Full FCP 7 Assault – Out of Memory, Dropped Frames, Playback Trouble suddenly.

[David Roth weiss]

I understand that completely Marc, fixing these is what’s required when you begin a project with improper seq settings. It’s a pain in the butt, however you’ll become much more proficient at these fixes after you learn from doing a few.

FYI, you best bet on a lot of these clips is to right click, remove all atttibutes, and fix from the clips native attributes. In other words, in resizing and repositioning before, with the bad codec, you most likely made things look right, but they were not really the accomplished properly.

Meanwhile, where are you located?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Mark Suszko]

You’d be wise to follow what David’s saying; he’s a pro.

It may be that at some point along the way, during ingest or edit, the footage from one of your cams had it’s frame size “baked-in” in the wrong ratio. And probably the wrong codec. No telling how much resolution you gave up. However it happened, if clicking on the shot, going into the “motion” tab and and undoing any and all pre-applied scaling and other effects doesn’t bring it up to size, it’s something you’re going to have to manually re-scale, if you insist on using the existing shot. For every such clip. The good news, if any, is that, once you re-size *one of these, select and copy it, then you can (relatively) quickly select and “paste attributes” to the other wrong-scaled clips, greatly reducing the workload. Though the really proper way to fix these, and get the maximum resolution out of them, would be to re-capture/re-import the camera originals in the proper size and codec. Which you refuse to do.

This is what I’m getting at with the term: “Sunk Costs Fallacy”. It’s the kind of thinking that turns a pilot into a stain on a canyon wall, when he doubles-down on making it thru the mountain passes in wrong conditions because he’s half-way to his destination already, dammit. I could give many more such examples. But this is where you are. You feel that you just can’t go back and re-do it right because you’re too close to being done. Actually, you’re nowhere near. Not if you have standards.

The question I have for you now though is: what’s the hurry, all of a sudden, that you can’t go back and do it right?

Did you think you could make this ready for some festival or contest coming up? Is there funding with a hard limit? Did the doctor call with really bad news? You said this was a passion project that took years of your time. But now it’s not worth going back, no matter how inconvenient or tedious, to get it all Just Right? Be honest with yourself, and ask yourself; “in my rush to complete this, am I baking-in all kinds of mistakes and problems that will stand out and make me look incompetent, make the work look flawed, every time it’s viewed, forever, and is that truly what I wanted for this project? For myself? That’s not what I’d call a Passion project. Passion projects are heartless, cruel, unrelenting things that demand you break your heart and wallet, over and over again, do hard or unpleasant things over and over again, without reward, until the result meets the standard you envisioned at the start. They make you forsake time with loved ones, profit opportunities, everything.

You know there’s work to be done, you’ve done it before, thanks to experience, you’ll actually be faster and better at it this next time around. If this project was ever worth it, it’s worth doing right. Dave told you how to fix it. I’m telling you how “not” to go about fixing it. But you already knew that, deep down, I’m betting.

[David Roth weiss]

Mark has hit the nail on the head Marc…

We all know how difficult it is to make these projects even under the best conditions, but when started incorrectly being creative in FCP becomes secondary to simply hoping you can get it to work.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Mark Suszko]

I don’t say that because I’m especially wise now, but because in the past I have been excessively foolish. ☺

Been there/donethat/re-did that/

[Marc Israel]

Fellows, I had to take a little break/space from this today as I am having trouble containing my exasperation over this present issue and the various possible hardships that lay ahead. I am hearing different things from different people, namely the two of you. Mark, my namesake, and David, name of my only brother. Ominous notions have floated such as an imminent system drive failure, bad sectors (what could sound worst then “bad sectors”?…even though I don’t know what sectors are), a outdated and/or corrupted application, sequence settings all wrong. One of you are so assured of the problem you are are ready for me to accept your gospel word and employ untold new work hours into fixing sequence settings despite the fact that I’ve had no issue at all with the settings for ages, and, if by chance, he is wrong and the problem persists, or I learn eventually through some Parallel Universe Entity that an easier solution was available all along, and that I was a victim of jumping-the gun, I will want to kill him, despite ideals of pacifism.

Mark, your language makes me laugh. “Stain on a canyon wall,” and your pep on passion projects is in all aspect received harmonious and in spirit…with well, the spirit of this film itself, which once was a fiction film that suffered so many setbacks it finally had to be forsaken or face the men w/ the butterfly nets. But have now come back to it years later and see it in a new light – that it is in fact a documentary about, among other things, the hardships, tests, travails, and failures about trying to complete that desperate film, mishaps so monumental their amusement value just might be deserving of a feature-length film to fully express, although by now it’s a film of myriad themes and sub-plots as well.

