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Titles corrupting in edit on reopening project
Hi all,
The baptism of fire into the wacky world of X continues.
Heres an odd one. I’ve cut a 2 minute piece comprising of clips with 10 titles spaced out evenly across the 2 min. I’ve used the ‘Four Corners’ title and modified each one accordingly to come up with a fairly random distribution across all 10, each matching the footage underneath in terms of position.
So I come back to the project after working on another sequence, and all the titles have changed position. One that was aligned ‘Top Left’ is now ‘Bottom Right’. All are incorrect. ‘Odd’, thinks I, and I duly reset the titles to where they should be. I render. I go to another project, come back to this one, I ‘Share to DVD’ and voila! All the titles are wrong again. HOWEVER skimming the timeline reveals them to be OK… curiouser and curiouser. It gets better – using Clip Skimming if I skim the title (not the timeline) then the title is WRONG and has seemingly randomly reset, even though the render looks correct. So Share is taking it’s information from the clip and NOT the render file. It’s extremely frustrating and is royally pi**ing my client off…
Any thoughts fellow Bovines?
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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13 Replies
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Wow that is odd. One think you might try is copying and pasting your timeline into a new project or compound clip. Perhaps export and reimport FCPXML for the timeline. Trash your prefs too. Lastly I would give Applecare a call about this one.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
I have a similar problem. Not exact, but in the same ballpark.
I can create a compound clip, step into it and edit and step out. Go to another project or quit FCPX and then come back. Stepping into the compound clip reveals that the clip within the compound container display above the top of the timeline view. I scroll them back into view and one of the tracks, the video clips most recently, display as a black clip and then the program crashes.
Note that I’ve used a preference manager app to delete the prefs and I’m used Event Manager X to turn off all projects except my newest one. This happened on a previous project as well. ALL compound clips in that previous project, when reopened, crashed FCPX.
At the moment its stable and working right after I again trashed the prefs, had only my newest even and project loaded, and deleted a title effect within the compound clips and replaced it with a different one. So far so good but as a bad journalist would say … “Only time will tell.”
NewsVideo.com
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I’ve frequently had title issues in FCP X. Typically it’s related to modifying a title format and then duplicating the title to modify text or some other parameter. You make a change and it simply doesn’t “stick”. Generally the fix seems to be to stop, exit and relaunch. Then you can proceed through the same process without difficulty. Probably some sort of RAM leak.
I blame it all on the stupid idea of using Motion as the only text tool. Motion does not seem to have been really optimized in the “re-imagining”. Merely re-skinned.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Oliver, that certainly chimes in with my thoughts. I created a title first (modifying font, size, colour etc to suit) and then duped this, changing text, colour and position accordingly on subsequent titles. I need to try the long way – using a ‘virgin’ title for each occurrence and modifying each parameter on each title to suit, and see if that sticks.
It’s a shame that such bugs exist, as they undo any of the speed benefits that X brings in terms of constructing edits.
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.*the artist formally known as Jaymags*
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Hang with me here.
I’ve been trying to systematically explore some of the menus I don’t use much and spent some time Saturday with the Share menu.
We all know that X is really just a big mass of meta-data referencing stuff and building up layers of data temporarily and persistently as needed.
Anyway, I was looking at the very first menu under Share – the Media Browser. I haven’t actually ever used it till now. But essentially it lets you burn a “digital copy” of your current timeline to a place in your Project Library call the Sharing Folder.
This appears to be a “persistent” picture of your work timeline in output formate right now. Even if your assets go off-line, this share copy is referenced by X to keep your project from going “off-line” in the project library and allows other parts of X to work with it to export, transcode and otherwise benefit from your work in progress.
If you make changes to a file, you can “re-publish” the updates to this Sharing folder with a click.
It’s like the place that feeds the Project Library and that the Project Library references when you want to output a new version of one of your projects.
