In need of assistance. My nearly completed feature film won’t load in FCPX!!!

[T. Payton]

[Michael Hadley] “You say your event is 400 mb?”

Oh that is just the database file. currentevent.fcpevent

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Richard Herd]

[Marcus Hardy] “This is the problem I discovered and will lead me to NOT use compound clips as often in the future for feature work. Compound clips being virtual clips and not actual physical clips, results in anything in FCPX that was in a compound clip and associated and located in that event becomes unreachable. You are unable to open the compound clip and peer inside, and because their is no physical media as far as FCPX is concerned, you cannot relink it to an event that DOES have all the media.”

Sorry you had to learn the lesson, but thanks for sharing!

[Charlie Austin]

[Richard Herd] “You are unable to open the compound clip and peer inside, and because their is no physical media as far as FCPX is concerned, you cannot relink it to an event that DOES have all the media.””

And this is why I won’t use CC’s for versioning either. There’s a bunch of people who, in trying to make X more like 7, are shouting far and wide to cut everything in CC’s. In this way they can mimic other NLE’s where sequences live in your “project” with all your media. I like having a separate Project Library, and this is another reason to use X like X. 🙂

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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~

[Marcus Hardy]

Greetings all, been a hell of a week.

We figured it out. With the gracious assistance of T. Payton I might add.

After learning about the SQLite error, I researched it and found a couple forum posts complaining about a similar issue. They claimed that they were able to open it after a long time, say 8 hours. So following their advice, I did the same and sure enough it did indeed open, albeit incredibly slow, and laggy. Took me 5 minutes between each click. But here is what I did that helped me over come the dreaded offline compound clips.

Once open, I first made a new Event, on a separate hard drive, then, in my problem event I made a smart collection, and set it to find all compound clips in the event. Then after 20 minutes of beachballing, all my compound clips popped up, offline of course. Then I selected each of them and dragged them to the new event. once they appeared in the new event I quit final cut.

Then using event manager x, I moved all events and projects offline. And then proceeded to boot final cut immediately with a new event. Then I located all my media attached to the problem event and dragged it into the new event. But only as references, to keep down on space. Finally keeping my problem event offline, I proceeded to launch FCPX, and in three minutes flat, it launched and to my marvel, all my media and those damn compound clips came back online.

Now I don’t know how this fixed it exactly, but its what worked for me.

As maintenance I’m now in the process of eliminating the compound clips that are no longer in use, which also is helping bring down the database size.

Also, be warned that certain plug-ins store their data inside the event database, mainly coremelt products. This doesn’t mean they are bad products, the opposite exact, but just be careful with how heavily you use them.

Thank you again for everyone to help out with this, I don’t know if I would have been able to figure this all out if it weren’t for the cow. Thanks everybody! If you are ever in Calgary Alberta Canada, I’ll buy you a drink!

Cheers,

Marcus Hardy

[Michael Lebor]

Can anyone explain his in a slightly more step by step for idiots way? I am 1000 miles from the computer that originally created the project and all of my compound clips are offline.

Marcus had led me to believe I can solve this but I can’t follow these instructions…

[Marcus Hardy]

Hi Michael,

Sorry you are having problems. I know how frustrating it can be.

The issue I had with my film was that I had made compound clips of each and every stage of my film, from assembly through to locked. As well as compound clips of compound clips to merge VFX shots down into one.

This is why I was having issues. Because my final locked time line was nothing but compound clips. I couldn’t reconnect the media. Compound Clips are virtual clips, they dont have a reference anywhere.

So in order to fix it, you have to be uber patient.

To fix it, it took me 5+ hours to load FCPX with the problem event loaded.

Once it was loaded, I cautiously and meticulously made a smart collection that summoned every compound clip in the event.

Once this loaded, I hit command A to select all the compound clips.

I then created a new event (you can do this beforehand, its faster) and dropped them onto the new event.

Once they appeared. I quit FCPX.

I then took just the problem event offline using Event Manager X.

I left the project online.

Finally, I moved the media that was associated with the problem event over to the new event. I just did it as references, but you can physically move them if you prefer.

Finally I booted FCPX with the new event and the old project.

This is what I did that fixed the problem.

I cannot explain how it fixed it, and I can’t say it’ll work for your situation. But hopefully its a bit more eligible.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Marcus Hardy

[Michael Lebor]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for getting back to me – Sadly I seem to fall at the first instruction, which is make a smart collection and make it “summon every smart collection in the event”. I can’t seem to select a filter for compound clips… or find on the web how to do this!

After a restless night still have no solution. Your solution sounds like it may work for mine. I’ll be a little clearer;

All of my media, project folders, event folders, render folders etc etc are all on one disk image within an external hard drive. As far as I am aware there are no other reference files for the project on the computer I created the project on, they should all be contained within this one Disk Image.

Now I am 1000 miles away from the computer that created the project with the hard drive and Disk Image with everything supposedly on it. Yet when I open up FCPX on another computer, the compound clips are offline.

All of the media is online but the compound clips are offline and cannot be expanded. My entire timeline is a compound clip as that is how i used the workflow to create older versions of edits that I might need to go back to.

[Marcus Hardy]

Hi Michael,

To summon compound clips you gotta be a little creative.

In previous versions of FCPX, I had to create a smart collection that searched for files called ‘compound’ If you simply created the compound clips without renaming them this should summon them.

However, a much easier way is to create a smart collection.

In the edit menu for the smart collection, select from the plus drop down menu ‘Clip Type’

Then it should present a string of commands to the degree of ‘Clip is/isn’t and then a list of all the clip types, first being audition, then compound, then multi cam and layered graphic.

Select the ‘compound’ option.

From there, if you are having the same issues as I was, you’ll have to wait, a long while, for them all to generate.

However once you do, you should be able to follow my previous instructions.

Sorry if I wasn’t more clear earlier, I forgot that workarounds I figured out aren’t universally known.

Hope this helps!

Marcus Hardy

[Michael Lebor]

Hi Marcus,

Call me a lsow learner… but I really can’t get past the first hurdle…

“In the edit menu for the smart collection, select from the plus drop down menu ‘Clip Type'”

I CAN CREATE A NEW SMART COLLECTION… BUT CANNOT FIND ANYWHERE AN OPTION TO FILTER IT BY COMPOUND CLIPS – The only drop down menu I can see is to select between “all clips”, “hide rejected”, “no ratings or key words” ETC ETC – none of them mention compound clips…

Then it should present a string of commands to the degree of ‘Clip is/isn’t and then a list of all the clip types, first being audition, then compound, then multi cam and layered graphic.

Select the ‘compound’ option.

SO I CAN”T EVEN GET THIS FAR…. if I highlight the new smart collection and go to the “edit” menu, no such options are available there either…

[Marcus Hardy]

Ah, I think I see the problem.

To access the filtering options for smart collections you have to double click on them.

A pop up HUD menu should appear. From there my instructions should make sense.