FCP compressor failure

[Daniel Low]

Make sure everything in rendered.

Check your field dominance settings – are you really working with 100% progressive material?

Export as a Quicktime Movie, – Make Self Contained

Play back the Quicktime movie back in Quicktime player, paying close attention to the sections with HDV content.

If all is good, bring this file into compressor and encode.

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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Lawrence Robbin]

I believed I checked the field dominance in the right area… but if you can confirm where I find that. There are so many settings… system settings, user preference, easy set up, render settings (under sequence)- each with so many choices. I don’t come at this from an engineering/technical perspective, so many of these set up issues are a mystery. I was primarily using DVCAM. Now I’m migrating to HD and HDV. This project I’m working on is mostly DVCAM with two HDV shots (that I exported and rendered as DVCAM).

Here’s the latest result:

FCP closed down during the end of the export to QT render process.
I found the .mov file that FCP made. Like other times, a message came up when I attempted to import the .mov file into compressor: “Error trying to open source media.”

So I’m trying to figure out is there something about the size – 41 minutes – and/or the fact that the project with all media is on a separate HD that is the problem. I have transcoded smaller projects (20 minutes) to mpeg 2 from this hard drive.

LR

[Daniel Low]

I believed I checked the field dominance in the right area… but if you can confirm where I find that.

You say that your settings had field dominance set to ‘None’ – I asked whether you were sure that all your footage was progressive, rather than interlaced. Any interlaced footage requires a field dominance setting, upper or lower, Progressive footage as no fields, as such it is set to none.

There are so many settings… system settings, user preference, easy set up, render settings (under sequence)- each with so many choices. I don’t come at this from an engineering/technical perspective, so many of these set up issues are a mystery

I don’t come from an engineering or technical background either. You seriously need to spend serious, quality time with the manuals and tutorials and reading websites like Ken Stones. Otherwise you’ll just waste a hell of a lot of time trying to figure things out while getting nowhere.

FCP closed down during the end of the export to QT render process.

So it crashed?

I found the .mov file that FCP made. Like other times, a message came up when I attempted to import the .mov file into compressor: “Error trying to open source media.”

Not surprising if FCP crashed during the export process and in doing so making the file corrupt. Did you try and open it in Quicktime player?

It’s unlikely to be anything to do with your hard drive or the length of your program, more likely to do with mixing DVCAM and HDV with the wrong settings or something along those lines – see my first point about fields.

What you are trying to achieve is very complex in the whole scheme of things, don’t expect to just fudge your way through it without some serious research. – Field dominance is one of the most basic fundamentals of video and is probably what’s causing you problems here.

__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Lawrence Robbin]

Thanks, Daniel.
I’m reading an article on Ken Stone’s website. Up to this point Ive been doing fine with FCP, but clearly I need to do my homework.

LR

[Daniel Low]

Mixing formats in FCP, and dealing with compressor is not easy, even for a seasoned professional.

__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Lawrence Robbin]

Thanks everyone for their help….

The conclusion of my compressor problems (FCP to mpeg 2 in Compressor crashes)is the following:

– It’s likely, the FCP show I was working on had corrupt files in it.
– The compressor was no longer functioning on this or any FCP show whatsoever.

So I did a couple of things:

– I printed to the show I was working on to tape, and then captured into another FCP show.
– I re-installed Compressor (with apple’s helpline help)
– I then compressed the show from FCP through Compressor into an mpeg 2 file

I have now made a finished DVD of the program.

LR