“The question I have for you now though is: what’s the hurry, all of a sudden, that you can’t go back and do it right? “

The scope of this project is huge, as in HUMONGOUS. It far outweighs any feature-length film I’ve made regarding volume of clips, number of sequences, in tightness and density of editing, not to mention storyline, cast of “characters”, scenes, etc. I also have often edited this film in a controlled, yet spontaneous way, whereby sometimes feel like I’m almost painting as much as editing. And the film is only a third finished. And yet it was almost 2 years of work. And no I’m not bragging, what I’m saying or asking is am I gonna take the word of one or both of you and put myself through unspeakable tedium revising all these sequence settings….or…gasp…start from scratch on a new app and create all these same exact edits, thousands of minutely-honed in IN and Out points, replicate the exact seconds of cross-dissolves or some other carefully chosen transition, the color correction of each of thousands of clips on these painting-like frames??? eek gadd gadd god help me…or even more torturous, to reimport footage? choke choke cough cough that is to cruel andIi can barely breathe due to the daunting prospect and horror, which I’d surely never survive in one piece. Really. I can only “go back” so far. Otherwise I will simply not be able to maintain a daily schedule or eating and sleeping. I will turn to slop, I will run naked in the streets twirling my dirty underwear and shouting obscenities. Every man has his breaking point.

It remains to be seen what I will, in fact, do. It will be something, that’s for sure. Because time in the old ticker is ticking, yes the doc has bad news, and every day spent in limbo on this is the sound of screeching bats echoing through my skull.

David, I’m in Los Angeles. Why do you ask?

[Marc Israel]

p.s. Mark
“However it happened, if clicking on the shot, going into the “motion” tab and and undoing any and all pre-applied scaling and other effects doesn’t bring it up to size, it’s something you’re going to have to manually re-scale, if you insist on using the existing shot. For every such clip. ”
It is not a question of changing the size or scale of the clip I don’t think. When I changed the sequence settings as per David’s suggestion, the dimensions of the canvas itself changed, creating that letterbox-like look as seen in the photo I affixed.

[Mark Suszko]

“David, I’m in Los Angeles. Why do you ask?”

To see if you’re Canadian, because you’re starting to sound like you might be Ryan’s alt.

I don’t think there’s anything left to discuss here. You’ve made your position pretty clear. Best of luck to you.

[David Roth weiss]

Marc,

The fact is, you’ve been using FCP improperly for years and on many projects, and thus you don’t know what you’re been missing all this time, and so you’re unwilling to do the necessary work to get things straightened out. I get it, you’re a proud independent creative dude, and you’ve relied on your own logic, instincts, and anecdotal evidence throughout your life in all of your creative endeavors, so it’s hard to change now.

Well, I’ve encountered and fixed these issues oodles of times, I’ve also worked for oodles of folks throughout my 40+ years in Hollywood who ask for my expert help, but then fail to listen, instead relying on their own logic, instincts, and anecdotal experience, so I’m wise enough and experienced enough to know when it’s time to say good night and good luck.

So, I wish you the best of luck in this and in all your future endeavors.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Marc Israel]

Hey fellas,
David: “you’re a proud independent creative dude, and you’ve relied on your own logic, instincts, and anecdotal evidence throughout your life in all of your creative endeavors, so it’s hard to change now.”
Mark “ You’ve made your position pretty clear. “

I’m not sure I recognize the guy you are describing as the person I see in bathroom mirror everyday. Maybe it just needs a good cleaning (it’s too close to the sink and water regularly splashes up, creating a kind of grime over time). We all know it can be challenging at times to express…things, whether they be highly technical or highly emotional, through writing. If I have given the impression that I am not open to change, or that I have ANY firm position on this topic, then I’ve failed with my words. I have been open to the idea of changing the sequence settings, enough to begin to do exactly that, to see how it might work, to employ the workflow. What I ran into was the issue with the framing of the image, represented in the photo I attached several posts back. As recent as my last email, I was reporting on the inability to solve that problem, hoping for further instruction. The fix that you offered, Mark, unfortunately wasn’t applicable to the actual issue and it otherwise was not addressed.

You guys have been exceedingly generous with your time and thoughts, and so if you wanna clear this thread and head for greater vistas, we can end it here. I am not “unwilling” to do what needs to be done, at least not certain things: I can consider changing all sequence settings, for example, but…starting the whole project over, on the other hand, is simply out of the question because I can’t do that, it’s literally not earthly possible for several practical reasons, which I tried my best to explain. AND, if the issue truly IS the sequence settings, not matter how much work that would take to reset, it would still be eons less work than starting from scratch. And so I simply want to understand all of what’s involved, and also part of what I was last expressing was that there have been multiple diagnosis projections on this lowly populated thread, each with their own implications and troubleshooting workflow and there does seem room for reasonable doubt, at least within my own brain’s chemistry, because of how all things ad up or don’t. But, as said, I must do something, and I’m trying to go the sequence settings route, for starters, but have immediate run into a snag I can’t fix.

[Marc Israel]

Ok I just reread some of pervious posts, and can understand well enough the portrait painted of stubborn, in-denial, defiant-in-the-face-of-facts filmmaker because of my own past inbred blissful ignorance, yes ok I concede there’s that aspect. But I’ve also been digesting, even with the bitter taste, the tonics you two talk of, taking in the flavor without wholly vomiting from the innate agitation produced from the flammable mix therein. But I can’t get past the letterboxing…