[Bill Rabkin]

I have exactly the same error when I try to share a finished project. However, I DID copy my media from the SDHC card to an external hard drive, and then ejected the SDHC card from my iMac. I launched FCPX, created a new Library, and imported the clip into my event from that external hard drive.

The Info tab in the Inspector says that this imported clip is in a folder on my external hard drive.

One unexpected problem did occur part way through my editing this project: I had closed FCPX, and when I launched it again FCPX said that the media was missing. I selected File > Relink Files…, navigated to the file on my external hard drive, and selected it. The clip in the browser was relinked. The partially edited storyline was restored, and the “missing media” indications disappeared from both browser and storyline.

For this Library, Arctic Whiteness Final Cut Library Manager says: 0 internal media, 39 external media. I have imported not only the camera clip, but 38 PNG images and one MP3 file, which accounts for the 39 external media. The list of external media displayed by Final Cut Library Manager includes the PNG and MP3 files, but not the camera clip.

I selected the .fcpbundle file in Finder and in the contextual menu selected Show Package Contents. I located the Original Media folder in the only event in this Library. It contained 39 aliases, but did not contain the camera file, Clip #2.mov, that I had originally imported and later relinked.

Something seems to be corrupted — Final Cut Library Manager does not list the camera clip as either internal or external media.

Like Taylor, I really don’t want to re-edit this hourlong project. Is there any workaround?

[Bill Rabkin]

Hello, Pierre —

Just yesterday, I finished a 1hr 16min video in FCPX. I exported the master file using a “Compressor Settings” destination that I created in Compressor and added to the destinations list on the “Destinations” tab of FCPX Preferences. This destination compresses video to H.264. My video has 12 chapter markers.

I then launched iDVD and dragged in the video. Although iDVD creates the Chapter Menus with a link to each chapter and the video frame associated with each Chapter Marker, it does not bring in the text that I defined for each Chapter Marker. (It began losing the marker text around Mountain Lion, I think.) I typed in the text for each Chapter Marker, added background music to each menu, and burned the disc. Unfortunately, iDVD failed; it displayed a “Multiplexor Error” message.

This happens to me on about 10% or 20% of my iDVD projects. iDVD transcodes all of the videos and menus, but when it gets to the “Multiplexing and Writing” step it dies. Sometimes, this happens before it actually writes anything to the disc; sometimes it happens part way through the burn process, and the resulting disc is a coaster.

The best solution I have found is to re-compress the movie in Compressor, using the same settings, and then recreate the disc from scratch in a new iDVD project using the new movie file. (If I simply drag the new movie into the existing iDVD project, iDVD messes up all of the chapter links. iDVD is nice enough to warn you that it has done so :-)).

While Apple and Adobe think that optical discs are dead technology, clients still want them. I have been searching for an iDVD replacement for several years, without success. Disc creation apps on the Mac App Store are junk, IMHO. None of them handles FCPX Chapter Markers properly.

If anyone finds a good replacement for iDVD, please inform the community of your find.

[Bill Rabkin]

Thanks very much! The lost project was in the most recent backup in User/Movies/Final Cut Backups/.

This time, when I Share the Master File I will watch my iMac to see if any error indications appear before it restarts :-).

Is there a way to specify how frequently I want FCPX to make a Library backup?

[Bill Rabkin]

For 2), you can keyframe the Scale property of your first image to create the desired zoom in. Then copy this image. Deselect the first image, and multi-select the other 14 images. Press Cmd+Shift+V to select Edit > Paste Attributes.

In the Paste Attributes dialog box, select Scale (below Transform), and click Paste. This will paste the Scale keyframe into the selected images.

[Bill Rabkin]

In iDVD, once you have dragged your QuickTime .mov file onto the template you’ve selected, your Main Menu will have 2 buttons — one to play the video, and the other to display the first (or only) Chapter Menu. Each Chapter Marker that you created in FCPX becomes an entry on a Chapter Menu in iDVD.

