[Andy Mees]

FCP needs to translate the MXF wrapped footage to Quicktime before it can use it, but once translated it is happy with the native codecs (MPEG IMX or DV)
Apple doesn’t support this MXF to QT translation directly, but a third party QuickTime component from Flip4Mac (aka Telestream) allows this from within FCP.
(see https://www.flip4mac.com/mxf.htm )

XDCAM HD format (MPEG-2 MP@HL) is not currently supported by QT, but I am given to understand that it is being worked upon. Equally we can assume that Flip4Mac will want to offer their support too.

Ingesting to a different codec is of course possible but somewhat detracts from the IT centric workflow

[Andy Mees]

that is strange, and sorry, I have no idea what the problem might be … still, what made you run disk doctor on a completely blank drive?
FWIW I seem to remember that Norton Disk Doctor was the cause of many a problem back in the dark days of OS 9.

What happens when you run Apple Disk First Aid … do you get the same error?

[Andy Mees]

hey Brad

you need to send your comments to Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html
or you can get to the feedback page directly from FCP by going to the Final Cut Pro menu and choosing “Provide Feedback”

cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

this may be due to a corrupt clip within the sequence

you might want to first duplicate your project (Save As… )
then in the duplicate, right click or comtrol click the problem sequence as select “Make Offline…” from the context menu
in the Make Offline dialog select the “Action For Media Files: Leave Them on the Disk” option, and click OK
then try to reopen the sequence …

… if it works you’ll then have to reconnect your sequence clips either one by one or in small groups.
eventually one of the clips is going to fail to reconnect and that is likely the cause of the problem
for that clip or clips you’ll have to recapture or reimport from source

… if it doesn’t work then we’ll have to put our thinking caps back on

[Andy Mees]

youll find many here are Natress Film Effects stallwarts, and with good reason
https://www.nattress.com

other options would include Magic Bullet for Editors
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/mbforeditors.html

[Andy Mees]

as far as i know, there is no equivalent VTR emulation either within FCP or as a third party add-on
but you might want to take a look at VirtualVTR from https://www.gallery.co.uk or https://www.virtualvtr.com

cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

you might save yourself some trouble by getting rid of the whole stereo pair thing, and going to dual mono instead
if you go to your sequence settings, audio outputs tab you will notice a setting called “Grouping” for each audio pair, which can be set as stereo or dual mono
if you change your outputs to dual mono then you will be able assign your tracks to the individual outputs eg “A1” or “A2” instead of “1 & 2”

[Andy Mees]

Ed, you need to set up those audio outputs in the sequence settings first
thats where you define what output to activate for the sequence, and how they are grouped

(sounds like you have your sequence set as a very basic 2 channel stereo output)

[Andy Mees]

you need to identify where the bad levels are originating

if its the source footage then you need to get a new shooter
if its coming out too out from the BetaSP then you need to pull the levels down a bit (you can use the built-in process controls or put it through a proc amp)
likewise the DV converter

if its something you’re doing to it in the timeline that is causing the problem then you need to figure out what that is and adjust your methods accordingly

and yes, if theres nowhere or no way to fix at source then you should use the colour correction filters
and very last step would be to throw the Broadcast Safe filter on there just to ensure that nothing is peaking too high

a waveform/vectorscope is really an essential investment

good luck
Andy

[Andy Mees]

[editguy] “I usually work with 4 channels of split audio, what I did on Avid Composers before was that I would mix 4 channels into two for channels 1&2 and then three out of the original 4 split tracks into two for channels 3&4, I would do this by using the Audio mixdown on the AVID. What’s the best way to do it in FCP 5.0.3?

you can set up the audio outputs of the selected or active sequence through its Sequence Settings window (Command 0)
then go to the Audio Outputs tab where you can specify how many audio output channels you need, and whether they should be treated as stereo pairs or mono
back on the timeline, if you right click an audio track on or near its autoselect button, you will see a context menu where you can assign the channel output

How do you “nestle a sequence” ?

select all or part of a sequence in the timeline and press Option C … or you can edit a precut sequnce into another from the browser, in exactly the same way in which you would edit in a clip

If I want to work with Titles and 3D titles but over my video, what is the best way to do it?

you can use the built-in text generators, including the bundled Title 3D plugin from Boris … look in Effects > Video Generators > Boris > Title 3D
or you can compose your titles over the video background using Livetype by exporting the

Digitize 4 channels of audio?

Log and Capture window, “Clip Settings” tab

Output to 4 channels and monitor them?”

in the Audio Mixer window you can toggle the downmix button (looks like a bowtie) to mix all output to stereo (1&2) only