Very strange & scary, files go missing on time line

[Bret Williams]

Drives sleeping? Ejected CDs/DVDs with imported media?

A hard drive that’s going bad fast. Seriously a possibility especially since you’ve seen it before. I’VE NEVER seen that before, but occasionally heard of something similar.

[Jason Jenkins]

I’ve been on a contract edit for the last two weeks (using their equipment) and stuff is constantly going offline. When I modify a Livetype or Motion file -5o% of the time it goes offline instead of updating in the timeline. There have been plenty of crashes, freezes and slowdowns as well. What a nightmare.

[Bret Williams]

How have you been updating the Motion file? You cannot, for example, leave the motion project open and just switch over to it and make adjustments and save. FCP will see that the file is different and make it off line. You have to get to the Motion project from FCP so that it is awaiting a change. You need to right click in the seq and choose to open in Motion/Livetype.

[Jason Jenkins]

I’ve been right clicking and choosing “open in editor”. Does the Motion project need to be closed before returning to FCP?

[John Steventon]

I’ve had something similar a couple of times (by the way, I don’t know how to fix it).

Happily editing away, go into another project, come back, and half the media has gone. The difference between your and my situation though is that I can’t re-connect. When I select the offline clips, and choose re-connect, the window doesn’t even display the clips for me to reconnect.

I can’t batch-capture just the clips on the timeline I need either (have you tried that as a fix?) – On my system, even if I choose ‘make clips independant – or if I go to media manager to make a sequence to let me only digitise the clips used – it still wants to take in the entire rushes relating to that clip.

If you’re in rush – and it won’t re-connect properly, the only real thing you can do is a) Re-import the QT’s off your hard drive, and manually drop in each of the clips into where they’ve gone offline. B) If your system will let you, do a batch capture of the offline clips – get ’em bac k in that way – or, if you’re like me and FCP won’t let you – c) Export an EDL – import EDL, recature the clips your need – then as you lay each clip back onto the timeline, copy the old one so you can paste the attributes of any effects back into it.

It’s interesting that others have this fault – I’d always been fobbed off with ‘it must be your system’. Good luck with it, I share your pain.

John
Success is merely a failiure to imagine more…

G5 2.7Ghz, 4.5Gb ram, Blackmagic Decklink/multibridge, 5.6Tb Infortrend storage, FCP Studio 5.02, Makie MCU control, Yahama 5.1 surround, JVC DTV multi-format monitor, 2x23inch Apple monitors – and a partirdge on a pear tree.

[Dog Food]

major progress last night…

1. toss preferences
2. repair permissions
3. toss all rendered files..

and then.. I dig into the “reconnect” process a little bit and find a file that has a different name than a 40 minute clip that is part of a “multi clip”.. BINGO..

I do a manual “reconnect” and I get 90% of my my clips ONLINE.. anthing with “speed” modification was scrammbled and had to be replaced/redone.

I will say this.. I have had a MAC since the first day they came out in 1984 ( I got it at Macy’s). Of the hundred + shows I have edited from start to end.. This is the fewest crashes I have ever had.. ONLY 1 CRASH… + this blunder.. (which was probably my fault)…. Normally with a project that is 1 hour long with 30 Video/audio layers I usually get at LEAST crash everyday… some time up to 10 crashes…

Hats off to 5.0.1 and 10.4.8….. Now I am scared to death to upgrade to 5.1.1 (the disks are just sitting here)

thanks for all your support GUYS!

cheers

[Seawild]

Hello,

Sorry about this… But I forgot how to repair permissions.
Did a search, but nothing obvious popped up.

Thanks, Chris

[Debe]

Repairing permissions is done in Disk Utility, which is usually located in [main hard drive]>Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility. Select the boot drive in the left column, and hit the “repair permissions” button at the bottom of the screen. Get coffee. It’ll take a few minutes.

debe

[Bret Williams]

Making clips independant simply unlinks them from the clips in the bin. For example you could redig the clip in the bin and it could still be offline in the seq. Making them independent in no way makes them shorter or change their media start/stop points.

To do that, you’d have to media manage the sequence.