Specifying User Preferences and System SettingsThe settings in the User Preferences and System Settings windows affect all of your Final Cut Express projects. The User Preferences window contains four tabs: General, Editing, Timeline Options, and Render Control. The System Settings window offers another four tabs' worth of preference settings: Scratch Disks, Memory & Cache, Playback Control, and External Editors. System Settings window preference options are covered in the second half of this section. To set General preferences:
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Prompt for Settings on New Project: Check this box if you want the option to modify project properties each time you create a new project.
Prompt for Settings on New Sequence: Check this box if you want to see a list of sequence presets each time you create a new sequence.
Report Dropped Frames During Playback: Check this box if you want Final Cut Express to display a warning dialog box whenever frames are dropped during playback.
Abort Capture on Dropped Frames: Check this box to automatically stop the capture process if dropped frames are detected during a capture.
Do Not Show A/V Device Warning on Launch: Check this box if you want Final Cut Express to ignore any missing external video devices when you launch the application and disable the display of the External A/V warning dialog box.
Auto Render: Check the box to enable the triggering of automatic rendering when FCE is idle for a specified period.
Start Render After
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Minutes: Enter a number of minutes to specify how long FCE should be idle before automatic rendering is triggered.
Which Sequences: Select Open Sequences to render all sequences currently open in the Timeline, select Current Only to render just the active sequence on the front tab of the Timeline, or select Open Except Current to render all open sequences except the active sequence on the front tab of the Timeline.
Render RT Segments: Check the box to include those sections of your sequence that use real-time effects in the auto-render operation.
Chapter 2, "Installing and Setting Up," before giving up and disabling Desktop video playback. You may want to increase the size of your thumbnail caches if you are working with a large number of clips and want to display thumbnails, or if you are using the Browser's Icon view. If you often scrub through thumbnails in Icon view, you can optimize the performance of this feature by increasing the size of the thumbnail RAM cache on the Memory & Cache tab of the System Settings window.