FCP6 upgrade tragedy

[Shane Ross]

Were talking RENDER files here, right? Not captured media? Can’t you simply re-render? I lose render files on occasion…and simply re-render.

Or are you not explaining this right? What exactly is missing?

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Dean Sensui]

The usual sage advice is never upgrade in the middle of a project.

It’s probably doubly important to not upgrade in the middle of capturing media for a project.

If you absolutely have to do this, create a backup boot disk with Super Duper and do your testing with that. Should the worst happen — and hopefully you also kept backups of your older projects — you always have the original system to fall back upon.

Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii

[Klaus]

Thank you for your reply, Shane, and I apologise for not expresing myself clearly.

I will try again.

For no apparent reason, my sequence (upon which previously existed 2 days of work) is now completely blank. This, obviously, is a major problem. When I use the ‘Apple-I’ function to examine the file using the Finder I can see that it is 132k, indicating that there is something there.

What also seems strange is that every render file has disappeared. Not only that, the actual folder that contained the render files has disappeared too.

Of course I understand that one should not upgrade project files mid-project etc, and it was a mistake to do so. I guess at this stage I’m wondering if there is any way of retrieving the info on my project file before I go back to square 1.

[Klaus]

I should also add that this happened not long after I upgraded to Magic Bullet Editors 2. I forgot to mention this. Not sure if this may have exacerbated the problem or not.

Anyway, I guess this has been a reminder to be more careful, and not simply rely on backups in the autosave vault, because every one of the backups seems to have corrupted too.

[Walter Biscardi]

[klaus] “Anyway, I guess this has been a reminder to be more careful, and not simply rely on backups in the autosave vault, because every one of the backups seems to have corrupted too.”

Obviously it’s too late not to have upgraded during a project, which is always the advice we give here. My copy of Studio 2 has been sitting in the box for almost three weeks as I have been finishing 8 projects and when I return to the office next week, I’ll finally be able to make the upgrade.

One thing here, I have never used AutoSave for anything. When preparing to upgrade, if you have to, during a project, manually save off the project as a different name. There is absolutely no reason why your project should not have opened correctly in FCP 6 as we have upgraded two of our three systems so far and all FCP 5 projects have opened just fine in FCP 6. No files or folders have disappeared. I suspect something might have been corrupted with the project before you even made the upgrade.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[Klaus]

Thanks for your reply Walter.

Good advice to save the project as a different name.

The strange thing that happened with this project is that, while it was started in FCP5, it opened fine in FCP 6 and worked fine for a couple of weeks. Then, out of the blue, all content on the timeline disappeared. Same thing happened with all content in autosave timeline – disappeared. And, as mentioned, every render file, including the folders themselves, disappeared.

As mentioned, it happened about an hour after I upgraded to Magic Bullet Editors 2, but maybe just coincidence.

Perhaps, as you mentioned, the project was already corrupted when created in FCP5.

[Richard Martz]

Can’t you re-install FCP5 and try to re-open the project in FCP5? Might be worth a try? If you can’t re-install…Another option might be to take the project to another FCP 5 shop and see if they can open the project file.

Richard Martz
MagicMartz Media

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[Klaus]

Thanks for your reply Richard.

I tried to do that, but it only seemed to recognise work completed under FCP 5.

I have abandoned my quest to save anything from the project, cut my losses, and am treating it as a lesson.

I’ve been spending the last few hours rebuilding the project and, as tedious as it is, it comes together much faster the second time around

[Jeremy Garchow]

Try removing Magic Bullet and see what happens.

[John Foley]

“I guess this is a classic case of not taking proper precautions when upgrading mid project.”

I would always advise anyone going from one version of FCP to a newer on to First – clone the current boot volume onto a firewire or SATA drive. Then – reinstall the operating system and QuickTime version necessary to support the latest FCP. The install it ALL from scratch.

Gives you a completely bootable copy of the last version and access to the latest version that you will ultimately be using from this point forward for new projects.

Please visit http://www.thefinalcutstore.com for all your Final Cut needs.