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FCP7 changes clip names in the timeline, then demands to be reconnected to file with made-up name
Here’s a weird one. I sent a FCP7 project to a sound mixer, and when he sent the project file back, his copy of FCP has changed a lot of the file names in the timeline — by adding a number (clipname 1.mov). The number seems to correspond to the number of times that clip has been used in the sequence. Then, when I try to open up the project file, it’s incapable of finding those clips on my drive, because the clip names no longer correspond to the file names.
Weird, right?
I can manually go through, clip by clip, and reconnect each now-incorrectly named clip to its actual file, but I’m more interested to know why that might have happened, and if there’s a way to change the clip name within the timeline in a way that will make it correctly map to the proper clip (in shorthand: can I delete the number that FCP added to make the clip reconnect properly?)
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4 Replies
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They need to upgrade their FCP to 7.0.3! They are running a version that had a HORRIBLE bug that renamed clips.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
That is a horrible bug! Thanks Shane, I’ll have him do that.
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If your post people overwrote your project file or you didn’t have a backup copy you have every right to be mad. I take peoples FCP projects for grading, online and sound post and I always save as and keep their original.
If all they are doing is putting the mix in your timeline, ask for a sequence without pictures and just paste the audio into your original sequence.
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Hi Shane,
[Sorry for the long explanation, but to fix these things, a good diagnosis may help…]
I’ve read a few posts on this issue — Final Cut Pro renaming clips — and I see that you consistently recommend upgarding to FCP 7.0.3.
I am having an similar problem, but it only arises when I use the Multiclip function/tool. I think my situation is likely to arise for other editors. So in case it helps, or in case you/someone can pass this on to FCP programmers, here is how it works:
When I rename files that have *never been part of a multiclip,* the renaming works fine. I can change each clip name, one by one, no problem. But once I create a multiclip, that’s when the problem starts and it applies to all the clips that are currently, *or were in the past*, part of a multiclilp. To break it down:
First, I put 6 clips, A-F, in a multiclip. Then I notice that the clips appear in a pattern within the multiclip window that is inconvenient, so I try to change the names to reposition them. When I rename one clip (A), this goes fine, only one clip is changed. But then when I rename a second clip (B) the new name I have just applied to B gets applied to BOTH clips A and B. Then if I change the name of clip C this name gets applied to BOTH A and C, but leaves B as I input it. This pattern repeats, up to F. Again, this only affects clips that were part of a multi-clip, resulting in a set of clips where A and F are identical, but B – E are unique, as I named them.
Remedies that have not worked for me so far are: 1) I am already running 7.0.3 (and have been throughout this project) – so that’s not a fix. (That’s why I’m writing you.) 2) Moving the clips into other bins does not help. Even renaming clips in one bin changes names of clips in another bin (if these two clips have been part of the same multiclip). 3) deleting the multi-clip does not help. Somehow FCP seems to “remember” that they once were associated in this way, and the bug continues to affect them.
I can’t speak for problems other users are seeing, but in my case, my best guess is that the bug is part of the multiclip feature. *When working normally*, the multiclip feature renames *itself* repeatedly, based on which clip is “active” in the multiclip window. So I’m guessing that this “self-renaming” aspect of the multiclip tool is somehow buggy, and is adversely affecting other clip renaming.
The workaround I’m doing, if you want to call it that, is to revert to a saved project from before I ever created a single multiclip and restarting work from there. Now when I rename the clips it works, and I can combine them into multi-clips after that fact. I just hope that I never need to change them again.
Edwin
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