Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with slowdown

Best way to edit MP4 HD video in FCP?

unSane — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:29:19 -0800

Preventing slowdowns when editing HD video in FCP? I am editing some H.264 720p video in FCP6. When I am just laying in the raw footage in insert mode, everything plays back fine, but as soon as I add a transition, playback gets really stuttery, and remains so even if I delete the transition and restart FCP.

I'm on a top end iMac so I know I'm probably pushing things a bit but it's frustrating that it plays fine until I add a transition.

Any clues? Should I transcode into something before editing? Would upgrading to the latest help much?

Slowing down a reltionship

tropikal — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:17:49 -0800

How do I slow down a new relationship? She wants it to go out as friends for now(the smart thing IMO) and see how it goes from there but Ive already been the dumba$$ guy and made a move. How do I recover/keep it going? More Below. She told me to my face shortly after I made my "move"(a kiss) that I need to slow it down. I accepted and said her I was glad she told me. Any constructive advice would be appreciated.

DSL speed takes a dive

diode — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:30:27 -0800

My non-profit uses a DSL service best typified as a mom and pop operation in our small city. The ISP recently switched their upstream provider and our DSL speeds got an immediate burst in speed and quality. Now it's back to being pokey again. What's the best way to see what's going on in a network sense? Our ISP is apparently owned and managed by one guy, his accountant and a helper/administrator. Our access has been relatively good on the DSL side, since the circuit is provided by Qwest, but is characterized by frequent DNS outages. Nevertheless, our nonprofit seems determined to stay the course and keep our 1.5/768 mbps DSL with this ISP until the heat death of the universe.

A few weeks ago the ISP owner had the bright idea of switching upstream providers for his connectivity. He gave his clients about two hours notice and then tried switching all his circuits over the weekend. Carnage and consternation ensued.

Our DSL circuit, once restored, was a lot cleaner in terms of speed and quality of service than previously and we were mollified. Now though, the circuit speed seems to be degrading again and we are getting about 220kbps download with poor quality.

We run a SonicWall with VPN to several locations. Citrix is running in the VPN. Our remote users definitely notice when the circuit slows down.

My question: what's the best way to get a picture of what's happening? I would think the ISP is overbooking his circuits again. How can I collect some evidence that will give me a clue what's going on?

Since the office here has 20 or so users, it's possible there's some sort of bandwidth suck going on here which is reducing total bandwidth coming to me when I do a speed test.

I could potentially mirror the Sonicwall's switch port and run Wireshark on it to see traffic. Or perhaps there are some useful network tests? Any help appreciated.

The ten second iTunes CPU hog

thecjm — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:08:25 -0800

Itunes question: Every song I play gets a case of the slowdowns and cracks the CPU usages up to 100%, but ONLY from 0:10-0:20. Otherwise it runs fine. It never used to be this way. What's up with that? (details inside) Details on my system: Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB ram, XP Pro. I'm running the latest itunes. Even though this problem didn't coincide with any itunes updates I did, I still went through all of the hassle of doing an itunes downgrade only to have the problem still be there, so I went ahead and re-upgraded. With firefox and utorrent running right now as well as itunes playing, my CPU usages is bouncing between 8-22%. Every song starts fine, but once it gets about 0:10 seconds in it gets plays in slow-mo as the CPU usage spikes to 100%. This only lasts until 0:20. Then the rest of the song plays fine. This happens on EVERY song. What's going on?

What's up with my connection?

jourman2 — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:42:14 -0800

My cable modem slows down inexplicably at night. How can fix this? I'm in NYC and use roadrunner (Time Warner) cable for internet access. During the day, up to 6-7 PM I have great speed (testing in at 4-5 Mbps - right now on the speakeasy speed test I'm getting download speeds of 5044 kbps and upload speeds of 482 kbps). However from 7 PM-1 AM or so the speed slows down to 200-100 Kbps or less. Understandably, this makes surfing or downloading anything hard or impossible.

Is there something I can do about this? Or is just a fact of life with cable modems that when more people are home using their internet connections (which I assume is the reason for the slowdown) my connection becomes unusable for anything except basic, non-graphics intensive surfing.

I'm on a wifi connection (secured with WEP and MAC protection) with Windows XP. I have two roommates, but I've confirmed with them that they're not using bittorrent at night or anything.

Why is my macbook running slow?

stresstwig — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:32:50 -0800

Why is my new Mac acting so slow, and what can I do to fix it? I've been a lifelong pc user, and I know windows like the back of my hand. I know where to go and what to do when experiencing problems and am usually the go-to guy.

But of course, I recently bought a macbook (the original low-end white model) and out of the box, it was quick to boot up, quick to start programs, and everything, even with only 512 megs of ram (I plan on upgrading soon, but this really shouldn't have anything to do with the amount of ram).
Now, after use, I find start up is slowing down immensely; the desktop icons, the menu bar at the top and then the far right icons (power, airport, battery) all appear at different times during the startup of my computer. In addition to this, basic programs which used to start immediately are now occasionally beachballing, while the dock icon will bounce for what feels like eons until the program begins and finally renders the entirety of the window. I still have at least 20 gigs of harddrive space available, and I know I should get more ram, but it's not like the computer has always been slow. What sort of things should I look out for as the reasoning for this, and what can I do to fix it?

Firefox is too slow

trbrts — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 14:26:03 -0800

Firefox Filter: Recently, Firefox on my XP laptop has become incredibly slow. It seems that the problem is that it is downloading images one by one. Even when it is the same image displayed repeatedly on a webpage. I've run every kind of Spyware and Virus software I can find on my computer, and uninstall and reinstalled the latest version of FF all to no avail. How can I get back up to speed? When I did the uninstall FF came back with all it's preferences and extensions. (the only extension I really have on this system is the developer extension)

A long time back, off a Metafilter post I made some changes to FF, I think it was called Faster Fox. I don't believe that this is the problem though.

Does anyone know what could be the cause of this mysterious condition?

Is there somewhere I can go that is a cheater site to help me sort out what computer processes I can shut off?

oflinkey — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:42:50 -0800

I am sorry if this is a stupid noob question, but my laptop has gotten really slow the last few days- things take forever to load up and I get overlapping in windows, etc. I suspect there has been a buildup of processes, but I really am too computer dumb to know which ones I need and which I can shut off to improve the situation. I have run ad-aware, virus scan, defrag, etc. Is there somewhere I can go that is a cheater site to help me sort out what I can shut off?

Slow XP Pro

signal — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:45:28 -0800

My XP Pro system slows down a lot when accesing large amounts of data on a CD (say copying a whole CD to a HD). This doesn't seem logical. Is there some cache-, buffer- or something- setting I can tweak?