[David Roth weiss]

Your best bet would be to replace ALL drives – when one fails it typically indicates the others in the RAID set won’t be far behind.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Just forge ahead Marc – you’ll get lots, but not all of the benefits I’ve been trying to turn you onto. So, you’ll be better off than before, and perhaps you’ll ask questions here before starting the next time you begin a project.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

There are just too many variables for me to have a clue, but tell me this, does your sequence set to render to Pro Res play without rendering? It should. And, how does it look?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

The number #1 thing I told you was that your choice of codecs (specifically the old and Lind sho discontinued HDV codec) was your biggest issue. Somehow, you seem to have missed that point, and above only mention the pixel dimensions, frame rate, etc.

Per your ongoing problems resizing clips… you spent years doing things improperly, fixing things is NOT gonna be instantaneous, it’s gonna take you some time, but you’ll quickly learn new skills while you do that will help you in the future.

Meanwhile, when changing the sequence settings on a previously edited sequence, not all parameters you change in the settings actually do apply and affect the underlying clips, and that it why best practices would dictate the cut and paste I previously recommended.

***HERE’S A TIP: Don’t be afraid to do a “Save as” to duplicate a sequence in order to try changing some parameters and leaving others. In your case, you could try duplicating the sequence and simply changing the codec in seq settings, while keeping all the other parameters the same. In theory, test would at least give you the real-time benefits of Pro Res. However, yiu might not get 100% of the benefits of the total fix I recommended, because I suspect you’ll have loads of pixels that might look okay to your eye, but which will not display 100% technically correctly or at their true native resolution.

Does this make sense to you?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Marc,

BS Marc, you CAN fix those letterbox issues, you just don’t know how to do it yet, and you’re allowing your fear of the unknown to overwhelm you.

I can log into your Mac remotely online, and I can teach you how to make the fixes you need on every type of clip you have, which you can then copy and paste to every other similar clip in your project. I charge $100/hour for my services, and if my fixes don’t fix things you pay $0.

***My 65th birthday is tomorrow, so that’s out, and my weekend rate is 2X – so, if you decide you’d like my help, I’d recommend getting started today or early next week. If you want to continue on your own, my feelings will not be hurt.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Marc,

The fact is, you’ve been using FCP improperly for years and on many projects, and thus you don’t know what you’re been missing all this time, and so you’re unwilling to do the necessary work to get things straightened out. I get it, you’re a proud independent creative dude, and you’ve relied on your own logic, instincts, and anecdotal evidence throughout your life in all of your creative endeavors, so it’s hard to change now.

Well, I’ve encountered and fixed these issues oodles of times, I’ve also worked for oodles of folks throughout my 40+ years in Hollywood who ask for my expert help, but then fail to listen, instead relying on their own logic, instincts, and anecdotal experience, so I’m wise enough and experienced enough to know when it’s time to say good night and good luck.

So, I wish you the best of luck in this and in all your future endeavors.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Mark has hit the nail on the head Marc…

We all know how difficult it is to make these projects even under the best conditions, but when started incorrectly being creative in FCP becomes secondary to simply hoping you can get it to work.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

I understand that completely Marc, fixing these is what’s required when you begin a project with improper seq settings. It’s a pain in the butt, however you’ll become much more proficient at these fixes after you learn from doing a few.

FYI, you best bet on a lot of these clips is to right click, remove all atttibutes, and fix from the clips native attributes. In other words, in resizing and repositioning before, with the bad codec, you most likely made things look right, but they were not really the accomplished properly.

Meanwhile, where are you located?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Marc,

I am retired and have far too many fun things to do besides reading overly long posts, and going back and forth between them.

Please, just stick to the here and now, I don’t really care about all your previous attempts to fix stuff, that’s the past, when you were unsure about what to do.

So, now that we have that out of the way, other than probably having to repo and resize a boatload of clips and things, to make them right, what other issues do you have?

FYI, you can just try to fix a few minutes of your timeline, or try editing some new clips on a proper timeline, you’ll find that almost everything will playback in real-time without rendering, becsuse Pro Res is a realtime codec, designed specifically for hi-speed real-time performance.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Roth weiss]

Marc,

If you go back and read my initial message you will see that I prognosticated that you’d have to resize some or all of your clips.

How do you think I knew that Marc? It’s because I’ve helped a few thousand people just like you who don’t begin FCP projects properly and land in editing Hell. The mistakes you make in FCP at the start of a project are cumulative, and they mount as you progress, until FCP chokes. That is where you are now… If you proceed as you were, you will not only struggle with every minute of your editing from this point, but the quality of every frame of your precious video will be, and apparently has been on past projects, inferior to what it could or should be (especially text and graphics).

So, you can learn how to do things right, and learn how to resize and reposition things quickly as you do, or keep going down the same road.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.