Render files issue not fixed in FCP 6.0.2

[Matthew Abourezk]

argh…. I am running into a nasty, vile, unacceptable problem with the render files. Not sure if this is the same problem you are referring to but it sounds like it might be. I have an elaborate graphically heavy video that is pretty much complete (3 months worth of editing). I have as many as 16 tracks of video (flying graphics) and I started nesting tracks, sometimes to affect a group of items in unison, other times just to clean up the main sequence. Suddenly I started getting a problem where the Audio track would randomly decide that it needed rendering, even when there was no indication of rendering needed, and with only a few tracks of audio in the timeline. (Real time audio set to 8 tracks). I never had to nest the audio tracks since there was only a music bed and a 48khz narrative track. This problem would show up randomly, even when I was not doing anything with the audio tracks. I would go to render a small video segment which would only take a few second, then I would notice that the render dialog would say it was rendering audio and that it would take as much as 10 hours to do so. What I eventually learned (the hard way) was that the erroneous audio render was re-writing the audio tracks (which were not nested) and slipping the audio signal by as much as a few minutes. Even worse was when it would slip the audio by just a few frames. The funny thing is, after the audio render would screw up a segment of a song or the narrative, the waveform in the audio track still showed the correct placement of the audio signal….

This caused me to have to watch the project about a hundred extra times to make sure that nothing new had happened.

The other interesting thing is, I eventually mixed down the audio to a stereo track, and once in a while it would still slip a few frames (or up to a few minutes) starting from the beginning of the audio track.

I tried everything, including tossing all render files, pitching the preferences, etc…..

This is a totally unacceptable problem that needs to be addressed immediately by Apple.
I have posted a bug notice to the FCP Apple feedback page, I suggest that anyone else who is affected by this does the same.

Talkingbox Digital Media Group, Inc.
http://www.talkingboxdmg.com
(203) 327-6617