[Dan Monro]

Compressor?
Mpeg Streamclip?

What are you converting from? (and to?)
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

Strong Bad is my hero…

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

Is your XDCam p30 or 29.97? Mixed frame rates are usually a problem.

While trouble shooting the Kona and the graphics card is a good idea, I think the problem lies with FCP itself. We’ve done fairly extensive troubleshooting with this problem, at different frame rates, using ProResHQ, ProRes, native XDCam, and mixed. It appears to be a Final Cut memory leak problem (we have worked with Apple engineers on this, and with AJA engineers.) As far as I know, there is no resolution to this as yet. On our last HQ project we were running with activity monitor open. FCP would invariably crash when the virtual memory approached a gig – always preceded by green flashes, then a beachball. This could happen when simply clicking around in the timeline.

My current project, which is 1080i, all ProRes, always gives me flashes whenever I put in unrendered animation codec graphics or XDCam broll. Once I render them its happy. Yes its a pain, but the render quickly and its less painful than crashing and re-starting.

If you can’t recompress I’d recommend trying to live with the rendering. And a short auto-save period. And re-start FCP occasionally, or even click off to the desktop now and again.

Sorry to ramble, but its early and my system is down…

Good luck,
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

Tell us also please how big your project is, i.e. lots of sequences? Lot’s of clips & bins? How big and complex is your sequence(s) and how many open at one time?

We have found here that the bigger and more complex the project the quicker you get out of memory errors, and that even though FCP reports the Kona card to be the cause that’s not necessarily the case. Ours also reports FCE effects, or “unknown” errors.

We get this type of crash (green flickereing, random frames, etc.) more often when working with HQ than with regular ProRes – do you need HQ? Not that that helps with deadline approaching.

My advice as a band-aid while you’re troubleshooting is to winnow your project down to the basic minimum. (I keep old seqs, graphics and music, etc. in different projects.) Take the time to convert those XDCam clips to ProRes or ProRes HQ. Render those green clips, even if you have to go get coffee, then keep rendering. Make sure you’re sequence is set to unlimited real time, that may be why your green clips are now yellow. Set that auto-save for 5 minutes and develop an “apple-S” twitch in your left hand. Seriously. In the worst times I save after each edit. Click off to the desktop often. Restart FCP occasionally.

All of this sounds like a pain, yes, but it got us through our worst edits. FCP runs more smoothly now, but I generally follow those guidelines, and I convert as much as possible ahead of time (compressor droplets make this easy).

Hope this helps, good luck,
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

Hey Martin,

It happened to me once; never figured out why. I eventually figured out what the offset was and purposefully slid it to the wrong frame so that it was correct when rendered.
Have you tried exporting it as a new self-contained, same-as-source QT? Then make your cuts and see if the re-wrap fixes the problem?

Last ditch, throw it to a tape and re-ingest.

Maybe a greater mind can actually solve your problem. Hope so.

Good luck,
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

What Scott is suggesting will work if your edits are fixed; once you’ve baked it you can’t go back and change the edit.

And by “baking”, he means export each sequence of shots as a “same as source” quicktime (select all, Apple + ‘e’) and then re-import it as a source. Make sure you export it to your media drive.

If you want to retain the editability of the shots, use Tom’s method.

Cheers,
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

See if these help:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/947007#947062

https://discussions.apple.com/message/11519624?messageID=11519624

https://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/315318-quicktime-error-50-a.html

My guess is a corrupt file, maybe a render. I googled “QuickTime Error: -50” and came up with these. Try that, too. Didn’t have time to read very far in each…

Good luck,
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

Actually, you can force them onto whatever track you want by using the auto select buttons, as Tom says. You do have to select them every time you want to paste, however. So say you want the audio tracks you copied from 1&2 to go to 3&4, you first option click 3, say, and then click 4 and then paste and they go to 3&4. Same idea with the video…
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

The difference is in which ‘delete’ key you use. Use the backspace key to delete the clip and leave a hole. Use the delete key (by the ‘end’ key) to delete and close gap. You can also do the latter by hitting ‘shift backspace’ (or ‘fn backspace’ on a laptop).

Cheers,
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6

[Dan Monro]

What Chris said…

Unless you tell photoshop to work in non-square pixels it will default to square – in that case you work at 720×540 and your NLE will squash it to the correct aspect ratio.

But with video presets in photoshop now you don’t have to do that; just choose the right starting template and its automatic.

Hope that hels,
D

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 4 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Final Cut Pro 7 Quicktime 7.6.6
– OR –
2 x 3.2 Quad Xeon; 16 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.6.4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Final Cut Pro 7.0.2 Quicktime 7.6.6