Solving Dropped Frame Errors

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Larry

[ This article was first published in the May, 2007, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]

There are three questions I get asked all the time:

How do I trash preferences?
How do I deal with images?
How do I deal with dropped frames?

The first two are already covered in articles in my library (Click the question to read related article.) However, this last one I haven’t really addressed. So, here is a quick checklist you can use to solve a dropped frame problem.

In general, dropped frame issues are caused by a hard disk that is too slow to keep up with the video format you are using.

Here’s an article that provides an overview of hard disk speeds compared to video data rates.

NOTE: By the way, if terms like RAID 0 or RAID 1 confuse you, read this short explanation of how RAIDS are defined.

System Setup Issues

Make sure your hardware is supported by Final Cut – check Apple’s web site.
Make sure you are not using a hard disk connected using USB.
Make sure your drive spins at least 7200 RPM, many inexpensive drives are slower.
Don’t capture media to your internal boot drive.
If you are using FireWire drives, make sure your total cable length is less than 15 feet total among all devices.
Make sure all your data drives are formatted for the Macintosh (Utilities > Disk Utility > Erase tab — if the format popup menus says anything EXCEPT Mac OS Extended or Mac OS Extended Journaled you may have problems.)
If you are using a third-party hard drive or RAID, make sure you have the latest drivers.
Disconnect all external devices. Reattach one at a time to see when the problem recurs.
Adding a second FireWire bus, via PCI card, can also solve data bottlenecks.

Operational Fixes

Make sure your Easy Setup settings correctly match the video format you are capturing.
If problem occurs during playback of an RT sequence, render the sequence.
If problem occurs during a rendered sequence, delete render files for that clip (Control+B) and re-render.
Make sure you have at least 20% free space on the hard disks you are using for capture.
Save your work, quit, and restart Final Cut Pro.
Save your work, quit, and shut down your computer. Wait 30 seconds, then restart.
If the room temperature is too hot, let things cool down.
Make sure AC power is not fluctuating wildly.
Do a Safe Boot on your boot disk. (Click here to learn how.)
Repair permissions on your boot disk. (Click here to learn how.)
Run Utilities > Disk Utility and repair the disk containing your scratch disks.
If you own Disk Warrior X, rebuild the disk directories on the disk containing your scratch disks.
Using System Preferences > Accounts, create a new user. Log into that new user. Restart Final Cut and see if that fixes your problem; if so, you have corrupted operating system preferences.
If all the prior steps don’t work, then trash your FCP Preferences.

UPDATE

Herb Issacs writes:

Why do you say not to use an internal disk to capture? Isn’t the internal bus faster than firewire input?

This was amplified by comments from Trent Anderson:

I frequently get dropped frames, and the error message at the bottom in red says, RT Extreme has determined that your hard drive is too slow, please increase the speed of the hard drive. Well, it is 7200 RPM, and I don’t see how I can get a faster one.

I notice that you said to not save to an INTERNAL hard drive. It would seem to me that having those things set to an External hard drive, via Firewire, would be even slower than going to an internal hd.???

And from Ben Balser:

Reading the newsletter, and in avoiding dropped frames you say, “2. Don’t use an internal drive to capture media.” Why not? It’s the most efficient and best method to capture without dropped frames. I don’t understand why you mention this. There must be something I’m not aware of.

Larry replies: Herb, Trent and Ben – thanks for pointing this out. I stated this poorly. What I meant is not to capture to your internal boot disk because it doesn’t have the ability to service the operating system, all running applications and still feed media reliably over time. It isn’t an issue of bus speed, it’s an issue of contention, rotation speed, and priorities. Complicating matters is that most laptops spin their hard disks slowly to save battery life.

An internal, second drive is perfectly acceptable.

UPDATE – Dec. 2007

I’ve recently learned that the Canon XL-1, and perhaps other Canon cameras, must not be directly connected to a FireWire drive. The chip set the camera uses does not communicate properly with the drive, causing dropped frame errors. This is a Canon problem, not a hard disk problem.

The only known solution is to add a PCI-based FireWire card to provide a second FireWire bus (if you have a tower) or to capture to the internal drive of the computer (if you have an iMac or laptop), then copy the files after capture to your media drive. It is never a good idea to edit video files stored on your boot drive.

