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Reel information disappears when using Raid 1 G-Safe drve
I am assistant editing on an independent feature shot on the 5D and am working on a MacBook Pro in FCP 6. The footage has already been transcoded to Apple ProRes on a 2 TB G-Safe, Raid 1 drive, which has two mirrored hard drives raided together to appear as one.
Yesterday I went through every clip we shot and, while in the browser, added “Reel” information to each one, in preparation for our eventual online edit. As I continued working, saving as I went along and with FCP auto-saving every half hour, there where no issues. At the end of the day, I had to do some drive housekeeping, and moved my original capture scratch folder, but kept it on the same G-Safe drive. I re-opened FCP to make sure everything was okay, and there seemed to be no issues, everything was online.
But when I came in the next day all of my Reel information was gone. I checked the actual media files on the drive, and none of them had any of the “reel” information. I opened an autosaved copy of the project, and it had all the “reel” information, but ALL the clips where offline. I assumed that had to do with me moving the location of the original capture scratch. So i tried to re-link everything, but when I did, I lost all my reel information. So I shut down FCP, moved the capture scratch back to its original folder from the day before, and opened the project again. And again, the “Reel” information was gone, in the regular project and the autosaved project.
Assuming I did something wrong, I re-did my previous days work, adding reel names to each and every clip, again. During the course of the day I had to shut everything down and restart my system, and when I went back to work, I saw that all of my “reel” information was gone, again. I did not move/change/do anything to the media this time. The “reel” info just disappeared.
Editing the “reel” information in FCP alters the actual meta data in the quicktime file itself, and I can not figure out a way that it could all disappear overnight while the computer is off or while I restart.Has anyone encountered this problem before in FCP? Is it even possible for the “reel” information to come and go, if FCP warns you every time you change it that it will effect the actual clip itself? changing it once should be forever, in any program I open it in, correct?
The only logical explanation I can think of is an issue with the mirrored drives on the G-Safe thinking that the altered clips on one of the mirrored drives are not “identical” to those same clips on the other mirrored drive. Has anyone ever had or heard of any issues like this with mirrored drives?
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7 Replies
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How did you originally transcode the footage?
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Originally I used Mpeg Streamclip to transcode all the footage into Apple ProRes (regular, not HQ).
I also have noticed that when I manually change the reel number in the browser, the “modified date” column does not change to the current date and time like it is supposed to if i am really changing the meta data in the quicktime. I also checked the clips themselves in the finder, and there modified dae has not been updated either.
Could this have to do with not using Log and Transfer when I originally brought the clips in? Or could it have something to do with me not using FCP to transcode them? -
No, modifying the file should work. I don’t think it would be your hard drive either.
Drag one of the qt files to your desktop, import it in to a test bin in fcp, modify the reel name ( in the browser) and see if it sticks. That would indicate if it’s the drive.
If that doesn’t work, trash your prefs.
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It could be that MPEG Streamclip is not creating the metadata tags (for lack of a better term) properly when it does the transcode. The AJA Ki Pro has that problem so we have to transcode all our Ki Pro footage same as source before we start working with it.
On a short clip I’d test using FCP or Compressor to create the ProRes file and see if that one can be properly modified.
-Andrew
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1) -
Great thinking, Andrew. That was fixed in FCP 7.0.2 or so i thought.
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I don’t think it’s the storage per se…
TC/Reel info lives in TWO places.
In the QT itself, AND in the project.
This makes sense. If it was not in the project, it would be impossible to re-capture / export XML if the files are not online.
(remember the first versions of Premiere where this was the case. Loose mediadrive, start editing again…)So indeed after changing tc / reel info, the mediafile must have an updated file modification time. If not, FCP only updated it’s own database.
Reasons for that could be too long pathnames, or network storage.
(Not sure in this case. I do know for sure there is a bug in QT, changing TC info on some network drives can make clips corrupt.)Now sometimes FCP can get confused, if the actual clip attributes (tc/reel, but also amount of video/audio tracks!) do not match original attributes in the project.
Now the solution for this:
Reconnect the media files, even if they are online!
On a reconnect, the project is updated with the actual media attributes.
(You need to club it into submission, as the files are online.
So do a search and force FCP to reconnect)For the OP:
If the file modification date is not changed, probably the clip isn’t changed. Simple to test the clips though, get QTchange from my site, it will display the TC and Reel info. (The free demo will do just fine for this)
https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/42/qtchangeIf the clips indeed are not changed, you can try if QTchange is able to do it.
(Again, the free demo will do this as well, although just on one clip at a time)
If both fail, it has to do with your drive, pathname or file permissions.
(Of course the QT’s must be write enabled)In all cases it is a good idea not to have too long pathnames / filenames, and no special characters in your pathnames.
(No idea why that is, just in my experience i’ve encountered lots of trouble coming from just this)hth,
Bouke
https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros -
Is the G Drive formatted MacOS Extended or something else?
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