Optimizing Performance
Trying to eke out the best possible performance from Final Cut Express? Here's a rundown of settings and maintenance tips that can help FCE perform more efficiently.
Settings
Display
Make sure the entire image area is visible in windows playing video. If you see scroll bars on the edge of the Viewer or the Canvas (Figure 2.14 ), you're zoomed in too far for optimum performance.
Figure 2.14. If you see scroll bars on the edge of the Canvas's image area, you're zoomed in too far for optimum playback performance, and your external video playback will be disabled. Choose Fit to Window from the Canvas View pop-up menu to bring the entire frame back into view.
Don't place program windows so that they split across dual monitors.
Disk maintenance
Store project files on your startup disk, and store media and rendered files on a separate hard disk. Maintain 10 percent free space on each disk drive. If you fill your disk to the last megabyte, your performance will take a diveand that's the best -case scenario. Defragment disk drives regularly, especially those you use for capturing. You can use a defragmentation utility; or make a complete backup of your data, erase the disk, and restore your data. When a project is finished and archived, delete all files from the disk you used to create the project and then defragment the drive. This helps prepare the disk for the next project. Final Cut Express performs poorly if you try to work with remote media files over a network connection. Copy files from the network to a local disk before importing them. It's a good idea to run Disk First Aid, a component of Apple's Disk Utility application, once or twice a month to check your drive's data directory.
The Bottom Line: Running FCE on a "Base-Case" Mac
To get the best performance possible from Final Cut Express running on a slower G4, you'll have to give up a little flexibility in your display options, but you may find that the improved responsiveness and playback quality are worth it. Eliminate display scaling. Scaling the video to match the size of the playback window in the Viewer or the Canvas is handled by the computer's video card, but it takes a lot of processing power to pull off. To reduce the card's demands on your CPU, set your display option to match DV's native display format: 50 percent, non-square pixels. Go to the Zoom pop-up menu in the Canvas, set the View size to 50 percent, and then uncheck the View as Square Pixels box. In the Monitors preference pane, set your monitor resolution to 1024 by 768 or lower and your color depth to Millions. On the General tab of the User Preferences window, reduce the number of undos as well as the number of recent items. These changes will free up more RAM. Keep your projects lean by deleting old versions of sequences that you no longer need to reference. Smaller projects reduce the amount of RAM necessary to track an open project file. Reinitialize your drives. Quite often, old drive software and/or drivers will impair performance.
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