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Bizarre issue – is it FCP or QuickTime 7.4?
I’ve recently tried capturing six tapes of a lecture series as large, uninterrupted clips. When I search for them in Finder, they appear as several fragments whose file type only gets errors from OSX 10.4. They have the .mov extension, but when I click to play one I get an error which reads “the file is not a movie file”. The files are named -v -1-v -1-2-v -1-3-v 1-4-v and so on.
Here’s what’s very strange: the clips played and edited fine when I first captured them. I dropped in JPEGs and the render files still exist and play in quicktime.
My guess is the files were too large to be properly processed by FCP or QT, so it divided the 53 minute clip into what it assumed were manageable chunks. None of the chunks are actual video files… I recently installed a sata500GB internal drive, and it was only after installation the problems began – though all other footage on my external 320 is fine.
Is there any way to recover the large clips? Will I have to recapture everything again with different Media Starts/Ends and start a new edit?
Any help is appreciated.
Mike
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11 Replies
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Those are temporary files ha FC makes when is capturing and find some difficulties. Those files are empty, but the picture and audio must be somewhere in your HD.
if you are having problems to capture in a SATA HD you may have the disk journaled.Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table. -
How are you drives formatted? They need to be MAC extended. Aret they FAT32 by any chance?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Check your FCP prefs. Specifically, System Setting > Scratch Disk tab.
There’s a check box near the bottom that says, “Limit Capture/Export File Segment Size to” and then there’s a dialogue box. If that box is checked and you have a number in the dialogue box, your video files will get split up into smaller chunks, and then you are left with a pointer in FCP that will reference all that media.
It’s either that or what David has suggested.
Jeremy
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I’ve had a couple media files do that as well. I’ll check the setting Gary mentions, but it does not seem to be size related in my case. Only a couple of files have had the problem — one from MPEG Streamclip and one from DV tape. They played at the time they were captured, but went offline after restart–suggesting the existence of referenced media that is no longer available after the restart. I’ve had to recapture to fix. Using logged time code was OK in my case.
Final Cut Studio 2, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.3.1, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.
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Whoa that’s weird, I could have sworn I formatted it for mac. It worked fine for every other FCP project I’ve worked. I just checked and it is DOS-Fat32 formatted. Any suggestions?
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Reformat the drive and recapture. Make sure to dump off anything you need that’s not recapturable.
Jeremy
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Thanks very much. I looked into disk journaling and it seems like the reasonable culprit. However, after reading the post below, it may prove to be a formatting error, though I don’t see why a FAT32 formatted drive would only cause problems with very large files… If I’m not mistaken FAT32 drives don’t allow journaling?
I’m transferring all of my 250 GB from ext. to int. drive (Thank You sata) and am planning to reformat the drive, turn journaling off and bring the footage back. May be a waste of time. What do you suggest for a next step?
Thanks again
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[Mike Land] “I don’t see why a FAT32 formatted drive would only cause problems with very large files…”
Among other issues, FAT32 has a file size limitation of 4gb.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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It’s all so clear now, thank you very much…
Now that I know the problem, are the files more or less useless at this point? Will I still have to go back and recapture the footage on a properly formatted drive? Or can I reformat, and then somehow get the files to work properly?
Again, thank you.
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[Mike Land] “Will I still have to go back and recapture the footage on a properly formatted drive?”
As Jeremy stated, move all good files to another drive, reformat the drive and and recapture.
BTW, just for the record… How was I able to diagnose this issue right off the bat??? I’ve seen it ten zillion times. You were number ten zillion and one…
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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