The reason I bring this up is because this might be a way to “preserve” your work in the state you like it, before you shut down.
Again, this is new to me. And I’m guessing.
But this Sharing idea is worth some exploration. And if you’re having problems with your projects not being “persistent” enough in their timeline state. I bet Sharing them might solve that.
If after “sharing” – your jumpy menus are where you want them. I bet you can depend on them to be there when you output the client file.
Food for thought.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis] “Anyway, I was looking at the very first menu under Share – the Media Browser. I haven’t actually ever used it till now. But essentially it lets you burn a “digital copy” of your current timeline to a place in your Project Library call the Sharing Folder.”
I’m not sure this is right, is it?
The Media Browser makes MPEG-4 files that will play back on other i-Devices or a computer. As such it’s not really an option for backing up your project.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I’m not sure this is right, is it?
The Media Browser makes MPEG-4 files that will play back on other i-Devices or a computer. As such it’s not really an option for backing up your project.
Simon Ubsdell
https://www.tokyo-uk.com“Sinon,
I’m not saying it backs up your PROJECT. Just that it creates a persistent copy of the current OUTPUT state of your project. Yes, it’s an MPEG-4 file. But if you elect to Share a high quality version at any point, then you have quite a bit of protection from your project going offline or losing any clip connections – since it appears to be a project version that X can load regardless of the presence of the source clips -and also one that you can use to create new export clips with different encodings.
It’s NOT a backup of all the data in a particular even or even a particular project. But if someone is having difficulties with losing data connections that specify something like the location of titles as with the OP – this might be a useful strategy for solving that problem.
If your project “SHARES” properly – then there’s no longer a need to worry about whether or not what you’ve sending to a client might have changed subsequently without your being aware of it.
This has potential not just for single operators, but for collaborative workflows where the timeline version of something and the “share” version might be subtly different.
Again, I’m trying to learn about it and how it might benefit other producers/editors.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis] “I’m not saying it backs up your PROJECT. Just that it creates a persistent copy of the current OUTPUT state of your project. Yes, it’s an MPEG-4 file. But if you elect to Share a high quality version at any point, then you have quite a bit of protection from your project going offline or losing any clip connections”
I don’t see why you would want to use this rather than using the Share/Export Media option to make a ProRes master protection copy.
I can’t see any benefit in having an MPEG-4 version instead with all the compression artefacts that you are going to throw at your pristine program material.
This Media Browser option is really just meant so you can easily make an iPod/Phone/Pad/Apple TV version with one hit.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] ” can’t see any benefit in having an MPEG-4 version instead with all the compression artefacts that you are going to throw at your pristine program material.
This Media Browser option is really just meant so you can easily make an iPod/Phone/Pad/Apple TV version with one hit.
“I don’t think so Simon,
There’s a separate function for doing iPod/Phone/Pad/Apple TV versions one menu choice directly below the Media Browser in their own space (iDevices.)
The Apple designers are a lot of things, but this kind of “two menus next to each other to do the exact same thing” – sloppy they are not.
Clearly they have a purpose in mind for the Media Browser under Share. The difference seems to be that it’s connected directly into a dedicated space (the Sharing folder) in the Project Library which the other export options in Share are not.
Why?
That’s what I’m trying to work out.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis] “I don’t think so Simon,
There’s a separate function for doing iPod/Phone/Pad/Apple TV versions one menu choice directly below the Media Browser in their own space (iDevices.)
The Apple designers are a lot of things, but this kind of “two menus next to each other to do the exact same thing” – sloppy they are not.”
I’m not prepared to speculate on whether or not Apple are sloppy – let’s not go there!
I will just reiterate – in case anyone is following this and wants to adopt your strategy – that what the Share/Media Browser makes is an MPEG-4 as we can see very clearly from the Summary tab.
Not really any doubt about it. This is not, repeat not, a mastering format as I am sure you are aware.
Simon Ubsdell
http://www.tokyo-uk.com
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