[mattspink]

I bought an 80Gb Ext FireWire drive for video editing but and video played from or edited on the external drive plays very jerky. It plays fine from the internal drive however. I know it isn't down to FireWire being too slow. I have tried friends ext drives on my machine and they do the same.

I have heard that it might be due to my iMac's system bus being too slow. (I have a 4 y/old 400Mhz iMac)

Can anyone shed any light on this??

[bradoesch]

Sounds like the FireWire drive is badly fragmented. I have the same iMac as you and I've never had trouble playing DV from my FireWire HD when it was defragmented. I did notice dropped frames and choppy playback when it got badly fragmented though. Programs that defrag drives are TechTool, Drive 10 and the Norton Utilities.

[mattspink]

Thanks,

However my drive is brand new. I got it a few weeks ago and formatted it before doing anything with it. It has never played DV properly. I cannot see why it would be badly defragmented from new??

[Centris650]

What program are you using to edit video? When I edit video with iMovie 3 I notice really choppy playback. However, when I export my finished movie back to the camera everythings perfect.

Hope this helps.