Media Management and Relinking STILL messed up in FCP6??

[Kevin Hamm]

Well, I have to MM the show that I do weekly, because we import a ton of tape that we don’t use and as it’s a topical show, we don’t really need anything that wasn’t at least interesting enough to get dropped into the keepers sequence (bloopers go there, too, just for fun). So, when we’re running out of space, or I’m just up for a challenge and want to mess with my day, I fire up the Media Manager and clean out the capture bits that I don’t need.

So then, lovely things happen, I leave it be, pet the cat, etc.

And then, a while later I come back, and it’s time to open the file and see what’s happened. Now I have a ton of time remapped stuff, and it’s all because people like replays in slo-mo, and we have “talent” that likes to slow things down to show off how much they know about a sport they can’t actually play themselves. All fun to do.

And amazingly, it’s not ever had a problem for me. But there are a few things I don’t do while the MM is running.

I don’t do anything else on the computer, and I don’t have any other programs open, not safari, not mail, nothing. Because MM is using such big files and working as fast as possible, the fewer things I have touching systems it needs, like quicktime, core data, etc., means it works better.

Try running MM at night when you can leave the computer on, but nothing else is running and see if that helps.

[Bill Russell]

Well, that’s interesting. I tried making sequence clips independent in 5 and that did nothing to improve things on FCP6 import.

HOWEVER, your suggestion to try exporting and importing as XML 3 DID work… on the speed changes. That is a BIG improvement. However, interestingly enough, a bunch of clips are now scaled to 133% and at the wrong aspect (33%) — seemingly treating my anamorphic footage as if it is 4×3 letterboxed, then scaling up to fit. These clips are 100% and correctly marked anamorphic in the FCP5 program. Only some clips got scale and distorted, not all — but it is still like a fourth of my feature length project.

There are also some graphics and video with keyframed motion-tab animation that are messed up in the XML import. Mostly graphics are coming in at the wrong sizes. This option may serve me well though — if I keep a timeline of each available (one from straight import, and one from XML import) then whenever I come across a Final Cut Oops, I’ll just cut and paste from one or the other in to my new master sequence and continue working. Heh.

Of course, this is all wrong, but hey, it’s new — never seen anything like this before!

“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA” –

And more…

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Bill Russell] “I tried making sequence clips independent in 5 and that did nothing to improve things on FCP6 import. “

And how did you perform this ‘import’?

[Bill Russell] “seemingly treating my anamorphic footage as if it is 4×3 letterboxed, then scaling up to fit. These clips are 100% and correctly marked anamorphic in the FCP5 program. Only some clips got scale and distorted, not all — but it is still like a fourth of my feature length project. “

Yes, this is true. Anamorphic flags do not seem to carry over in any quicktime files. The good thing about this, is that this is really quick and easy to fix in FCP. Simply remove attributes > Scale and Distort. you can do that on multiple clips at once. Is your timeline anamorphic?

[Bill Russell] “Mostly graphics are coming in at the wrong sizes.”

How are they coming in at the wrong sizes? Are you transcoding your graphics somehow or simply relinking to the originals?

[Bill Russell]

Import —

Well, you know: I just open the project with FCP6. FCP 6 of course alerts you that it needs to update the project (and you click “Yes,” do it.)

Graphics

Seems some graphics that are sized small jump back to their huge sizes. I’ve seen this before with XMLs. I’m not doing any relinking or transcoding — they are already linked after the XML import into 6, I didn’t need to relink anything.

[Jeremy Garchow]

OK, so you haven’t tried Media Manager yet? Your terms are getting me confused.

[Ben Scott]

didnt try it as I cleverly do what apple says and only have the version 6 installed on my machine

also I have heard horror stories of multiclips and sublcips losing synch between opening version 5 and 6 projects so this is not a magic fix from apple for the media manager

it still doesnt work well

[Bill Russell]

I guess I’m not understanding the question. Are you asking in regards to the issue of FCP6 corrupting my FCP5 project? If so, no, media management was not any part of the equation this time, before, during or after. Or…

… are you asking me if I have ever media managed before on other projects? Yes, tons of times over many years. Media management in my experience results in the very same kinds of errors we are now seeing with this trans-version corruption. Seems one linking / relinking fault lies at the core of both, as well as the problems people see in XML and OMF creation — all these flows seem to be tripped up by the same linking miscalucation, one that often manifests when speed changes are encountered (or more generally, when keyframes are encountered — even static speed changes happen to be registered across the clip extent with keyframes). Fix the bug, then Apple will finally fix the linking problem in all these areas, that seems pretty clear to me. Or…

Are you wanting me to try to media manage the FCP5 project first before opening it in FCP6, as a possible solution?

I apologize! I guess we are both missing the other’s gist…

[Bill Russell]

I may see one confusion: When I say “graphics are coming in at the wrong sizes” I’m refering to the keyframed motion attributes – scaling — not as if the graphics media files themselves have changed size. No, no transcoding here. Or relinking. Or media management 🙂

“THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA” –

And more…

[Jeremy Garchow]

Alright man. We need to start over.

Tell me what exactly you have done and what you have not done. You said you went through the larry jordan article, but then you did an import. That article tells you to media manage, not import. You have also said you have exported an XML and that seems to work, the only part it screwed up was the anamorphic flags which is a super easy fix, and can probably be fixed before you relink your media. But you also said you have media managed a zillion times. I am just confused as to what you have done for this project, not your Final Cut Pro MM history.

Have you tried media managing to a higher quality codec and recapturing? Perhaps your relinking is screwing up with two different versions of FCP/QT/Whatever else. And also, as you have found out, upgrading a project has never been reccommended

Please be specific. When you say the graphics come in big, how much did their scale change by? Did anything else change such as the distort parameter, what has changed and by how much? Perhaps we can find a pattern and figure it out.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

[ben scott] “didnt try it as I cleverly do what apple says and only have the version 6 installed on my machine “

Yes, multiclips I have heard have problems, but I rarely use them so I am at a loss for that one.

Is by any chance your media 24p sd? Meaning have you captured and removed pull down so that your Sd media is actually 23.98?

[ben scott] “it still doesnt work well “

Sorry Ben, I am trying to track two different conversations here. What doesn’t work well, the XML?

Jeremy