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Green Screen of Death
Okay, just a little Microsoft reference for you all…
Now the real problem. Sorry for the long post – please bear with me.
(also posted at Apple FCP discussion group)System:
FCP Suite 1 (FCP 5.something)
Macbook Pro (original version, 1 dual core), 2 gig RAM
Lacie BigDisk 1TB RAID 0 via eSATA card, 23″ display
Canopous (or ADC?) firewire box driving a Sony 13″ broadcast monitor.
latest version of Tiger, recent software update (within the last month)Almost done with a a roughly 90 min sequence. 4 cams, multiclip edit, sequence has been collapsed & nested. Sequence is rendered (wouldn’t play reliably with the color correction without rendering). All was well until last night. I dropped in some sweetened audio and stated laying in titles. Titles are text from FCP’s text generator, laid over a cropped & positioned graphic (scanned a page, imported the TIFF into FCP).
At about 10 min. into the show, the video under the graphics began to turn green. Deleted the graphics & the video faded either to black, and/or lost chroma. Undid my steps (back to the original rendered video) and all was well. Redid graphics. Same problem. Matched back to the original footage. That clip came up black, would not play, gave all signs of being a corrupted clip. Earlier portions of the timeline how no problem with or without graphics. Problems does not appear to be related to the sweetened audio clips, either.
Now I’m at a loss. I restarted both FCP and the computer. Still no joy. The bad video spans cuts in the original (un-nested) sequence. When I get home again, my next step is to look at the master clips in Quicktime.
Might this be another “upgrading to the latest QT breaks FCP” issue? Have the original clips been corrupted (AVID used to do this all the time with certain OS/version combinations). Reloading a bunch of Beta SP clips to recreate the multicam edit would be a major drag (but doable).
I throw myself upon the mercies of The Cow.
Jeff M.
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6 Replies
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One thing to do before troubleshooting… maybe take that last full render, export as a self-contained Quicktime, and bring that back in. Otherwise it’s rendering your titles, plus whatever CC and stuff you have in the nest. In my experience – nesting can really foul things up. Plus this will give you a quicktime backup in case things do go bad.
Now try delete all your FCP prefs. Relaunch and see if that fixed the problem.
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Hi Aaron.
Good idea. I’ll also go look at the original (un-nested) sequence again. One of the reasons I nested in the first place (I don’t normally do that) was to apply some “global” correction to certain sections (a show choir “pops” show with great stage lighting (and horrible for video!)).
Should I use FCP rescue? or just trash the prefs & restart?
Jeff M.
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personally i’d just trash and restart. it won’t take long to get your settings back, and i think it’s good practice to run through the setup menus thoroughly from time to time.
or FCP rescue works too!
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Well…
– Trashed prefs, restarted. No change.
– Made new project, copied sequence into new project. No change.
– Exported the section with the problems to a self-contained QT, replaced the affected section in the timeline. Problem gone.The affected media played fine in QT. Played fine in FCP until putting the titles on. Then the corrupted bits stayed corrupted even after removing the titles.
Anyway, problem solved for now. Can’t wait to do Act 2!
Thanks, Aaron. Anyone else with a thought welcome to weigh in.
Jeff M.
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Are you using FCP’s built in text generator or Boris “Title 3D?” The built in text generator is weak, and only there for legacy. Title 3D is much better, more robust, and could possibly save you this trouble. 🙂
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
Yea, I know the FCP title tool is weak (so is Avid’s title tool). These were pretty simple titles, so it was okay. I’m used to getting real titles from a graphics department, so I still have to find the time to dig into Boris or Live Type.
As far as this particular problem, I’m leaning toward some flaky media being the culprit, as the problem hasn’t occurred on any other section of the sequence.
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