[Ben Singer]

Thanks! I’ve definitely played with that icon and the timeline view options, but none of them effect the height of that particular lower “keyframe editor” layer. Not that big a deal now that I know the issue but I will try more right clicks for sure!

[Ben Singer]

Right, thanks for that! Yeah, I can understand why you’d want it expanded for manipulating keyframes. I don’t think I had done any of that in that track, so must have been an accidental selection. I do find it a bit odd you can’t manipulate that height (either bigger or smaller) to suit your needs!

[Ben Singer]

A bit late here, but I’m curious how or if this was resolved.

I’m working on FCP 7 on a year old (late 2012) iMac with the specs below, and I often get “out of memory” and “codec error” messages as I work. Oh, and crashes. Lots and lots of crashes.

With 16 GB of RAM and the juiced up NVIDIA 2 Gig card, I really can’t figure out what’s wrong….

The current project that has caused most of these issues is pretty huge, as I’ve been working on iterations of it for nearly a year. The project file alone runs to 77 MB, and I’m working off nearly 2TB of files on the media drive (though much less actually used int he sequences).

But is this enough to cause these constant headaches?

– Ben

====================
iMac
3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 (quad core)
16 GB RAM 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB
OS X 10.9.2

[Ben Singer]

Thanks for your help earlier Rafael. I think the footage looks good compressed using your idea.

Now I have a slightly different question. Most of the footage was in 23.98, with about 1/3 or less in 29.97, or probably 1/4 of what will be in the final film.

I chose to convert the 29.97 stuff to 23.98 to get everything into one frame rate, and am working with that in FCP 7. Now I am told I need to deliver the final product in 60i (29.97 fps) to the broadcaster. :S

Now my question is: do I keep editing in my 23.98 timeline with the footage in that frame rate, and worry about converting to 29.97 at the end? My concern here is mostly with the 29.97 stuff I already compressed to 23.98. When that gets REconverted back to 29.97 at the end, I worry how it will look.

OR, do I go back and convert all the 75% of the material that is 23.98 over to 29.97, and cut that way. At least this way there won’t be much lost in the FINAL conversion, because the cut will already be in 29.97. But this could cost me another 3 days in converting files, which makes me want to cry.

OR, do I forget about converting anything for now, cut with multiple frame rates, using whatever the material came in as originally, and worry about the conversion at the end. I hesitate because from past experience I get constant rendering issues in FCP 7 and I fear my edit will drag and drag.

Any advice on this front? You have been a life-saver so far!

Ben

[Ben Singer]

Thanks Rafael. That’s interesting. My understanding was that it’s not just “dropping frames” per se, but blending them to turn 30 into 24 without making the motion super weird. I had also never heard about “losing a generation” in the context of using Compressor with digital files. I thought we escaped all that when we abandoned tape.

In any case, I am trying your idea now, and it’s certainly running quicker!

[Ben Singer]

Thanks. However the link you sent me doesn’t refer to my problem at all. In fact I haven’t been able to find anyone dealing with this exact issue in any online forums or elsewhere.

I did however duplicate the problem using a totally different machine (also with FCP 7) so I believe the problem is either endemic to this Sony HDV Plugin OR it’s something to do with the footage I shot, i.e. some settings on the camera I wasn’t aware of. As far as I know (and movie inspector confirms it) I shot HDV in 1080 at 24p. So this is still a mystery to me.

For now I used MPEG Streamclip to flip all my M2T files to ProRes 422, though another side of me is considering just editing straight up in HDV to save on the four-fold increase in filesize ProRes causes.

[Ben Singer]

Thanks Bouke (much delayed)!

I manage to get everything to sync up in a multiclip and have been editing merrily along. But when I brought my drive to another editor (main guy on the project) FCP gives him a “operation not allowed” error message anytime he tries to do a camera angle switch/edit in the timeline I have built. There is no other info in the error msg.

I repeat, he is using my exact drive, with his MacBook Pro with the same version of FCP (7.0).

Has anyone experienced this? It’s driving me bonkers.

Cheers, and thanks again.

Ben