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“File Error: Illegal Name” when rendering or exporting
Hi there,
I recently upgraded one of our Mac Pros from Final Cut Studio 1 to Final Cut Studio 2 and installed an Aja Kona LHe card. At the same time, I set up a second Mac Pro from scratch with Final Cut Studio 2 and the same Kona card. Since then, I’ve been getting a “File Error: Illegal Name” error when rendering or exporting sequences on either machine. I can usually get around it by rendering individual clips rather than using Render All, but it’s especially problematic when exporting.
Both machines are 2 x 2.66Ghz Dual Core Intel Xeon. They are both running Mac OS X 10.4.10 and FCP 6.0.1. The older one has 2GB of RAM and two 750GB drives, the new one has 3GB RAM and two of the new Hitachi 1TB drives. The drives are all formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
I thought the problem was with the 1TB drives, but then I started getting the error on the older machine. I believe I’ve seen this error before when trying to write files with too many characters in the name, or trying to write files to FAT-formatted drives, but I don’t think either of those issues should be in play. I didn’t have this problem when the older machine was running FCP Studio 1 (FCP5) without the Kona card.
Haven’t found any info on this error on Apple’s support site or forums. Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem could be?
Much appreciated,
Gabe Russell
D2 Productions -
9 Replies
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[gaberussell] “I’ve been getting a “File Error: Illegal Name” error when rendering or exporting sequences on either machine.”
This happens when you’ve exported a file and then opened that file somewhere else, like in Quicktime Player or After Effects. Even if you quit that App, FCP thinks the file is still being used and all you have to do is just re-name the file and it will export.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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Hi Walter,
Thanks for your reply. I’m getting the error in the middle of rendering or exporting, and it stops the operation. The render or export won’t complete. I don’t have any other apps open when I get the error, so FCP is the only app accessing the file as far as I know.
Any other ideas?
Thanks,
Gabe
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You might try running disk utility, and see if the illegal name shows up there.
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Gabe –
[gaberussell] “The drives are all formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”
The only drives that should have journaling enabled is/are your startup (boot) drive(s). Scratch disks should not be journaled. For what it’s worth.
pvw
Phil Van West
Terra Nova Productions
Denver, CO
Video Production/Post-ProductionG5 DP 2.5GHz / 4.5 GB RAM / OS 10.4.10 / FCP 5.1.4 / QT 7.2
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I had the same issue with getting the “File Error: Illegal Name” when trying to “render all” in Final Cut.
After changing hard drives to where my renders were being saved, cleaning out all my render cache with the render manager, restarting and changing my timeline name, I still got the same error in the middle of my renders.
I then discovered in my Final Cut Pro, System Settings that somehow the checkbox for “Limit Capture/Export File Segment Size” had gotten checked. After unchecking it, the error is gone.
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For the sake of confirmation and historical record, unchecking “Limit Capture/Export File Segment Size” worked for me when I had this problem.
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I’m getting this “File Error: Illegal Name” message when I’m trying to export my file into a Quicktime movie. I read through the other threads and I tried all of these suggestions. I checked my System Settings, I closed all other applications, my file names are only .aiff and .mov, I renamed the file and saved it as something else. I’m not using any other files. What could be the problem? I’m going nuts? Thanks for your help!
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I had the same problem and I tried to follow all the advice that was on here. Nothing helped until I named the project totally different than what i named it originally and it exported right away…. dont know how to explain that, but it worked. thanks guys
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FWIW, I had this error coming up due to a FAT-32 drive being selected as a render target. As I’m sure most of you know, that volume format has significant restrictions, so no surprise there, except that I had it targeted in the first place. Oops.
Just another troubleshooting step for people with this error.
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