What’s with “Operation not allowed” when saving or exporting

[Andy Mees]

Goodness Peter, you make it sound rather like you are the only person who has a clue eh? The rest of us must surely all be woolly headed idiots. Actually most of us just get on with the job at hand, we discuss issues here, share workarounds and occasionally have a good old group whinge about the terrible state of affairs … but on the whole we avoid issues by keeping abreast of the potential pitfalls and adopting best work practices so as to avoid them (I can’t remember the last time I got an “operation not allowed” message) … if when something does crop up then we simply report those issues to each other here and elsewhere (so as to help others avoid the problem) and to Apple at their feedback page (or for those who are beta testers then perhaps directly to the product managers) and then we move on. As to “Why has this issue been happening with Final Cut for years it seems?” well what exactly is your issue? All you note is that you’ve been plagued by problems. Are you sure its not because you are simply unfamiliar with the new workflows you need to adopt … goodness knows I had the same problems when I first switched from Linear to Lightworks and from Lightworks to Avid and from Avid to FCP and from FCP to Edius etc etc etc

Best
Andy

[Peter Corbett]

ohhh….sorry

I’m just editing away then a message comes up at random, “autosave cannot be performed. Operation not permitted” or something similar. Convential saves also cannot be performed. The project is a 1080 ACV-Intra (Varicam 2700) format with ProRes HQ compressor.

It’s tricky when you have a couple of hours of work that cannot be saved. I found a workaround by creating a new project and importing the old project into it, but this only delays the reoccurance for a few hours.

Anyway, on the Adobe beta forum we rant and rave about this sort of thing until they fix it. I was surprised that such an important issue has existed in FCP for so long. No offense intended.

Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
http://www.php.com.au

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Peter Corbett] “I find that this is normal operation for FCP.”

It’s not normal for me. I’ve been using FCP more or less daily for over 8 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.

Try repairing your disk permissions. Also check the permissions on the drive that you’re saving your project to. Make sure that drive is formatted for Mac OS extended, not for Fat 32 or NTFS.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[David Bogie]

[Peter Corbett] “Today, with a commercial deadline on my first FCP job, “

Welcome to the family.
There are few things you are probably doing wrong on your very first project but it’s impossible to know from here. The more common cause is not having write access to the particular folder you are using to store the project and that can be caused by network or Finder problems, not related at all to FCP.

This error is regrettable but it is predictable for first-timers. I would have taken a bit of offline time and practiced first.

bogiesan

[Bob Flood]

Peter

We seem to keep running into each other :).

Please take what i say as nothing more than co-miseration and understanding of where you are, as myself, DRW, Les Kaye, and i think Wayne Cole, have been where you are.

When i transitioned from edit to FCP, i pulled my hair out for a long time. Some say a couple of years, but i say about 6 months. (hahaha)

Needless to say, fcp is unique animal, partly cuz its mac and not PC.

I see “Op Not Allowed” in a couple of places: when you try and ovwerwrite a clip if the existing clip has a transition other than a cut(this is my biggest peeve!). You have to delete the transition, do the overwrite, then re-do the transition. There are other ways to replace a shot, like the replace function or option-v (paste attributes).

another place i get “Op Not Allowed” when i try and export or save to a volume thats got some kind of write protection going on, like permissions or something, or may not have enough room, or might be FAT32 insted of HFS+.

BTW, another “gotcha” i found was that undo applies to the whole project, not just the timeline, so if you want to undo something you did before you, say, opened a new bin, you will lose the bin.

Somewhere around here (this forum) is a bunch of threads with DRW and Les and the rest, and a lot of the edit-to-fcp pain is alleviated by reading them

Oh, and whenver you rant about how something may be broken and hasn’t been fixed, you’ll get this: “But Look What You Can Do For Under a Thousand Dollars!”

This is a great forum, a lot of stuff you are experiencing has been covered, and I hope this helps!

“I like video because its so fast!”

Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc.

[Peter Corbett]

Thanks Bob (and everyone else),

I know I’m just being an elephant in the room. If only the very best of FCP and PPro could be in the same package it would be a happy world. I’m going to have to research the under-the-hood machinations of OSX. But there’s no better way to learn than on a real job. If you have the time, it is tough-love way of picking up a new system’s quirks.

Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
http://www.php.com.au

[Shane Ross]

This is not normal. I too have not had this issue. I have seen others with this issue, and it was because their folder was write protected for some oddball reason. A REPAIR PERMISSIONS from DISK UTILITY fixed that right up.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Kevin Paolillo]

A workaround if you have lots of work since your last save is to start a New Project with the old project open, then tab back to the project in question, select all, copy, and paste the whole thing into the new project bin.
Not the best, but at least you’ll have your changes.

[Peter Corbett]

Thanks Kevin,

Yes that’s exactly how I’ve been fixing it. An inconvenience but not a killer problem.

Peter

Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
http://www.php.com.au

[David Roth weiss]

Hey Peter,

Honestly, as Shane and several others have already mentioned, the “Operation not allowed” error is not common at all. I haven’t seen it in years. I would fix permissions on all drives and run Disk Warrior on all drives.

You do have Disk Warrior, don’t you? If not, you need it, it’s essential software for any of us in this business.

Let us know if things improve.

DRW

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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