Hair raising_output is a mess, not what was edited_FAQs?

[Aaron Neitz]

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

Final cut 4.5 was very stable.

[David Roth weiss]

[S.E. Ball] “I try and explain Random Access Memory and Software Only based editing.
The unstability of this program affects my credibility.”

Sherwood,

Neither of these things is germaine to the issues you’re having. Random access memory does not mean it randomly changes things in memory or in your apps. It simply means that when you turn your computer off the information stored in RAM is no longer there when you start the computer up again. All computers work this way. And software based editing does not mean haphazard quess work editing. Many of us actually use FCP to do broadcast and film work at the very highest levels, that would not be possible if everyone had the issues you’ve been having.

Your issues are either related to pilot error or to your older version of FCP, or both. I would recommend that you upgrade to FCP Studio and/or consider hiring someone more familiar with FCP to help sort out your difficulties. I’ll be available next week when I’m done with the feature documentary I’m cutting.

DRW

[Ron James]

This is why FCP gets such a bad rap, b/c so many people using it don’t have a clue what they’re doing!

I recommend you hire someone ASAP to come in and go through FCP with you and/or get your project out by deadline. Then, learn the software. It’s sophisticated stuff, despite the stupid claims by people who want to sell you things that say “it’s so easy!!” b/c it’s not so easy, as you can see. It’s pretty easy to start bungling things up.

Don’t mean to sound harsh, but how can you come on lashing out about something you clearly don’t know??? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

FCP has been rock solid for me lately, but I’ve been using successfully since version 1 without dramatic episodes.

BTW, locking does indeed lock the track. I’m not sure what you’re doing.

[Shane Ross]

I’m with Reel on this. It sounds like you have no idea how to use the software. If you do, I apologize, but your odd post (is that some sort of iambic pentameter?) is really not clear at all. But by the way I read the post, you don’t know how FCP really works.

It comes with a set of tutorials that you really should do.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Shane Ross]

OK…reading your other posts in this forum it appears that you might be familiar with editing, but with another application…Avid. FCP is not an Avid, and really does a lot of things differently. Again, the tutorials would be a great place to have started. All the posts suggest that you didn’t really know how FCP works….and you really need to know your tools.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Ron James]

Again, I really don’t mean to sound harsh. I do FCP training and am actually the most patient person in the world, but I also encounter too much negative attitude from people who badmouth FCP without really knowing much about it.

Please explain your problem(s) more clearly, b/c I’d honestly like to help you out, if I can.

What do you mean, first, by things coming out different than they should? Do you mean different clips are playing than what’s in your timeline, or you’re getting some kind of artifacting?

[Sherwood Ball]

Gentlemen,
Thank you for your willingness to help.

Here are some examples of the anamolies that have happened:

Interviewee starts talking, after a few seconds cut to photographs,
headlines, reenactments, so I can tighten the audio dialog rambling.
Lock the track when finished.

Create opacity fade up and fade downs on a headline with an
overlap into another viz clip.
Lock track

Save.

Next day open project.

Audio dialog shows the same regions cut, but the content has been
shifted to another portion of the interview.

Headline is not black frames because for some reason in the Motion tab
the opacity changes are further down the timeline.

When nesting, when you open the nest and edit, then save and close,
later on playing back of the nest clips off ends of dialog phrases,
yet when you open the nest and play the elements in the timeline,
no clipping of dialog.

If I wasn just the producer on this feature, I would think it was
pilot error and hire someone else.

Gentlemen, I have read the tutorials, I have watched tutorials
and edited several projects, but could not pin this down.
I enlisted the services of my close friend long time professional
working editor for major film company trailers, etc.
He has experienced the same problems of filter settings shifting
down the timeline, audio clips being cut off, viz clips turned to
black and so forth.

I believe it was Shane that suggested the most realistic workaround,
export to QT, put the QT’s in a new sequence and then export to
Compressor.