On the Main Menu, double-click the “Select” button to edit the Chapter Menu. iDVD always inserts a “pseudo-chapter” at the beginning of your video, which it labels “Beginning.” The remaining Chapters correspond to the Chapter Markers in your video. Select one, and you should see that iDVD highlights it (the specific highlight depends on the template). You should also see the text box below or beside the chapter’s video frame, but the text box will be empty.

Double-click the empty text box, and you’ll be able to type the chapter name.

Here’s a tip: I usually open my .mov file in the QuickTime Player, and then click the “Show Chapters” dropdown icon in the Player to display a list of all the chapter names. Since that list disappears when you switch back to iDVD, I often will take a screen grab of that list. I press Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4 and drag a rectangle around the chapter list; when I let go of the mouse, OS X puts the screen grab onto the Clipboard. Then I launch Preview, where Cmd+N creates a new picture file from the Clipboard contents. This technique keeps the chapter list visible while I enter the chapter names in iDVD.

[Bill Rabkin]

I typically shoot with 3 cameras, 2 miniDV tape and one tapeless that records .AVI files. For a one-hour concert, I will import 1 miniDV clip from each camera plus 4 contiguous .AVI files from the tapeless camera.

I generally avoid FCPX auto-sync’ing based on audio tracks. Instead, I use a clapboard before the concert begins and in FCPX I insert a marker on each camera’s clip. (For the .AVI files, this is the first clip of the concert.) To create my multicam clip I tell FCPX to sync using first markers.

Then, in the multicam editor I simply insert the remaining contiguous clips of .AVI files into that angle of the multicam clip. This approach has worked pretty well for me.

FastBill

[Bill Rabkin]

It turned out that I had pressed Option+S, which turned on “Solo selected clips.” Thus, when I cut the clip with the Blade tool, the clip prior to the cut remained selected (and therefore it was “Solo’d”) and the clip after the cut (which was not selected) was turned darker grey and silenced.

The FCPX Help says that “nonsoloed clips are shown in black and white,” which is exactly what I saw. FCPX also “lights up” in yellow the “Solo selected clips” toolbar button at the top right-hand side of the Timeline window, next to the “Snap” button.

[Bill Rabkin]

I downloaded, installed, and launched the X-Files Pro Public Beta. It displayed my external FW800 drives in its “Final Cut Pro X Volumes” window, which shows 8 drives (7 of which are “True” for FCP X; the other drive is my Time Machine backup drive).

However, all menu choices in the “Events & Projects” menu pull-down are disabled (greyed out). This is still true if I select a drive in the “Volumes” window.

How do I manage Events and Projects?
==============================

Suggestion: Don’t use Command+P for the “Manage Events & Projects” command. That shortcut is widely used for “File > Print.”

Thanks,
FastBill

[Bill Rabkin]

Indeed, Event Manager X is very handy — I’ve used it for several months. Unfortunately, it doesn’t handle sub-folder hierarchies in the “Final Cut Projects” folder. My external disk looks something like this:

My_USB_Drive
-Final Cut Projects
—Lectures
——January
———Lecture #1
———Lecture #2
——February
———Lecture #3
—Concerts
——January
———Piano Solo
———Violin-Piano Duo
——February
———Soprano

Event Manager X only displays the “Lectures” and “Concerts” folders:

My_USB_Drive
—Lectures (Folder)
—Concerts (Folder)

But I don’t want to archive those folders, because I will be adding more sub-folders and projects to each of them as the year progresses.
In March, I want to archive Lectures/January and Concerts/January, but Event Manager X doesn’t provide that opportunity. FCPX would let me move individual projects to an archive drive, but does not maintain the folder structure.

[Bill Rabkin]

Correction: It turned out that the 2 projects that should have been in the last sub-folder were immediately below that sub-folder in the Project Browser, and FCPX did not let me drop the projects into that folder.

However, I discovered that if I first dragged the projects to another sub-folder (without letting go of the mouse) and then dragged them to the desired target folder, FCPX allowed me to drop them into that folder after all.

Seems a bit odd, but at least the 2 projects are now in the sub-folder where I want them to be.

Thanks again for the suggestion. Problem solved!