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After thinking about my last post that pointed to a discussion thread at apple.com, I thought it might be fun to start a new category for just that: interesting forum posts, or message board topics or discussion threads, whatever you want to call them. As I mentioned in the studentfilmmakers.com post, an Internet discussion forums can be a wealth of information, be it from asking a question, answering with your expertise or just browsing during some down time. What you will often find is a question asked (often a very common one), answers galore, often a similar discussion that begins in the same thread on a somewhat related topic, and in the good threads, tons of handy info. That’s a good discussion thread.

There is one discussion going on at apple.com in the Final Cut Pro topic called dropped frames on capture. If you aren’t familiar with the Apple discussion boards, the numbers above means that at the time of the posting there were 1,726 views of the topic and 72 replies. While certainly not the biggest thread there it is quite a well used one. Dropped frames upon capture is a very common issue with Final Cut Pro. It is frustrating but is usually easily solvable with some patience and troubleshooting. It is the kind of problem that any one who has worked on FCP for any length of time has encountered, hence the reason a thread with such a title has generated so many views.

Here’s a couple of handy tips that came just from this thread:

A number of folks will keep an external drive with the complete OS and apps cloned from a known good point of time of the system.
This does two things for you.
1. Should you update with disastrous results, you can revert to a good system in a few minutes. No real down time.
2. Should your good system hiccup – hard drive failure, corruption, spilled coffee, etc. You can be back up and running in a few minutes.
It is really cheap insurance.

It goes without saying that one should always have a back-up clone of their hard drive. If you don’t have it already and you read it enough, maybe you’ll take the advice and back-up.

Dropped frames during capture can often be attributed to three basic problems: poor input, poor throughput or bad QT install.
To address the possibility of an input problem, try:
• using a different FW cable
• cleaning or servicing the playback device
• using a different playback device
To address the possibility of throughput problems, make sure your DV device is connected to it’s own FW bus.
For the last common cause, try reinstalling QT. Check on Apple’s QT support site for any technical articles related to the version you have. Since the problem started right after an update, I’d suspect this may be the cause.

Solving a dropped frame issue can often be a simple fix. And solving another issue can often be finding a detailed discussion thread because chances are if you are having a problem with your edit system, others had the same issue. And someone has asked for help with it.