Re: g4, fcp studio and QT

Boot from and run the hardware test disk that came with the machine. It may be poorly seated or marginal RAM that only gets used when you are using FCP. If the problem only occurs after a while, then it could be related to the heat inside the computer causing RAM (or logic board) failures. Either way, run the hardware test overnight running looping RAM tests to see if, when booted off the CD/DVD, the machine fails. If it does so, it eliminates the possibility of your software having been corrupted.

If you've got a spare hard disk, install a copy of the latest copy of the OS on it, together with the minimal amount of FCP/S to do testing with your material. This should take about an hour or two at most for the install. Run with this minimal software and see if you still have problems. Running the latest version of FCP would be best, since you never know what bugs may have been present and squashed by a later update of software. This way you won't have to interrupt your existing setup. I've done this on one of my iMacs since I was getting kernel panics and poor performance (it gets used as a TV set with an EyeTV tuner attached) - and now I've narrowed the problems down to the software on the iMac since everything has been fine running the temporary software off an external FireWire drive for the last three months.

Bill Lee