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EVERY FCP project file corrupted?!?!?
Major, major problem.
EVERY single project file I open in FCP gives an error, “project file is unreadable or was created in a newer version of Final Cut.”
System setup: MBP 17″, 3GHz Core2Duo, FCS3; Final Cut using a SansDigital eSATA external RAID5 for capture and scratch through a OWC eSATA Expresscard.
At first, I thought this was due to a failure with the RAID box, which OSX is saying cannot be repaired (but can read and copy data). However, EVERY FCP project I’m opening on any backup hard drive not even attached to this machine now gives this error.
Trashing preferences has yielded no change.
I don’t have another FCS3 machine handy on which to try opening these files.
Do I get to do a fresh re-install of FCS and all my plugins, or are there other alternatives?
Sidenote: this is the second eSATA RAID failure for me; is there a MBP solution out there that actually doesn’t suck rocks?
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10 Replies
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1 – Repair Disc Permissions on your Mac.
2 – Re-boot your Mac zapping the PRAM. (when the machine restarts, hold down Option+Command+P+R and the machine will reboot itself multiple times, let the machine chime three times, and then release the keys)
3 – Duplicate one of the project files and re-name it.
4 – Launch FCP and see if you can open that duplicated file.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
was created in a newer version of Final Cut
You can’t open a proj. from a newer version then what you have…
You would need to upgrade.FYI.
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
@ Chris: There is no newer version of FCP than what I have. It was simple weirdness.
Permissions + PRAM zap + DiskWarrior on the RAID to recover the broken FCP Docs directory structure got the projects open again as normal… at least enough to save elsewhere and recover the captured video (a multi-cam 4+ hour HDV presentation that I’d rather not recapture).
So yay for that.
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[Kevin McRoberts] “on the RAID to recover the broken FCP Docs”
You have your Project files on the RAID? The .fcp files? If so, always keep those on your internal Mac HD. I have a “Projects” folder on my main Startup Drive where we keep all our projects.
Project files that are kept on the RAID are more likely to be corrupted.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media -
“Project files that are kept on the RAID are more likely to be corrupted.”
What do you mean by this? What is it about a RAID volume that will corrupt project files? RAID 0, 1, 5, 6?
Jamie Crausman
ThinkTank Productions -
I had a few project files on the RAID (old projects), most others on the system drive.
While it was having the problem, EVERY project file, even archived on hard drives and optical media, was displaying the same error.
The “broken FCP Docs” was in reference to the FCP Documents folder directory structure being broken… it displayed on the RAID as an empty, 0-byte folder, despite actually containing about 2TB of captures, renders, etc from various projects. DiskWarrior fixed the directory structure.
But yes, I need to find a much better way of backing up all these large finished projects rather than tossing them on a large RAID and praying it won’t go belly-up or that I’ll be able to recover when it does.
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RAID 0 drives are designed for speed and for large files. FCP projects tend to be smaller and sometimes don’t play well with RAID drives (never work from a project that is on a SAN or RAID).
Remember that FCP also has point releases – a project created in Final Cut Pro 7.0 may not open in Final Cut Pro 7.3 without the warning coming up.
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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London -
Kevin, I suspect some add in did this. I get a similar message about not having the right version ever since installing posthaste. I just ignore it and the file works fine. You might look at whether you added anything recently. remove it if you have. Did you install the latest Mac osx upgrade? I’ve opted out of all os upgrades until proven reliable (about one month after or so). As to putting your project files on your boot drive, that is something Larry Jordan recommends, only for speed sake. I’d love to know why that would have anything to do with data corruption. But you mit want to see if you have a backup of a project file off line, and restore it to a non raided device.
Btw: I too had a failure of my owc raid (new drive in last three months). I’m struggling through with twin working drives and copying one to the other daily, until I find a break in the action to restore. A true pain.
Alf
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No, it wasn’t a version issue (hasn’t changed since these projects were created) and wasn’t an add-on issue (haven’t installed anything since these projects were created).
What appeared to have happened was that the floundering RAID lost its directory structure, and with FCP preferences pointing to these “there-yet-not-there” directories on the RAID, the program became utterly confused and denounced the misguided project files as unreadable or maybe of a newer version. I changed nothing else about the system aside from temporarily repairing the RAID’s directory structure, and the project files worked again… albeit now pointed to the main hard drive instead of that soon-to-be-trashed-POS RAID.
Not sure why a simple FCP prefs trash didn’t resolve it initially, but oh well.
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[walter biscardi] “You have your Project files on the RAID? The .fcp files? If so, always keep those on your internal Mac HD. I have a “Projects” folder on my main Startup Drive where we keep all our projects.”
Walter, This is an interesting thought. What is it about keeping the project file on the RAID that makes it more corruptible?
I would love to hear your thoughts on the file/data structure that you guys typically use. As in, do you keep all your captured media on one scratch disk, separate from other graphics, audio/music, etc? Or do you perhaps have one “master project” folder for each project, and everything is hierarchal and contained within that folder?
Maybe you could do a blog about it sometime?? 🙂 I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be interested in learning from your Standard Operating approaches.
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