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Help! Final Cut Pro 7 file totally messed up 5 hours later
Hey folks!
I’ve been working on a university Mac computer (public with personal login) with Final Cut Pro 7 on it.
Yesterday afternoon, I was ALMOST done with a 55 minute long film that I’ve worked on for countless hours. I opened it at 2pm, made some edits to the soundtrack, saved and logged out. When I logged in and opened it back up at 7pm, two media files were offline (don’t know why) including a render sequence (couldn’t locate the render file to reconnect it…not sure where it saves, plus I dont think I rendered anything??).
The project itself was really peculiar, it was totally missing my most recent sequences. Some of the sequences were strange, too. For example, I have a media file Vid9.avi. A now-mislabled sequence made of 20+ small clips still played back as such in the canvas, but was displayed as a continous clip named Vid9.avi, though not all of the clips were even from that file.
Also, there was a warning sign (yellow triangle with !) on some of the clips in the canvas. On those clips, the bright areas had diagonal flashing lines. Others had a green circle with a check. This was the first time those had appeared, and I couldn’t find answers in the help section.
Also, my user preferences were for autosaving, but it claimed there were no files in the autosave vault when I tried restoring it. Plus! I had emailed myself a file for backup a few days earlier. Since emailing myself that file, I had made considerable changes. Yet, when I opened it up in FCP it appeared just as the one saved on the harddrive did. Thinking it was a computer issue, I logged onto a different computer, and tried opening up the emailed file there with the same effect.
If it’s helpful to know, I was using AVI files captured previously from a digital HI8 camcorder.
After looking at some suggestion sites for corrupt files, I tried the method of closing all the sequences, taking the media offline, saving as a new file, reconnecting the media. No difference.
My mind is blown. A virus you think? I’d be surprised though because it seems like MIT scans things alot. Any help would be super super appreciated, because it looks like I’m going to have to start the project over (while in grad school, pain in my tush!)
Thanks!!
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9 Replies
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Hi Kel,
When you drop an AVI file in FC is at your risk.
AVI is not one of the media supported format FC.
It ay work, or may crash, but don’t blame FC.
You better use MPGStreamclip and transcode the file.
Cheers,
rafael -
Doesn’t sound like a media file, corruption or virus issue Kel … sounds rather more like the shared workstation you were using has an issue with its setup for working with FCP. Check to see if your project’s saves and autosaves are actually on the local drive of the shared computer you were using rather than your network home folder … visa versa. Hopefully this is a simple issue of not looking in the right location rather than an network administration/permissions issue whereby your changes were not permanently recorded.
Good luck
Andy -
Thanks so much for your help guys!
I ended up searching and FOUND the autosave vault finally, so I was able to use that file! Just saved me SO MUCH WORK!! Thank you thank you thank you!!
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Hey there–
since yall were helpful before, thought I’d pick your brains again…how do i get rid of the yellow triangle and lines in the canvas? i think it has something to do with rendering…
night out help -
The exclamation point and diagonal lines mean you have “Range Check” activated. Press ctrl-z to get rid of that. That is just to warn you if you have colors that are illegal for broadcast.
Your scratch disk (for Render Files) and the location of your autosave is user configurable, so if somebody else modified this on your edit station, that could account for why you can’t find the auto save.
I would try using the finder to location your autosaves. Just search “autosave” to pull up all the autosave folders you might have, and go trolling for a file name that roughly matches your project.
The odds of this being a virus are next to none, though it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try repairing disk permissions in the disk utility. Also, as Rafeal mentioned, AVIs perform horribly in FCP and we’d all urge you to use mpeg streamclip to convert it to an MOV. DV/DVCPRO compression will probably be your best bet. DO NOT use h.264 or photo jpeg.
Do you keep a copy of your project on a flash drive, or are they saved to the mac’s local hard drive? If they are kept on the macs hard drive, it’s not entirely inconceivable that somebody may have opened your project, accidentally screwed with your project. Closed (and saved in the process) and left you with a messed up project. This happened left and right to people when I was in college. Hope any of this helps.
Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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press Control Z
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Thanks guys!
I’m going to transcode it–the triangles went away and all.
Appreciate your help! -
[Kel Miller] ”
how do i get rid of the yellow triangle and lines in the canvas? i think it has something to do with rendering… “
Hi Kel,
Those questions belong to the Basic Forum.
You should spend a bit of time with the FC manual. is great.
Cheers,
rafael -
Just want to say thanks for this information. I was just about to spend the whole day recreating an edit as my FCP project file wouldn’t open. When I thought I may as well I searche for help, and as usual come across Creative Cow.
I noticed that the point where it would open (the auto-save version that would open – from 2 days earlier) was just prior to importing an AVI file….. so
I deleted the offending AVI files at your advice, – plus a few others for the sake of it, and I was then finally able to open my latest FCP project. Yippee – you’ve saved me a few tears and many hours extra shifts at midnight.Bad AVI.
Thanks!
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