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26 Responses to Solving Dropped Frame Errors

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Niyah says:

September 15, 2020 at 7:39 pm

Hi Larry, I’ve been researching and changing as much as I can to fix my dropped frames but nothing will work. I’m using FCPX Version 10.2.1 on a MacBook Air Version 10.11.6 so early 2015 model. The processor is a 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5. The video I’m editing I believe was shot in 4K, I never paid close attention to details like that because I didn’t know it made a difference especially being that I’ve edited other videos many times before with no problem like this before (that may or may not have been shot in 4K). At first my 9 minute video wasn’t rendering when I manually chose for it to render. A notification would come up that lead me to believe that there’s wasn’t enough space on my laptop for it to render so I changed the cache location to my LACIE external hard drive. It then rendered out fully but that’s when the dropped frames started. After reading all of these replies, I realized the LACIE USB 3.0 drive is too slow even though it has 1 TB worth of space. I cleared out as much space on my laptop as possible and currently have 92.43 GB worth of space, so it’s rendering fine but the frames are still dropping. I also changed my media to proxy for better disk performance. The only thing I can’t figure out is your suggestion of changing h.264 to jpeg because I don’t know where to find it.The frames are still dropping and I’m completely lost as to what else I can do.
Larry says:

September 15, 2020 at 7:59 pm

Niyah:

Let’s take this in several steps. First, and MOST important, there are two key parameters for storage: 1. How much is holds (capacity) and 2. How fast it transfers data (bandwidth). Your external storage (Lacie) has lots of capacity, but way too little bandwidth.

Dropped frames are caused by your storage being too slow to play the media format you are editing. It is a bandwidth issue.

Rendering, which does not occur in real time, can deal with slower hard disks, but now capacity comes into play. 4K media requires 4X the capacity and bandwidth of HD media. A system that can play HD can be – and in your case is – overwhelmed playing huge 4K files. ProRes 422 requires almost 70 MB/second for 4K playback, more for 4K editing.

From a storage point of view, you’ll need at least 40 GB to for render files, plus another 40 GB to store the final exported video.

Switching to proxy files for editing is the perfect solution. It should solve the dropped frame problem. Then, switch back to the master files when you are ready to create the final export, which does not require real-time playback.

Finally, you can’t switch H.264 to JPEG, rather, you can use either ProRes Proxy or H.264 for your proxy files. Given your system, I recommend ProRes Proxy. They are bigger than H.264, but playback more smoothly.

If you still have problems, contact me directly via email.

Larry
Will says:

November 10, 2021 at 3:38 pm

Hey Larry,
Would love some help here. I am editing GoPro footage on Final Cut Pro and have had no issues until now. I am getting a pop up message: “video frames were dropped during playback.” I have no idea what created this issue but playback is very laggy. This has only been an issue when rendering. But rendering is finished, and playback very choppy.

I have a SSD drive which stores my FCP library; USB-C to USB-C on a MacBook Pro. Trying to finalize a project and have never experience this before. Any advice, please let me know.

Thanks
Larry says:

November 10, 2021 at 4:01 pm

Will:

In almost all cases, dropped frame errors are caused by storage that’s too slow to support the video format you are editing. So is lag, for that matter.

My GUESS is that somehow your render files are not stored on the SSD, but on a slower USB drive, or, maybe an internal drive that is running very, very slow. Verify the speed of your storage, then make sure files are getting stored where you THINK they are getting stored.

IF that doesn’t fix it, call Apple Support.

Larry
Clara says:

February 14, 2023 at 5:25 am

Hello Larry I have read all your comments but have not been able to fix my dropped frame problem, if you could see what my issue is it would be life changing! I am editing R3D files (https://www.red.com) with FCPX 10.6.5. It was working fine all day and suddenly the frames dropped and now the videos have turned black.

1. I am using Proxy files, altho it seems like my computer is only turning some files into Proxy and not all. I am unsure why. Current setting is “Proxy Preferred”.

2. I am using external hard drive (SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD, 1050 Mbps read & 1000 Mbps write time).

3. I am editing on MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021), Chip: Apple M1 Pro, Memory: 16GB

4. Some people suggested that the black disappears when exporting but I’ve tried it and the black stays even when I switch the setting to “Optimized/Original” and relinking original media and then export it.

I’ve tried deleting one proxy media of a video that turned black and relinking it to the original media and strangely that helped. However that only worked once and did not work for other files.

Thank you so much for reading.
Larry says:

February 14, 2023 at 11:19 am

Clara:

I’m off the grid in New Zealand at the moment.

Try trashing your FCP preferences by pressing option and Cmd when you launch FCP. If that doesn’t solve it, it’s time to call Apple Support

Larry