[Dana Strom]

It’s been a while but this issue is still persistent. I’ve just been manually syncing my Time Machine backup at home, but this same behavior is persistent with any local network activity at my work.

We do not backup to time machines (we manually backup to FW drives) – but whenever someone is pushing or pulling a file via the local network, the same problem I described above occurs.

It’s not just slower or stuttery, it’ll seize up and give me a beach ball for about a minute – let me play, stop but it’ll freeze back up again when moving the playhead. Essentially FCP becomes unusable during any local network activity… as it’s also fine when I’m downloading/uploading to the internet.

Obviously an avoidable situation… but obnoxious since I’ve got four edit stations without shared storage and I’m frequently sending small movie files back and forth for VFX.

Since I’m seeing it in multiple situations I’m surprised this isn’t common for everyone!

[Dana Strom]

Thanks!
We will do that, however this morning I removed the Kona 3 card and used the AJA Uninstaller utility.
This afternoon we ran into the same problem again, backing up my gut feeling that this is not a Kona issue.

[Dana Strom]

Thanks for the quick responses.
A brief history;
This problem manifested near the end of cutting our last show (first show on this particular system) and we’re now seeing it in our current show which is very young. It’s just in the string-out stage so there are only a few simple sequences but there is a lot of media (documentary). We’re shooting on a variety of formats but everything ends up as 1080 29.97 ProRes 422 (HQ) except XDCam which comes in as it’s native codec (Apple XDCAM HD422 1080p30, 1920 x 1080)- but it still seems to play nicely with the other formats.

I doubt that this is an issue with the XDCam codec itself. While at the moment, all the “unrendered” (light green “FULL” render bars) is XDCam since it doesn’t match the sequence, but we were seeing this on our last project when we applied color correction filters and whatnot.

Also, we’re doing multiple episodes right now and only having this problem with this one newer 12-core system which has the Kona 3 card in it.

Also of note: On the LAFCPUG thread, a common element among others with this issue is that they’re also on the newer Mac Pros. Many have Kona 3 cards but some don’t.

I’m fine with rendering effects to avoid the problem, but rendering every XDCam clip as it’s placed and modified in the timeline just isn’t a practical solution. Also, re-compressing this media would be a total nightmare.

[Dana Strom]

Hi
Just wanted to offer that I’ve just solved this mystery for myself.
Not sure how to explain other then tell you my story;

Working on a large show across multiple edit systems. I had duplicated the project file and handed it to another editor with a copy of all the media to organize. Then I brought the newly organized project back on to my system, copied the organized bins into my project and attempted to re-link them… only to have the “” is missing and unspecified path problem.

Then, I decided to try re-linking the media within the project file I’d been given… no problem. Only after I did this was I able to properly copy the organized clips into my project.

So, in summary- It looks like the path information may not carry across projects well when the media is offline. Make sure the media is connected before you move your clips from project to project.

Hope that helps!

[Dana Strom]

If you are shooting in 24p, make a 24p Blu-Ray.

Otherwise just export at your current frame rate.
Best to keep the frame rate native to what you’ve shot to avoid frame-rate conversion problems.

[Dana Strom]

Got a PDW-U1 in and it worked great!
Thanks so much for your help!
Even the camera operators and rental house were stumped and ultimately just suggested the PDW-U1 anyway.
I can’t imagine we were ALL looking in the wrong places for this answer.

I’m sincerely unimpressed with Sony’s “solutions”.

[Dana Strom]

Ha!
Thank you so much for clearing that up.

All I’m trying to do is transfer the raw files to a Final Cut Pro system… once I get access to the file structure, I can use the XDCam transfer software.

So what is it that’s standing in the way of reading the raw data? I don’t need it to play back, just act as a drive and mount the disc as a volume (I’ve installed the OSX FAM driver) but I can’t get passed this “NO SUPPORT” problem.

Any thoughts?

[Dana Strom]

We’ve been experiencing some strange behavior on our system; we’re having a terrible playback issue that seems to coincide mostly with “green bars” unrendered preview segments. Here’s an example of the playback issue;

https://gallery.me.com/danajstrom#100040/FCP%20Flicker%20Problem

This generally leads to a crash citing AJA Video Output Codec Plug-In as the problem… not sure if it’s related, but we also get a LOT of “Out of Memory” errors on renders.

We’re on a brand new 12-core Mac Pro with a Kona 3 card and an 8TB sata RAID array.

[Dana Strom]

Thanks for the response!

Nothing over 4k. Everything is 1080 at the highest. I’ve removed all CMYK stills, jpegs and non-optomized video and audio… you know, the usual suspects… but we’re finding that it specifically wants to crap out when rendering something like a transition or filter. We’re going to a proper color correct later so we’re not very filter heavy right now- but we have some Nattress effects day-for-night stuff in right now and we use the G-Film Flash for a lot of our transitions…

I don’t think these are ‘causing’ the problems, but these are what’s left unrendered when it craps out.

: (

[Dana Strom]

Maybe I shouldn’t have been operating under assumptions, but seeing as how FCP adds a proper 3:2 cadence to a 24p (yes, 23.98) clip when dropping into a 720p60 sequence, I thought we wouldn’t have problems working some acquired 24p HD footage into our 1080i timeline…

When I watched it back, the stutter was obvious enough for me, and therefore for a QC flag… which I do my best to avoid at all cost.

So it’s the interlacing process that FCP can’t handle? It can only assign cadence progressive frames? I was okay with that because my second assumption was that Cinema Tools must surely be able to handle this type of thing… right?

Nope. Even the official documentation seems to run you around in circles… ‘FCP and Compressor can add pulldowns to your 23.98 footage…’ but the reality is that the best either of them can do is a 2:2:2:4 cadence.

Does anything in the FCP sweet do this? Apparently Compressor does. After some research, I found a few threads that helped me to solve the issue. The secret is to put the 24p clip in compressor, apply a compression setting that matches all the settings, then select 29.97 for the frame rate and IMPORTANT: turn on frame controls, and choose ‘bottom field’ for field dominance.

That seems to do the trick… now Apple just needs to include a filter, compressor setting or function in Cinema Tools to do this because no, a 2:2:2:4 cadence is NOT up to broadcast par.