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Media Offline issue with Apple prores footage
Hello all, first timer here. I have a very strange issue, and I’ve been scouring the internet for an answer with no luck, so I reach out to everyone in the hopes of finding out what exactly this problem is.
I recently shot a fashion show with my new Canon Vixia HG21 at the highest possible recording settings. I connect the camera to my Macbook pro and log and transfer all the raw footage using Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 onto my external hard drive that is about 3-4 years old now (an accomdata 320 gig I believe).
So Final Cut does its thing, encodes all the video files to apple pro res, and all the files are in working order and everything is fine. I then disconnect my hard drive from my computer when finished for now.
When I come back later, I flip my hard drive on, load up the project file, and final cut gives me an error, saying “16 media files are offline”. I then try to reconnect these files, however when i go to the files in my hard drive, they are all grayed out. I turn off the “match file name and in/out points” or whatever (sorry I’m not at my computer at this moment) and reconnect the files anyway. However, the files do not reconnect correctly, and they reconnect with a random other video clip that I have.
I then try to just completely reload Final Cut and start a new project, importing all the footage. 16 files STILL do not import correctly, and it’s as if they are lost. I then re-transfer the files that are apparently lost, and everything is fine again. Turn off the drive when done working.
Turning back on the drive, the same problem happens, but to different files (and it’s not always 16 files, it varies). I then did some tests, reloading final cut and turning my hard drive on and off, and found that it’s not always the same files that are offline, and relinking the files is ALWAYS impossible.
So my question after this long story is…Why in the world is this happening? Any insight would be greatly appreciated, as I’ve not been able to get any editing done and I am new to HD.
I am leaning towards that since this is an older external hard drive, it does not have the power to read the apple prores files correctly (I have just ordered a 1 TB LaCie external) Does anyone know if this is true? Or have heard of this happening before? Will the new hard solve this problem?
Computer Specs:
Macbook Pro dual core October 2007 model
160gb harddrive
2 gb ram
Final Cut Pro 6.0.5I know this was a lot of text but I tried to be as detailed as possible. Thank you very much for taking the time to read.
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6 Replies
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Are they on that drive? Can you manually open the drive, navigate to the CAPTURE SCRATCH folder, and see them? Open them?
Shane
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Yes the files are definitely on the hard drive. I have opened them and previewed them. However which ever ones that are shown offline in Final Cut, do not open correctly when I try to view them in quicktime. They’ll be replaced by a random different video file. if that makes sense.
Ex: Clip #110 will be listed, but when opened it shows Clip #103. Very odd.
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You might want to run Disk Warrior. Sounds like it might be a directory issue.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Comp 3.5.1, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.1)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Yeah I’m pretty sure it’s the hard drive. It’s about four years old, do you think this is a sign of it crashing?
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did ever figure out what was the problem and how to fix it?
i have the same problem and I just bought a new external hd so I’m trying to figure out what the problem is. -
Thanks to Peter Sengstock for encouraging me to post here – from a similar thread.
We encountered a similar problem with students losing L+T files, having files appear offline anytime they closed the project or moved to another computer in spite of having their footage on an external hard drive.
it seems that at the core was a skipped step pre-ingest. Because of time and computer disk space issues some people used the Log and Transfer straight from the memory cards.
What confused us at first was the issue seemed to only affect certain groups, even though several had adopted this procedure- however on inspection this seemingly random slice of luck for some students was down to their being no other AVCHD files on the system when they entered into the L+T window.
And so, sorry if it seems like stating the obvious but –
with our machines on FCP 6.0.8, their is no option to use ProRes HQ, and therefore, it seems, no timecode for FCP or mere humans to confirm that a clip is really the intended/named clip
coming straight from the cards the Volume is NONAME which becomes the Reel Name in FCP, which Reel Name would be shared by all other straight from card transfers -as would the title ‘Clip #1’ ‘Clip #2’ etc and so while the FCP project might work with those files in the beginning, as soon as the project is closed and re-opened it can look for a ‘Clip #1’ etc that is not the one that was Log+Transferred into the project, but one that was L+T’d by someone else-
as someone mentioned in a previous post, FCP/L+T will see that there are already clips from NONAME in the L+T cache and so will increment from the end of those clips, thereby making what we see as supposed ‘Clip #1’ into what the computer sees as Clip #Seemingly Random Number
having scratch disks set incorrectly or having these conflicting ‘Clip #Names’ all going into the same scratch disk seems to compound the issue as does continual reconnecting and project copying
Without saying there is a simple fix – creating a new project and copying the cut sequence in as either a straight Cut + Paste or by using an XML import – and then reconnecting manually seems to have resolved the issue for those affected. And when the clips are back online, we then get them to manually change the Reel Number in FCP and also to change the clip and use the Rename – File to Match Clip – function in FCP – this resolves the issue.
Sorry if its old ground – hope it helps someone.
We all skip steps sometime and sometimes we get caught badly, sometimes not so badly, but this is how we learn!
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