Clip is Failing to Play

Product: Flyer

Platforms: 2000 3000 3000T 4000 4000T

Problem: Attempt to Play Sequence generates the error:

Clip Failed to Play Move to a Faster Drive, or Record Clip at lower quality.

The message you are getting is very general in its nature and can be caused by the following:

1. Flyer is being too conservative in estimating the playback requirements. Turn off "Stop Sequence on timing Error", and see if the project will play.

2. The video drive was not short-stroked, and a clip or an A/V temp file has been recorded to an area of the drive which is not capable of the required data transfer rate to play that clip or temp file.

Solution: always short-stroke the drive to match the most demanding mode you intend to use. If you will only use Standard mode, then test the drive and short-stroke for Standard Mode. If you intend to use HQ5, or both Standard and HQ5 modes, then you must test and short-stroke for HQ5.

3. The harddrives may not be fast enough to play back the clip. Drives need to be thoroughly tested to determine if they are Flyer-capable, and to see what level of capability they would offer with the Flyer. It is wise to purchase drives from a dealer who is experienced in setting up Flyer systems, and knows those makes and models which will work. If you do not do so, then you may end up with drives which do not offer the capability you need.

4. "Drive Not Fast Enough" error, but drive was short-stroked, and had been performing fine. Drive performance characteristics can change over the life of the drive. Re-Test and reformat the drive. A change of just a very few percent may not indicate a problem. A large loss in capability for your tested mode, as for example when a drive which has previously been 90% HQ5 capable drops to only 75%, may be a danger sign that the drive is failing, or that power or cooling in the drive's housing is failing. Check power and cooling issues first. Then suspect drive failure, if these are up to expected performance.

5. A corrupt clip may cause this error message. Open the control panel and use the Inpoint and Outpoint sliders to scrub through the clip. Look for missing or faulty fields in the clip (if a field has a band where the chroma is missing or the image is replaced by noise, then the clip is corrupt. You must re-record the clip if this is the problem.

6. Check A/V Clips for the speaker on the crouton. This denotes that the Flyer will activate audio whether audio was physically present on the clip when recorded or not. Just turn audio off on the clip. Making the volume level zero will not turn off audio on clips.

7. A scroll or crawl page is scheduled too close to an effect. Give more time between the effect and the scroll or crawl.

8. Bad SCSI cables. Replace them.