FCPX 10.3 breaking links to generated proxies

[Noah Kadner]

Or a permissions issue- how are you sharing- SAN, Sneakernet, erc.

Noah

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[Michael Angelo]

oh permissions! I should run disk utility (the old useful one), totally forgot about that, thank you as always!

The crazy thing is the proxies are fine in another library for the same clips and on the same drive, they should be linked via hard links. If proxies failed in the past usually you can just drag the needed clips over to the library that has the proxy issue, select copy proxy media and because it’s the same drive it simply creates hard links without taking extra space, then wakes up the proxies.

I could see how permissions could be a deal breaker, gonna look into it, thanks

Harvest the compromises…

[Michael Angelo]

BTW share is usually sneaker net direct hard drive to hard drive via GUI libraries or XML. Sometimes we do the transfer library with no media but that often gets spicy and has unfavorable results

Harvest the compromises…

[Michael Angelo]

Hmmm disk utility says everything is OK, unable to run “Verify Disk Permissions” assuming because it’s not the boot drive. We use the following settings as far as permissions:

administrator – Read & Write
staff – Read & Write
everyone – Read & Write
CHECKED – Ignore ownership on this volume

I’m thinking maybe the remote drive that the sequence was created on is the issue and corrupted the project? Got talked into buying a few Seagate Backup Plus drives as it was only 5TB portable at the time, nothing but troubles, they keep dying, we reformat, they die. Definitely gonna go back and stick with Lacie rugged in the future.

Any other ideas we are all ears, thanks again

MA

Harvest the compromises…

[Joe Marler]

[Michael Angelo] “We are starting to see many clips suddenly showing up as “missing proxies” when all we have done is quit and relaunch the app. …Looking in the package contents the FCPX generated proxies are still there but the application no longer sees them. The behavior was intermittent but now those proxies aren’t coming back at all….Has anyone seen this kind of behavior?…it’s an edit that we share between multiple systems and we are seeing similar behavior on both systems. They both have their own proxy media in self contained proxy only libraries that point to external drives with the optimized/original media….We’ve…trashed the preferences file, still the same behavior….”

I am seeing some of these on 10.3.2 when using external proxies and a two-location workflow where the library file is emailed back and forth, and the media requires relinking due to change in disk volume name. The media itself re-links OK but sometimes the proxies show up missing. Other times a few proxies will go missing in FCPX for no obvious reason — the files are still there and the aliases in the library still point to them. This may or may not be related to what you’re seeing. I am trying to investigate.

[Michael Angelo]

Hi Joe,

Sounds very similar though we are still linked to the original/optimized media OK. If there was a way to relink proxies I think it would solve both our problems and since we have the proxies working in other libraries on the same drive we should be able to drag it over to wake up the missing proxies but it’s not working or stops working after quitting and relaunching the app.

Wondering how many other folks are seeing this same behavior in 10.3.2, the software we are using right now as well.

Chees

MA

Harvest the compromises…

[Joe Marler]

[Michael Angelo] “If there was a way to relink proxies I think it would solve both our problems”

After a fashion, you can move and relink proxies using this procedure. However I have tried it and it doesn’t work reliably in my case. Note: to create alias links in Finder via drag/drop, you must first select the files, do the drag, keep the mouse button down, then hold down OPT+CMD to invoke alias creation. This is not a documented or approved FCPX procedure from Apple’s standpoint, but a lot of people use it.

https://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/tutorials/1828-cheating-final-cut-pro-x-proxies-to-store-where-you-want-by-using-aliases

[Joe Marler]

Further study shows most (but not all) of the problems I see are related to using external proxies and two-editor workflow with different drive volume names. In that case the original media relinks but the proxies do not. If the volume name is the same, relink is not required upon receiving the updated library, and both original media and proxies work (usually).

If volume name is different you’re supposed to relink but this doesn’t seem to work for external proxies. That might be understandable since those aliases contain the original volume name and now the volume name is different. However even after a successful relink of the original media, then using the previous-stated procedure of manually recreating the proxy aliases within the library (which at this point uses the current volume name) no longer works.

There is an approved procedure for using external proxies but it involves consolidation which is extremely time-consuming if the proxies already exist within the library. I haven’t tested that for the case involving a volume name change and media relink to see of the external proxies created by that procedure keep working.

I have also seen some weird cases in two-editor workflow with external proxies where changing the destination volume name to the source volume name, then starting FCPX, then changing the volume name back will sometimes make the external proxies work. There is something odd about this area.

I also see cases where a few proxies just go off line by themselves after loading an updated library file, even when consistently using the same volume name.

[Andreas Kiel]

Have you tried Disk Warrior?

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Michael Angelo]

Hey Joe,

I appreciate you mentioning that proxy relink technique but it is a bit spicy for us with upwards of 2000 hours of footage, likely too cumbersome for us to manage. These challenges are definitely a FCPX 10.3 upward bug as the proxies disappear and reappear at random, often deciding to be stubborn when we are in delivery mode. Also we have been using the remote duplicate proxy media workflow for a years successfully with XMLs, metadata only media-less transfer libraries and straight up sneaker net hard drive to hard drive library transfers without copying proxies nor optimized. The master library finds the media on the destination drive and yes the different drive names mean the app is finicky about managed media but ultimately we’ve been able to make it work before 10.3

I don’t have the answers but my intuition is that it’s about waking up the hard links to the proxies. Our show is so big, we have a single library for each year and location for example NY14, SF14, LA15, LV12 ie New York 2014, San Francisco 2014, Los Angeles 2015, Las Vegas 2012. We melt material in these libraries, do some rough segment editing then move those sequences to a master library we call EDITS where we complete the final sequences. The EDITS library now has the bug that is causing the proxies to intermittently disappear.

In the past if proxies disappeared (which did happen here and there on a small scale) we would simply drag the clip from the original year location library, say SF14, to the EDITS library with copy proxies selected. This seemingly replaced the old dead proxy link with a proper hard link causing the missing proxies in the project timeline to be restored because we’ve looked inside package contents and no 2nd proxy clip was created. Now when we do this it doesn’t work consistently if at all and multicams rarely wake up. Re-transcoding would add 2TB to the EDITS library and adversely affect our remote drive workflow by losing the space saving hard links.

I’m sure we can improve our workflow over all but perhaps someone out there has an answer on how to reconnect hard links without having to re-transcode footage creating unnecessary duplicate proxy media?

As always thanks to everyone for the dialogue and assistance.

MA

Harvest the compromises…