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1108 Part XIII Appendixes
 Another source of dropped frames on capture or playback may be fragmented hard
disks. In general, it’s preferable to capture to disks that are specifically reserved for
video. To avoid fragmentation, you should avoid filling up your disks with numerous
files unrelated to the projects you’re working on.
If you’re editing a long project where some clips are captured, others are deleted,
and then more are captured, and so on, even the cleanest storage volume may
become fragmented. You can diagnose this with a hard disk utility. Should your
capture disks be seriously fragmented to the point of impeding performance, you
have three options:
 Quit Final Cut Express, back up your project file, and delete all the clips from the
affected volumes. (Delete only media that can be recaptured; do not delete
graphics, audio, or project files.) Upon reopening your Final Cut Express project,
you will find that all your video clips are now offline. Simply recapture them and
performance should improve.
 Copy all the files from the fragmented volume to a blank volume with enough
space. Copying files defragments them on the volume to which they are copied.
Then delete the files from the original, fragmented volume; now you’re ready to
capture more clips to it. Upon reopening your project, Final Cut Express will
automatically begin the process of reconnecting your media.
 A more time-intensive solution is to back up your project file, then use
disk-defragmenting software to defragment your volume.
 Another potential cause of dropped frames during output is having too many
sequences open simultaneously in the Timeline. Especially with complex sequences
with numerous edits, having more than one sequence open at the same time can
affect playback performance. To resolve this, close all sequences except the one you
want to output to video.
 Another cause of dropped frames is playing sequences with numerous short edits.
Projects with a large number of short edits (for example, a video made up of several
hundred ten-frame clips) can sometimes overwhelm a hard disk’s ability to jump
from one clip to another. In this case there are two things you can try:
 Write out one single file. When rendering out using the Export QuickTime Movie
command, disable the Recompress All Frames feature to save unnecessary
rendering time.
 Another solution, particularly in the case of long sequences, is to split a single long
sequence into multiple short sequences, outputting them to tape one at a time.