Final Cut and After Effects File is Busy Error

[Jason Adams]

I have had the same problem working in animated series with maya and constantly updating shots. I believe the problem stems from FCP “checking out” the file, purposely blocking others from changing for security reasons(a OSX unix thing). After all my testing I have only found 2 solutions. The first and easiest, is that for some reason the Quicktime player app in windows will directly save over the “checked out” files, bypassing the permissions checks. I use Quicktime player as the default previewer in maya so I can save stuff directly to fcp. In the case of AfterEffects I believe that it renders straight to disk. So a work around could be to have it render to a temp dir and then have After Effects open it in Quicktime then save from there. The second more involved method requires the use of the terminal. I create a general render temp directory, render to there, and then command line copy it over the original. This will bypass the permissions problems. Copying through the finder will give the same “file in use” error. To take it a step farther I wrote a shell script that will look in the temp dir and then replace the original automatically with a single keystroke. That is certainly more involved, but is a really simple script if you want to get your hands dirty in some shell scripting. It is also the fastest in terms of workflow – render, type “update renders”(or whatever you call the script) in a shell, and boom you are on to relinking. I have absolutely tried everything over 2 years of heavy production( I update hundreds of shots a day) and those are the only 2 options I have found that will work.

Relinking. Relinking under 10.3 and fcp4.5 has come to take up a good portion of my fcp station’s working day. It is slow and cumbersome. Media offline, cursor spin, do you want to relink, spin, what do you want to relink, spin, Is this the file you want to relink, spin. I would say it takes a good long minute or so to relink the shot. Over hundreds of shots minutes add up to hours. And unfortunately there isn’t anyway around it. period. It has to do with the database fcp keeps of current clips, if the creation or modification date of one of those shots changes – Media offline. I have tried everything to trick the database, shell scripts, long workarounds with dummy files and pointers, reference movies, everything. Nothing. No tricks. No workarounds. I am starting to believe that if you even THINK of updating a clip – Media Offline. The good news. FCP5’s relinking is a dream. If Media goes offline, 3 clicks of the mouse and its relinked. No spinnig cursor. All in seconds. I will say as of now I am having a few issues with FCP5 not updating the clip after a relink, hopefully something that will be addressed in an update. But when it does update it is a savior.

I am sure these arn’t really the answers you were looking for and I would not say I am an expert on the internal workings of FCP and OSX, but I have used both since their original versions. Having worked constantly on Animated series over the last 2 years, these 2 issues have been the only and biggest workflow issue I have delt with and endlessly tried to problem solve. If someone else out there has any more definitive answers or better solutions for a workaround I would be just as appreciative to hear them.

[Mike]

Jason-

Thank you so much for your incredidly detailed explanation. It’s true that it was not necessarily what I wanted to hear, but I really appreciate all of the information you provided. It seems bizzare that final cut needs to hold file permissions the way it does. Does anyone at apple know this is a huge inconvenience? And needing to relink clips with the same name and duration borders on absurd to me. It makes me feel better to know you’ve had some relief in FCP 5, but regardless this seems way too sensitive a feature for people that make frequent changes to clips where almost all parameters stay the same. In an attended 8 hour edit day, I can sometimes make anywhere from 50-75 re-renders from after effects and constant re-linking is a huge slow down to the process. Moving from Premiere to Final Cut was supposed to improve our workflow, but this is one way where it is really slowing me down. Again, thanks very much for your input – your response was extremely helpful.

– Mike