Thread: Playback stutters on desktop, looks fine on ext. hardrive

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  1. #1 Playback stutters on desktop, looks fine on ext. hardrive 
    Yesterday I shot a predation sequence I've been trying to shoot for 10 years. It wasn't perfect, but best I've seen. This morning I offloaded my Red Drive to 2 backup hard drives (as always), watched them playback, all was good, and re-formatted my Red Drive. The storage drives are 1GB eSata Fantom drives, same as I've been using the past year or more. The computer is a Macbook pro, 2.4ghz, 2GB memory.

    When I pulled some of the clips back onto my desktop, they playback with a "freeze" at one to two spots. This happens even with the lowest res proxy, and the Apple wheel starts spinning. It seems that Quicktime is freezing or having problems, because Quicktime seems very sluggish/unresponsive once it starts this phase. I tried pulling the same clips off each of the drives, then playback, they both "freeze" in identical places. Everything plays back fine (normal slight stutter w/H proxy, smoother w/M proxy) as long as I'm watching the footage off of the external hard drive (which is only 5400rpm), when I pull a clip and put it on the desktop, the playback stutters and goes wacky.

    I copied the files from the 1GB Fantom to another hardrive, a 2.5" WD 320gb esata, 5400rpm, and playback on them works the same as on the Fantom external drives. But when I pull them from this external drive to the desktop, same "freeze" problem in the same place. I'm hoping its a quicktime desktop issue (??!?) and not corrupt files??? What can explain why my clips play horribly from the desktop, where I thought they would play better?

    So I went back and found some other clips I've shot in the last week on Build 21, and found a few that freeze when played from the desktop, and some don't. I can't figure out if this is just build 21 and certain clips for me. I certainly haven't seen it before. Voodoo? Any thoughts?

    I've got a couple other voodoo issues, I have a flicker that plagues me every 20-30 start-ups, not usually too big of problem as long as I see it in time, and nothing amazing is happening. It has always disappeared on restart. But sometimes it won't show when I first start shooting, and I'll look down in the middle of recording and see the image flickering - only pulled all my hair out a couple of times.

    Also have a couple clips that turned to monochrome on various frames. One was build 20, one was build 21. One corrected itself on frame 4, one stayed monochrome the whole clip. I'd like to get the one back that stayed monochrome, its a decent otter dive, but I can't figure out how. Here's frame 1 and frame 2 (where it turns monochrome) attached.

    Well, if anyone has any thoughts, I'll listen. Thanks as always to all of ya'all who know computers better than I.
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  2. #2  
    Oh, and by the way, I do have the latest Quicktime/Red download, and re-downloaded it just in case
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  3. #3  
    Senior Member jimhare's Avatar
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    Are you talking about Proxies? In my experience, you get whatever performance you can from Proxies, but you really won't know what you have until you debayer and transcode your footage into something else, like ProRes.
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  4. #4  
    Senior Member Alex Carr's Avatar
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    Do you have a 5400rpm drive in your laptop? Could very well be your 5400 rpm drive in your laptop screaming at you!! You should really upgrade to a 7200rpm or solid state if you would like better playback speed off your laptop's desktop. When I first got my laptop in 2008, the first thing I did was replace the drive with a 7200, and I was always able to playback at least _M proxies at full speed. and _H occasionally when the wind was good. ;)
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  5. #5  
    Alex and Jim,

    thanks, could be it, but I probably shouldn't have used the word "stutter" so I revised my post above. I'm real familiar with the stutter of playback, but this is more of an outright freeze, in one or two locations, consistent on playback, but only when it plays from the desktop.

    Your right, the computer only has a 5400rpm drive, but the external ones are only 5400rpm too. Files have played back fine on my desktop for over a year.

    I dunno, I'm not worried as long as they aren't corrupted somehow.

    Now the monochrome and flicker...
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