uncompressed audio

[Don Greening]

Sounds like someone dragged something to the trash they shouldn’t have, but unless I’m able to look over your shoulder anything I would suggest you look for that might be missing would just be a big fat guess. From the cluse you’ve provided my guess is something to do with your quicktime progam got lost. You’re much better off dragging the purpetrator back to your chair and finding out from him/her what folders or programming was used/opened, etc. And don’t let that person use your machine again without supervision 🙂

– Don

[Don Greening]

In case they were using FCP and fouled up the preferencees in the process, you could try trashing the pref files and restarting FCP to see if the export of your PAL movie gets done any faster.

Just another wild guess.

– Don

[Josephine]

hey don, thanks for the suggestions. i’ve actually reinstalled fcp, but it didn’t help. when you mentioned trashing preferences, are you refering to all the files under Library>Preferences?

just for the record, the ‘perpetrator’ was trying to export a short sequence, but denies having anything to do with it. 🙂

josephine

[Don Greening]

No not at all. Just certain FCP prefs, and not all those either. Um, here’s a link to doing the preference trashing properly:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html

You can also get a free program that will do the same thing for you. It’s called FCP Rescue. Just Google it an it’ll come up.

But really, after giving it more thought I’m kinda wondering if it’s more of a quicktime thing rather than a FCP thing. Once you learn how to trash the prefs for FCP you night want to have a look at the QT prefs as well. Short of that you might have to re-install QT, because of the QT components within FCP that have gone missing, such as what you were describing earlier.

– Don

[Josephine]

trashed the fcp preferences, trashed the QT preferences, reinstalled QT, and the problem persists. em, have you more suggestions? otherwise, it looks like i’ll have to live with it for a while, til im ready to wipe out everything. thanks a lot for your help though

josephine

[Don Greening]

Okay, time to get serious. I’ll need you to divulge your system hardware and software before I can go further with this. Model of Mac, hard drives connected, internal and external. What versions of FCP, Quicktime, and other pertinant info you could supply me with. What version of the Mac OS you’re running. Hopefully you have some sort of dedicated media drive you’re capturing to and you’re not using the system drive for this purpose, which is a big no no. You don’t have any active virus protection software which would interfere with the capture/exporting process. If so, turn off any “auto-protect” or “auto-scan” feature. You have journaling turned off for your media drive and that your media drive(s) is properly formatted in Mac OS Extended. Bear in mind that I can only make suggestions on possible solutions based on available information you provide. I’m trying to look over your shoulder from a long ways away.

Since I’m on the west coast of Canada I’ll check here first thing in the morning, but I’ll be away untinl sometime in the afternoon. Since you’re working in PAL format I’ll assume you’re not living in North America, so I’m just advising you of the time difference between us.

– Don

[Josephine]

thanks don. im actually in asia, and i check my mails only before going to work and when i get home. i’m a freelancer and usually edit in proper facilities, but the ‘system’ we’re talking about here is my own and i’m doing a 1/2 hr episode on it at the moment. it’s an ibook G4 OS X, ram 1.5gb. i have one external hard drive connected – Lacie D2 – which i had formatted Extended, as well as partitioned – this is for media storage. FCP5, and Quicktime version7 (reinstalled yesterday). er, no virus protection software. yet.

i doubt it’s got to do with Lacie. whether it’s connected or not, n whether my clip for export is on Lacie or my local system disk, i still get this problem. btw, how does fcp read the available codecs? where are they stored?

again, thanks!

josephine

[Don Greening]

Josephine,

Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you, but that’s another phone call 🙂

I’m pretty sure that the codecs that FCP uses are actually part of the Quicktime program. What ususally happens though, is that when a codec becomes unavailable it’s not that the codec is ‘missing’, it’s more a problem of Quicktime not recognizing other programs that need to use certain types of its codecs. For example, when I upgraded to a later version of Quicktime last year, the MPEG 2 codec had all of a sudden became unavailable in DVD Studio Pro 2. I had to do a reinstall of that program before QT would recognize it. I know this doesn’t help your present situation but perhaps now you ‘ll have a better understanding of how these pro-apps interact.

You mentioned that you’re using FCP v.5 and Quicktime 7. I’m assuming you’re also using OS 10.4, although you didn’t mention which version of OSX you’re using in your previous post. Is this correct? I’m also looking for a previous post here at Creative Cow where someone pointed to something at the Apple web site that addresses issues with pro apps not recognizing each other. So, stay tuned, I’m still on the case.

Some additional reading:

https://www.macworld.com/2005/04/features/takecontroltigerupgrade/index.php

– Don

[Josephine]

hey don

thanks for the explanation.. i never would have thought of it if you hadnt mentioned. sounds like i may have been too quick to blame someone else for the codec disappearance! as for the article.. i guess it’ll come in handy eventually if the problem is still unsolved. im just not prepared to take the risk of formatting my hard drive yet since i’ve got a project on hand.

the OS is vs 10.4 tiger. i wonder why reinstalling the programs don’t work for me.

n yes, i shall stay tuned very fervently.. it’s good to know that someone is facing this with me!

josephine

I’m pretty sure that the codecs that FCP uses are actually part of the Quicktime program. What ususally happens though, is that when a codec becomes unavailable it’s not that the codec is ‘missing’, it’s more a problem of Quicktime not recognizing other programs that need to use certain types of its codecs. For example, when I upgraded to a later version of Quicktime last year, the MPEG 2 codec had all of a sudden became unavailable in DVD Studio Pro 2. I had to do a reinstall of that program before QT would recognize it. I know this doesn’t help your present situation but perhaps now you ‘ll have a better understanding of how these pro-apps interact.

You mentioned that you’re using FCP v.5 and Quicktime 7. I’m assuming you’re also using OS 10.4, although you didn’t mention which version of OSX you’re using in your previous post. Is this correct? I’m also looking for a previous post here at Creative Cow where someone pointed to something at the Apple web site that addresses issues with pro apps not recognizing each other. So, stay tuned, I’m still on the case.

[Don Greening]

Since I haven’t started using Final Cut Studio yet because I was right in the middle of a project using FCP HD on my G4 Dual 800 and didn’t want to transfer over to my 2.7 G5 until that project was finished, I just realized something *try to imagine a little light bulb popping on just above my forehead*:

1. You’re using FC Studio that comes with Compressor 2. Yes?

2. Compressor 2 does the audio encoding now, as opposed to Compressor 1 that really didn’t do any audio conversion to other formats (like .ac3) but instead just compressed the PCM digital audio for the DVD, right? You had to use a program called A.Pack with Compressor 1 in order to encode .aif or PCM audio to .ac3 audio.

3. Your greyed out or unaccessable audio encoding commands using QT conversion from within FCP are codecs inherent to Compressor, and not Quicktime. Correct? This is because Compressor 2 now does .ac3 encoding, the digital standard for DVD’s

Does this make sense? Have you tried to do audio or video encoding using the Comperssor 2 stand-alone app instead of going through FCP and using Compressor that way, a.k.a. Quicktime conversion? The stand-alone Compressor app will do everything you want, just like using it within FCP.

If the stand-alone Compressor app is still a no go then you might consider re-installing that program as well. Here’s a link to the Apple website that deals with issues concerning Compressor, although not quite the same problems you’re having. But perhaps the fix they talk about may also work in your case.

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93234

– Don