Choppy playback in canvas

Hi everyone, yes its anoher boring question about choppy playback... Sorry!

I have read countless advice on this, and none of the issues they have are the same as mine.. so here goes...

I am using FCP7, I have converted all my XML and .movs from my 5D mark ii to prores 422 and imported them no problem.

I use 2 x GRaid 4TB Firewire 800 drives as my media drives (the project is huge)

Recently it has started playing back in the canvas choppily. Its a nightmare. I am not the most experienced editor, and alongside tuition from Lynda.com and just learning myself I have got a reasonably good understanding of this program, but understand its a complex one!

So - can anyone advise? Could it be due to my RT settings? Currently set to dynamic.

Oh and there are some speed variations in some shots, and it does appear to be worse with them.

Thanks in advance!

Heva

If you're have a really huge project, and/or are doing lots of compositing or filters, FW800 (even a RAID) will bog down. eSATA or internal SATA would be your best bet. Also be sure you have at least 12MB RAM.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for that appreciated.

I only have 8 ram, on a 17 macbook pro - I looked into it and I dont think I can get 12? The laptop is about 2 years old. But yes that might help.

my card slot (eSata) has never been great on this laptop so hence I use Firewire...

Hev

Yep, what you have is what you have, and that's about it. You've simply found the limits of editing on a laptop.