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Oh No It Didn’t… Did FCP Just Delete My Media?!
After wading through countless posts about basic problems with reconnecting media and using media manager….
I have a project with a sequence that just went 90% offline. I’m using a quad-core MacPro running FCP 6.0.5 and OS 10.5.5, with all my media sitting on a 2nd Generation Drobo via FireWire800. Things have been good. I was working on this project this morning before getting ready for a shoot in our studio. Since the MacPro shares the same space, I went ahead and shut it down, and after a few minutes unplugged the Drobo (it’s lights were already off, only the fan was running). I do this all the time to keep things quiet in the studio during shooting.
So after lunch, it was time to get back to editing. I plugged the Drobo back in, let it warm up for half a minute, then turned on the MacPro. I get into the project and everything looks fine in my timeline. I didn’t scrub through, but there were no “Media has gone offline” warnings and the clips themselves looked okay. Then I selected an audio track I wanted to send to SoundTrack Pro (right click, send to>Soundtrack Pro Multitrack Project), specified where I wanted the projectName(sent).stap to go, and then it gave the warnings.
It said it couldn’t find a certain clip (BRL_Hallway.mov), which had nothing to do with the VO_Jason.wav files I was sending to Soundtrack, so I hit cancel, it then wanted me to locate some video render file, to which I hit cancel as well. Then it said “Error sending selection to Soundtrack Pro”. Hitting okay gave me another window: “General Error (34)”.
After that, 90% of my media in the timeline suddenly changed to “Media offline”. Oh, the horrid redness! All the clips that went offline were .mov files from either a flash card or captured from tape, except for one. And that one .mov clip that didn’t go offline is not dissimilar from the others in any way shape or form. Even inspecting it in Quicktimes HUD, there’s no funky frame rate or anything. It has a time remap applied to it and a 3-way color corrected, but most of the other clips have that, too.
So I go digging through finder for them. I knew exactly where they should be (I stay VERY well organized), and to my surprise they were all gone! Every single offline file was missing. It hadn’t been moved, they hadn’t been renamed (I’d recognize an out-of-place file), and there was nothing in the trash. I’d at least expect a corrupted file that I couldn’t open, but I didn’t even have that! They were just gone!
Any ideas at all? I’m going to start looking through some other projects to see if any media might also be offline.
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5 Replies
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Quite FCP without saving. Rebooted. Checked in Finder. Drobo shows up. Did a quick search for a couple missing clips and couldn’t find them. Opened Disk Utility and Drobo is recognized there.
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Shut down FCP — and don’t save the project.
Reboot the computer.
Now, see what’s cooking with the Drobo in the Finder without running FCP or any other apps. Does your media show up? Report back.
Open Apple Disk Utility and see if the Drobo shows up. Does it? Report back.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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The first thing I’d do in you case is fix permissions in the Apple Disk Utility. However, given that Drobo is a relatively new product, and frankly I’m not familiar with any of their proprietary software or hardware requirements, you should call them before doing anything else Michael. They may have seen this on their systems and might have a fix special to their hardware. I’ll help you with normal protocols if you need help after first checking with Drobo. BTW, let them know you’re a member of the Cow, as Cow advertisers they should most likely give you priority service.
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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FCP just doesn’t delete media all by itself. The second G Drobo is not meant to be used as a scratch disc.
If you indeed had your media stored on the Drobo, the only way to delete files is to manually put them in the trash. If one of your hard drives failed, it would have repaired it or asked you to replace.
Something isn’t kosher.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
Quick update for anyone who was following:
We ended up finding the old files (before they were copied and renamed for better organization) in the Final Cut Server library, and were able to recopy, reconnect, and rename them. Luckily, FCSvr had a backup of each file in the library. We’re in the process of altering our workflow which adds the step of checking in a project with bundled assets at the end of every day, and checking it back out in the mornings. This eliminates the need to us the drobo as anything other than a purely background device. I’ll be installing a newly ordered 750GB drive in the MacPro to mirror an existing 750GB drive with a RAID setup in Disk Utility.
Sheesh….
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