HELP! Weird FCP Launch Problem!

[Tony Brittan]

I just tried to re-open the project that this is from and now it’s also looking for the same thing but with a “1” at the end. They are 2 files I didn’t actually use in the project and the original clips have since been removed from the project. What gives?

[Steve Eisen]

FCP is looking for render files. What you thought to be self-contained movies, are actually reference movies.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Tony Brittan]

Actually, the files that I moved around had nothing to do with this particular file. I just got off the phone with Apple support and when we change my scratch disk to another location, it opens fine. I never even touched the scratch folders for this particular file! She told me that I would have to re-aquire that footage and recreate it then, delete if if I want it to stop, or use a new scratch folder.

Isn’t there a way to tell FCP not to look for that render file? Weirdest thing is that even if I’m not dealing with that project at all, it’s still looking for it. Even if I close all projects, close FCP and reopen it to an untitled project, it still looks for it!

Any ideas?

[Tony Brittan]

OK…assuming this is the case, and I don’t have a matching file, how can I make FCP forget about this render file? I’ve tried re-creating the files, putting them into a timeline and rendering them to force a render file with this name and that didn’t work. I found a render file with the same name but a “3” instead of a “2” at the end so I’ve copied it to my desktop, renamed it to the name of the file that it’s looking for, and when it asks me to search for it, it will find the file (the only one not greyed out), I select it and it moves on. When it actually opens the program, it does it again. I saved it, closed FCP and opened it again only to find the exact same thing! I don’t want to have to change my scratch folder but I think that might be the only thing I can do. If I need to open any projects from the old scratch folder it’s going to run me through this again.

Any ideas?

[Michael Black fcp]

Not sure how to fix this exactly. Did you trash the prefs and all that?

In the future, you should use the media manager when doing something like this, so that all the necessary files get copied over and saved.

[Tony Brittan]

Yea, I did all the usual stuff with trashing prefs and what-not. Changing the scratch disk location works but I have a few projects in the old location that I need to work on from time to time. I use media manager when I want to archive the whole project. For yesterdays purpose, I simply exported native quicktime, self-contained, and saved the finished movie. Then I went in and deleted the folders that contained old projects as well as the actual project files.

The strange thing here is that the file that’s causing the problem is in a project that I didn’t touch and there were no stray files existing in any other project stuff that I dumped. In fact, these are render files that are in a project that I haven’t messed with in a while at all. And when I go in to the render manager after getting this project to open, it doesn’t have a folder listed for this particular sequence at all. It was called “Lines” and that was taken out of the project months ago.

[Tony Brittan]

Update…the only thing that works to fix this is to create a new scratch folder on my media drive, change all the scratch settings…including waveform, thumbnail, and autosave vault settings…to the new scratch folder and it all seems to work fine.

I dunno…maybe there is a corruption in the old scratch folder location or something.

While I was typing this, I had an idea…I changed the regular scratch folder back to the one it was using, left the Autosave vault in it’s original location (on the system drive in Final Cut Pro Documents) and then changed the waveform cache and thumbnail cache from their original locations (both in the same folder as where the Autosave was at…the default install location on system drive / Final Cut Pro Documents) to the scratch location on my media drive where all the other scratch stuff has been living and it seems to have fixed the problem. Must be something with either the waveform or thumbnail caches!

Can you clear those caches? Am I going to run into problems with the way I’ve got it set up?

Either way, maybe this thread can help someone in the future. I rarely post here but scour this forum every day. So far this is my first problem I had to bring to the table but many posts I’ve read in the past have helped me before I ever even get to the problems so thank you all!

Tony Brittan
islandshoreproductions.com

[Tony Brittan]

OK…that is until you try to open the project with the offending file in it! I did that with the new settings and it’s happening all over again.

Never a dull moment!

[Dennis Leppell]

delete the waveform and thumbnail folders from your scratch disk, and blast ALL render files with the render manager thru FCP. Empty trash, and you should be done.
IF it comes back again, click the “forget” checkbox when it tells you the file is missing, and you should be good.

[Tony Brittan]

I’ve narrowed it down to the Thumbnail Cache. If I delete the info inside that folder, all is well until I open the project with the missing render file in it. If I have to open that project, it will cause the problem again. Maybe I should use Media Manager to create a new project from that once it’s open.

Thank you all again! You rock.