• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  XML import problem with file extensions?

  Posted by Chris Maurer on October 10, 2006 at 6:52 pm

  Hi Everyone,

  I’m working in an academic setting and the FCP machines that I am responisble for are all running 5.1.1. Some computers that I am not responsible for, and thus cannot upgrade, are still running 5.0.4. A need for people to move projects between these machines exists and I recently tested XML export/import to try and solve the problem of going from 5.1.1 back to 5.0.4. I had success but the process was not without some strange issues.

  The major complication I experienced was with reconnecting media when I imported the XML into 5.0.4. The project that I exported from 5.1.1 had numerous imported graphics, music and sound fx. The graphics were in a variety of formats (tga, jpg, layered psd), the music and effects were in AIFF format. For all of the files that had file extensions, FCP dropped them when trying to reconnect the media. Lets say, for example, that there was a graphic named “fancyimage.tga”. When attempting to reconnect the media in 5.0.4, FCP was looking for just “fancyimage” with no file extension. In order to get “fancyimage” to reconnect to “fancyimage.tga”, I had to uncheck “matched name only”. After doing that and selecting the file manually it did reconnect properly. But doing this for every single file was a bit tedious. I looked at the XML files with a text editor and the file extensions ARE included in the file, so I’m not sure where/why it is dropping them for reconnecting.

  After manually reconnecting those files, the sequence was fine…but given the unexpected behavior of the reconnecting I’m hesitant to recommend the process to people. Anyway I’m hoping maybe someone has some experience with the issue and some advice.

  Thanks for any help you can provide,
  Chris

  Chris Maurer replied 19 years, 7 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Martin Baker

  October 10, 2006 at 7:12 pm

  My guess is that this might be connected to whether the Finder preferences are set to show file extensions or not.

  Finder > Preferences > Advanced tab > Show all file extensions

  If the Mac is set to hide the extensions when you locate a file then it makes sense that an exact name match becomes impossible.

  Martin
  Digital Heaven, London UK
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• 

  Chris Maurer

  October 10, 2006 at 7:48 pm

  Hi Martin,

  Thanks for the quick response and the idea. That setting came to mind while experiencing the problem and “show all file extensions” was enabled on the 5.0.4 (XML Import) machine. But after reading your message I realized I had never investigated that preference on the 5.1.1 (XML Export) machine I was using to test. I found that while the files in question are displaying their file extensions in the Finder, the “show all file extensions” preference is NOT checked. I will try again with the preference checked on the exporting machine and report back. Unfortunately the 5.0.4 machine are far away so it won’t be today.

  Thanks for the help!
  Chris

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