCP (tool bar), there should be a list of the all the open tabs for FCP. The ones with a check are open, you have to recheck the tabs you want open.