Final Cut from Hell

[Tony]

Have you considered taking a FCP editing course to get you up to speed on all the in’s and out’s of the software and hardware in under one week.

This would be money well spent instead of trying to waste countless hours with a pencil stuck in your eye.

Don’t blind yourself with frustration get the education you need and move on.

Knowledge is power… power is change.

Tony Salgado

Tony Salgado

[Justinfay]

I have discovered that the Big 700G disk is formatted as extended journaled, which may be a problem. I don’t see where I can turn off journaling in the menu of disk utility only “enable”. I have renewed my permissions on my boot drive as well. I don’t think the keyboard setup would cause the problem as it is not a wrong key I am hitting. (it does it the same if I use menu commands.) I’m sure there would be some benefit to me taking a class, however, I don’t think this should happen on a system that is so highly touted as “user friendly” . As un-user friendly as it was, when I was learning Avid in the early days, the only headaches I had to worry about were system incompatibilites and corrupt media. My timeline was always rock solid. I don’t think I should have to become an Apple Technician to be able to find a correct combo that works for my system.

[David Bogie]

The illustrations don’t help.

But, I’d like to welcome you to the family and tell you we all feel your pain. I’m not condescending. If you’re coming from a deeply ingrained platform like Avid, you’re going to be extremely frustrated by many aspects of FCP. Coming from Windows, you’re going to have emotional conflicts with Tiger.
FCP doesn’t work like Avid and you can’t talk to it in the same way. “Ripple delete” probably doesn’t even mean the same thing in both apps. I never use ripple delete because the results are so bizarrely unpredictable. AutoSelect gets involved (or gets in the way, I simply loathe autoselect and would like to see the bozos who implemented it slooowwlly… but I digress) Autoselect controls all of your timeline decisions made with keystrokes instead of mouse commands.

You’re obviously a seasoned editor and I think you’re going to enjoy FCP in a few more months but, if you don’t mind me saying so, you appear to have bitten off a project that demands too much of your limited FCP/Tiger knowledge. Do you have some FCP or Apple buddies you can call? Get some fancy imported bubbly waters and cheeses and invite them over to help you with your TIger issues. Go buy Andy Inhatko’s ultra cool Tiger book (can’t miss it on the shelves at Borders, bright silver cover). Invest five or ten hours of slogging through those silly FCP tutorials. Elementary, yes, but all kinds of light bulbs will go on for you. Go buy one of the “FCP for Avid Users” books.

Stick with us, keep us posted and start a new thread.

You can trust us: In two months you’re going to be contributing to the forum, posting helpful suggestions to other Avid users, instead of bemoaning your purchase decisions.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Rob Alexander]

justin,

here’s a thought – I notice that there’s a discrepancy between the track selection icons on the two snapshots. It’s a bit hard to see what’s going on and find reference points because of the scaling but you might find that because of the sync relationship that FCP establishes between video and audio clips, ripple deleting (or inserting) without the track selectors all on can do strange things to the relative position of clips in the timeline. The selectors work a bit (but not completely) like arming or disarming a track on an AVID timeline.

So, I’d recommend making sure the track selectors are all on and then delete.

Can’t promise anything but it’s worth a go.

Good luck,
Rob

[Filip Vandoorne]

is to select the bad sequence in the browser, and export it to xml.
Then import this xml into a new project and see what happens.
also usefull is before starting the new project, quit FCP and remove your prefs of Finalcutpro and start with new ones.

[Shawn Bockoven]

This same thing happened to a PBS station I support. They were using an external Lacie that had been formatted with journaling on. After formatting another drive with journaling turned off, I moved the media to that drive, renamed the drive to match the previous one, and all works well.

Shawn Bockoven
METV EBS Station Manager/Engineer

[Rob Alexander]

OK same tack but slightly more complex. I wonder whether you have video and audio clips which are linked but that you’ve slipped out of sync with one another (or multiple video and audio clips selcted in the timeline) and that you’re perhaps selecting a video clip and hitting [delete] or shift+x to achieve the ripple. This will certainly cause strange things to happen in the timeline. In fact even if you’re trying to use an in and out point for the ripple but have clips selected you will get something other than you expected. I’ve got into the habit of always deselcting everything (shift+cmd+a) before ripple deleting.

Rob.

[Dean Sensui]

I cut and past entire one-hour shows without any problems.

Be careful about ripple edits. It’s possible to in advertently shift individual tracks rather than the all tracks of a sequence. I use “command-G” to close up gaps under certain circumstances. And other circumstances I’ll lasso groups of clips and move them.

Mostly I want to make sure I’m moving only the clips that I want to move and nothing else.

Otherwise, I haven’t experienced the problems you’ve faced. Certainly sounds like something is seriously corrupted. In which case it might be safer to start with a new project and not just a new sequence.

Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com

[Justinfay]

Thanks for the encouragement/ideas everyone. I am deeply ingrained in Avid, but also, very quick to pick up new apps. I only used Macs up until Avid release MC on PC, so I am familiar with the interface. I’ve evenhad to troubleshoot some OS X issues for my brother before I dove in to FCP. I have several hardcore FCP friends/associates who have helped me through the transition. I very quickly realized the danger/pitfalls of auto select and ripple delete. I little trial and error and some out of syncness quickly brought me up to speed. (actually I am just now getting the idea of the auto select.) The thing is, anytime I did a delete etc. I would make sure it didn’t adversely affect my timeline. I would make sure to select all tracks or just have all autoselects on. The problem I am having now pertains to the cmd-z. The timeline doesn’t just shift wrong, because I could then undo and theoretically all would go back to normal. If I cmd-z, as you saw in the pictures, I got a 10 minute gap in my sequence, even after cutting and undoing. I think the fella from PBS who said the journaling was the prob might be on to something seeing as 2 of my drives have it switched on and I have tried trashing prefs and rebuilding permissions, and all the other fancy tricks that are the norm. I don’t have the option to turn off journaling on the drives in questions because they were formatted with it on. I suppose I will have to make sure I setup my drives/system correctly prior to starting my next project. (A medium level FCP editor setup this project. He doesn’t know all the tricks yet.) He was perplexed by this problem, and I managed to get to the bottom of it after visiting the forum here.

[Kevin Monahan]

[justinfay] ” I suppose I will have to make sure I setup my drives/system correctly prior to starting my next project. “

Start by avoiding FireWire drives. They are simply not approved by Apple. Go with a separate internal drive or internal or external SATA array.

Many problems can be avoided with properly initialized internal media drives. Period.
FireWire drives work for some, but for many they are problematic.
The really big FireWire drives seem to have the bigget problems.

My 22 Cents….

Former Avid guy….

Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com