Unfortunately, without this knowledge we submitted a very profound,
poignant documentary to Sundance that looks like a monkey edited it.
I just pray that the DVD burn WON’T play on their system and
that we can submit a vhs with the fixes.

I spent 120 days straight, 16 hours a day editing this puppie,
so I know the command keys, the filters and have learned a few things
from the generous folk here at the Cow.

Is there some button I missed that keeps the elements steadfast?
I have even exported my dialog edits into an .aif and reimported
it to avoid this slippage weirdness.

I apologize for coming off too strong.
I want this to work. I have not cut on Avid.
I have overseen many edits on Avid, Media 100, & FCP
as a director and producer.
Fortunately, I made the leap three years ago doing mostly
one minute spots and short form.

What I meant by using the incorrect term of Random Access Memory
is the nature of computers using pathways to the source material
instead of linearly, hence non-linear.

I encountered this same difficulty with regions shifting
in the beginning of hard disk recording for audio until it became
more stable years later.

I hope this helps clarify what’s been happening.
If I wasn’t the producer on this, I certainly would have been
fired for these anamolies.

Sherwood

G5 Dual 2.5 GHz
4G Ram OSX4.6
Sata drives
Final Cut Pro 4.5HD, Logic Audio 7.1
PS CS2, AE CS2

[Sherwood Ball]

BTW, made the upgrade to 5.1.1 three weeks ago.

G5 Dual 2.5 GHz
4G Ram OSX4.6
Sata drives
Final Cut Pro 4.5HD, Logic Audio 7.1
PS CS2, AE CS2

[Boyd Mccollum]

Sherwood,

a couple of thoughts that may help:

[S.E. Ball] “When nesting, when you open the nest and edit, then save and close,
later on playing back of the nest clips off ends of dialog phrases,
yet when you open the nest and play the elements in the timeline,
no clipping of dialog.”

just finished up a doc where I nested the different chapters and ran into a similar problem – and a search of the cow helped me from having a melt down! It appears FCP (at least 5.0.4) needs you to force render the nest for the changes you make inside the nest to update. What I do, after I close the nest, is manually bring the opacity of the nest to 0 then move it back to 100%. You should see redlines come up on the render status bar. Select the nest and Cmd+R to render the nest. The edits you made are now updated.

As for some of your other problems, have you tried trashing your pref files? You can do a search and find where you can download FCP Rescue to help with that.

Also, you might have a corrupt render file somewhere. You could trash all your render files and rerender everything to see if this helps. (Don’t forget your audio render files as well). While you’re at it, you might want to trash all your cache files (thumbnail and waveform).

It’s also possible that you have a corrupt project file. Have you been doing “save as” on your project file as you’ve been going along? If so, try and open an earlier version and see if you have the same issues, or open up one of your Autosave files (though that may not help depending how long this has been going on.)

A couple of other things to look at – how big is your project file, what format are you exporting from, do you have mixed formats on your timeline, how much disk space you have, etc. Did the problem start once you upgraded? And did you upgrade from 4.5HD to 5.1 or 5.0 to 5.1? Eventually the problem will probably turn out to be something relatively minor, i.e, some corrupt file or incompatibility, etc. – FCP itself is pretty solid.

As an aside, I’m not sure what your workflow is, but from rough cut on, I usually create dvds along the way (more so as I near the end) – I like to get a feel for how my film is going to play on a large screen tv (as the audience will probably see it) and it helps me polish the film. It also lets me know if I’m running into crazy issues like you’ve been having. I hope you get it worked out.

Boyd
“Go slow to go fast”

[Ron James]

Nesting could be your problem. I personally never use nests unless for a very specific purpose (motion effects, etc). I don’t think you should ever edit sequences within nests, aside from tweaks here and there. I’m not sure if nest updating is still a problem, but in previous versions you would tweak then (this is what I’d do, anyway) yank the opacity slider down and back up again on your Nest, which would force everything to update.

What I would do first off is copy everything inside the nest and paste it into a new, empty sequence, finish all your editing of this sequence *outside* of the nest.

I’m unclear what your purpose is for using the nest?