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Missing media and Force Relink Redux
I imported a project into FCPX that was originally edited in FCP7. I used XtoCC to do the translation. It contained 4 sequences and everything linked up except 4 clips. The media is missing without a missing media red icon. If you try to play through these clips you lose all video signal, which is fixed by relaunching FCPX. The timeline looks like this:
In the event it looks like this:
When I “Open in Timeline”, I get a red band across the time ruler:
The issue appears to be related to clean aperture:
When I change the presentation setting to Production in QT7 and save, I get 1920×1080 back:
The result is:
Now, I get the red missing media icon in FCPX:
When I try to relink these clips to the corrected file, I get an incompatible file warning and it will not relink:
FWIW – if I simply re-import the raw clip WITHOUT changing the aperture setting, FCPX is just fine with the clip as is. It won’t relink, of course, but I could cut it in and use Replace just fine.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
6 Replies
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Seems like a weird file.
Audio 40,000 kHz and 25 fps. Does that seem right?
What does the XML say about those files?
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These were files used in a PAL project, except some were mistakenly shot at 29.97 and were conformed to 25 in Cinema Tools. These were used without audio in the edit as b-roll shots. This project was edited before X even existed.
When these shots are edited into the timeline as they are, they are fine. Just impossible to relink. Plus the fact that it completely shuts down the video display to the viewer is really weird.
Below is a chunk of the XML containing one of these clips.
– Oliver
MVI_1754-PrProgLT
78FALSE
2527
48
2937
2958
Square
TRUE
FALSE
none
MVI_1754-PrProgLT1FALSE
MVI_1754-PrProgLT.mov
file://localhost/Volumes/Mac%20HD3%20RAID/Demo%20Proj%20-%20DB%20Wines/Media/DeBortolli-Demo/MVI_1754-PrProgLT.mov25
78
QuickTime
com.apple.finalcutstudio.media.uuid
36
UTF8
ABA3CA1D-F78A-4765-9F20-D4DB1CFD417CQuickTime
com.apple.finalcutstudio.media.history.uuid
36
UTF8
3E0DFF31-439A-44B1-A48F-510ECF9922F5QuickTime
com.apple.finalcutstudio.media.history.uuid
36
UTF8
2751ED8C-DDF9-425E-B900-76F8DE773540QuickTime
com.apple.finalcutstudio.media.history.uuid
36
UTF8
D1CD5189-1FCB-41E3-B3A0-56124A067B2630
12:50:01:12
1386042
NDF
sourceHarvesting
78
1920
108040000
162
video
none
C18EA817-00CF-49DA-96A4-0947CC5B0CE5
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I can’t see the copy/paste. No biggie.
Since the media is OK as evidenced by the direct import of the media, I’d imagine something is wrong with the XML translation. If you select the original “blank” instance in the timeline and compare the inspector settings from that blank clip to the direct imported clip, are there any discrepancies in the media attributes?
If not, the XML may be sending fcpx something it shouldn’t, about the media.
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Files ‘conformed’ in CinemaTools is something that’s extremely common in the PAL world where we used to shoot film at 24fps, telecine it to tape at 25fps (with 25fps TC), then capture them to FCP and ‘conform’ from 25fps to 24fps either in CinemaTools or directly in FCP.
What this did, was to play a 25fps clip at 24fps so sound sync was preserved, but keep timecode at 25fps. This enabled us to make an EDL on the end which we could telecine or scan neg from.
This anomalous behaviour of conformed clips where the playback fps and timecode rate are different, is something that many apps cannot deal with. Your clips are playing back at 25fps but have 29.97fps timecode on them.
Maybe if one were to ‘re-stripe’ the TC in these clips to 25fps in FCP (Clip > Modify timecode) or with an app like QTChange, then FCP X would work fine with them.
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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India -
[Neil Sadwelkar] “Maybe if one were to ‘re-stripe’ the TC in these clips to 25fps in FCP (Clip > Modify timecode) or with an app like QTChange, then FCP X would work fine with them.”
You know this of course, but for others, there’s actually there’s no such thing as re-striping TC on a file (in the sense of re-striping on a videotape). All you are doing is changing the file header info with a new TC start point and the frame-rate. That’s why the process is fast. In this case I was only trying to resurrect an old project for teaching purposes and ran into this issue on a few clips, which surprised me. No similar problem in PProCC, BTW.
I would caution that with FCPX it’s a very bad idea to change playback speed parameters externally because it causes weird problems. With FCPX, you should always use the conform function inside the NLE. In the past I had a B-roll shot in an FCPX project that was externally altered using CT. The resulting change in audio sample rate on the clip caused severe audio distortion on the exported file. The audio volume was turned down and it all sounded fine while editing. It was only audible on the export and only in the area of those clips. Detaching and removing the audio fixed the problem. Apple traced this down to the sample rate of the audio.
So as we’ve all come to learn, FCPX isn’t nearly as forgiving nor flexible with media as FCP “legacy”.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “I would caution that with FCPX it’s a very bad idea to change playback speed parameters externally because it causes weird problems. With FCPX, you should always use the conform function inside the NLE. “
Any app that affects clips using the QTKit architecture to change the frame rate will cause this to happen.
Transcoding the clips in compressor though not ideal creates AVFoundation friendly files.
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