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Final Cut from Hell
Just finally purchased a G5 tower last week after several years of Windows Avid land. I was asked to start using a FCP system to edit a show and after mapping my keyboard and learning the workflow, I was getting pretty jazzed about FCP. I always thought it made a good online system, but bad offline system compared to the Avid. I liked it enought to go out and buy a G5!
Then the honeymoon was over. The system I was using at work started doing something strange. My sequence was showing holes and missing clips in my timeline as I was zoomed out, then when I zoomed in some of them showed up and others were missing. Then as I edited more I realized that the last 5 minutes of my sequence had completely disappeared and there were clips scattered randomly down my timeline for 45 mins. I restored my project, and a while later it happened again. As time went on and my sequence grew, this got worse. I had to go back to older sequences and cut in the sections of my timeline that were good to the one I was currently working on because the end kept getting cut off or messed up. Sometimes, I would restart and open the project up and one clip would be extended over 15 mins of my sequence. It really seems possessed. This has been getting so bad now that I can’t make 3 edits without it getting screwed. I have wasted so much time with this it makes me feel like sticking a pencil in my eye. In 10 years of Avid editing I had alot of headaches with media offline, or corrupt files, or hit the overwrite key without knowing it, but I NEVER had my sequence get screwed up randomly. I could always count on my Avid sequences being locked to whatever I had created them. This is not the case with the FCP. If someone has helpful suggestions please chime in before I throw this thing out the window.
System
Dual 2.0 G5
Lacie BigDisk 400G 50% full (had 90% full when problems had begun, but moved media hoping it would help.)
Lacie 700G raid tower about half full.Media is spread out on the 3 drives unfortunately.
FCP 5.02
OS-X Tiger updated -
26 Replies
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Sounds like it might be time to Exorcise the system. Back up your projects and files, and wipe the sucker clean. Reformat the drive and reinstall the OS and FCP.
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This is not normal. Final Cut is a good system. How much memory do you have? I’d look at bad memory first. My system is about identical to yours. I have 4.5 gigs of ram and a Huge SCSI array.
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Do you have journaling or security encryption active on the drives on which you store your projects? Also make sure journaling is not active on your media drives. Other than that, I do not know what to tell you, I’ve stored FCP projects for months and months and they still work fine when I open them, although I am still using Panther + FCP 4.5.
I also have my OS and User data on different disk partitions. Media drive is a G-RAID.
-mark
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So, as a Avid person what would you do if this happedn to you? You would say, Oh I have a corrupt timeline. I better create a new sequence and copy and past from one timeline to the new timeline (sequence).
It works with FCP too, for me it works each and every time (twice).
Chris
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You are correct, in Avid I would copy and paste into a new timeline, but in FCP, I was told not to copy and paste because it causes further problems. True, Not? I have isolated the problem to the undo Key. cmd-z. If I do a ripple delete or anything else that changes the length of my sequence, the timeline stars getting screwy. If I do it several times in a row my sequence is F’d. Problem is, some of the clips move back when I undo, and some stay in the same place. So the ones that moved back overwrite part of the ones that didn’t move, creating a gap in my timeline. As for the media being linked to the wrong clips, i don’t know what that is. If I do an overwrite, or some other actions that do not change the timeline length, then I can undo. This has happened on 2 systems, so I am going to say that bad RAM is most likely not he cause. Also, on my home system I just got it last week and just installed FCP, so it is a fresh install so I am going to rule that out as well. I don’t know what this journaling is, however, and this could be something to look at.
I am going to try the new sequence thing for now…Ill keep y’all posted.
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Here is my sequence before doing ripple delete. (I made the edit just before the big gaps.)
https://img280.imageshack.us/img280/9708/snapshot200510011104593fq.png
And here is after four ripple delete- cmd-z undo’s:
https://img280.imageshack.us/img280/5789/snapshot200510011104137kf.png
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Copying and passting everything from your bins and timeline is perfectly okay. It will save you project.
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Oh, by the way, this was after creating a new sequence and copy-pasting my show into the new timeline.
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Have you tried trashing the preferences?
Dajen Productions
Santa Barbara, CA
G5 Dual 2 Gig – AJA IO & LA
Huge 1.2 Raid
FCP 5-OS X 10.4.1-QT 7 -
Di you try saving your project as? Did you say you remapped your keyboard? Have you tried using the default keyboard set up?
Dajen Productions
Santa Barbara, CA
G5 Dual 2 Gig – AJA IO & LA
Huge 1.2 Raid
FCP 5-OS X 10.4.1-QT 7
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