Debe
Forum Replies Created
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It’s an extra step, but until things get fixed, I’ve been exporting out freezes as stills and exporting out speed changes as self-contained movies and reimporting them back in. Then I have real media for when I archive, or for times like these.
It is a pain, but it’s better than the current alternative!
debe
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You can also try exporting the timeline to your internal hard drive as a self-contained QT, then reimport back in and play that new clip that is generated back to tape. However, the problems you are having may persist in an export. The only way to know is to try!
If any of the advice here works, for next time, you may want to consider upping your RAM. 512 is just barely enough to keep FCP breathing. If this is a complex timeline super-low RAM may be adding to your issues.
A gig of RAM is recommended, and 2 is better. I’ve ever heard some say that 2.5 has some magical properties.
Just a thought…
debe
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I usually just toss my thumbnail cache into the trash. It’ll regenreate all of the thumbnails, so it takes a little time, but it’s the most reliable way of ditching those pesky “offline media” thumbs I’ve found.
Thumbnail cache is usually found in the Final Cut Pro Documents folder, unless you changed it’s location in the System Settings.
Hope this helps
debe
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I have one guy who claims he has no problems with Virex and FCP.
Based on what I know about the general nature of an antiviral, I find it hard to believe, however.
Ask your IT guys of evidence or PROOF of a Mac getting a virus. They won’t find one. The only real reason to have an antivirus utility on a Mac is to keep a virus from getting passed from a PC to a Mac to an unprotected PC. That virus won’t affect the Mac, and if they’ve done thier jobs right, the next PC has it’s own antivirus utility, so merely passing it along shouldn’t matter! It wouldn’t be actively passed from the Mac like it would from a PC.
An unprotected Mac will not get a virus designed for a PC. An unprotected Mac will not open a virus designed for a PC. An unprotected Mac not send anything actively harmful if that file gets passed to a PC. It’s the responsibility of the PC user to protect the PC from a PC virus.
A virus that affects Macs and OSX has not been detected as of yet, and no antivirus program that exists today would protect a Mac from something that doesn’t exist yet, anyway. Yet “antiviral” software creates so many other problems on Macs.
It’s circular logic on the part of your IT guys. They think they’ll be saving themselves virus headaches by having antivirus software on all computers. Well, that only works if all computers are always affected by all viruses. That’s not the case. The antivirus software will create other headaches for them on a Mac, so which headaches do they want, the real one or the imagined one?
They need to do more research.
debe
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Are you by any chance capturing to a FW drive and not using a FW cardbus on a Powerbook or do not have an additional FW card installed on a desktop?
That may be your problem. Video is a huge bandwidth hog, even lil’ol DV. Sometimes one can make it through with out a second FW bus, but oftentimes one can’t.
debe
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Did you do an Audio Mixdown before you made your tapes?
It’s different than an Avid Audio Mixdown. It creates a render file, it doesn’t create a separate media file that would replace your audio tracks like Avid does.
It is a crucial step in outputting from FCP. It’s Option+Command+R. You should do it whenever you make a tape or export to QuickTime.
Hope this helps.
debe
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Would you be capturing on that iBook, or copying already captured files from your desktop to edit with?
You can’t really reliably capture from a FW device and save to an external FW drive on only one bus, which all Macs have unless a FW card or a card bus are added. On an iBook, you can’t add another bus. On a PowerBook, you can add a FW bus card.
Although FW drives aren’t recommended by Apple for editing, plenty of folks do use them and “get away with it”. However, they are flaky. Be prepared to have lots of dropped frames issues, along with other probelms associated with using FW drives for media. If you are willing to take the risk, it can be done. It’s just not reliable.
I honestly don’t think an iBook would work out for you, especially if you’re intending on capturing.
How about a gently used PowerBook instead?
debe
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I’m not sure I have an answer that will help you with this problem, but I will tell you that if you are using this drive for FCP media, it should be formatted HFS+, which would not be readable by a PC. Since you’ve obviously used it with a PC, it’s not formatted HFS+. This could be the source of your problem, and if it is, I’ve not heard of any way to recover from it. There may be, I just haven’t heard of one. I will freely admit that I don’t know everything!
However, if I found myself in this situation, this is what I’d do: Before you get too far, try running Disk Warrior or TechTool to see if there are problems with the drive or the b-tree. Do you have the AutoSave Vault backed up anywhere else but the drive? If you have an AutoSave Vault anywhere else, try going back a few versions and see if you can get one to open. This may be your best bet. If there’s no other AutoSave Vault, or there are no other files anywhere else but on this external drive, try copying the files to your internal drive, reformat the drive HFS+, and copy them back. It’s possilbe the files are corrupted, however, and you may not get them back.
When you moved the drive from one computer to another, do you eject, or unmount it first, wait for the drives to spin down, before you pull the cable or turn it off? That also is a frequent cause of fried B-trees which can look like corrupion at times.
I am more “paranoid” about corruption than most. I copy project files to a completely separate drive when I make my backups, which can be two or three times a day. I have a backup on a flash drive, a backup on a FW drive, and my AutoSave Vault on a different drive from my project files. I don’t like to keep all the files in one place, and what you’re experiencing is the reason!
Hope something in here helps!!
debe
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[MitchJi] “Get the additional RAM from crucial.com instead of Apple unless you like paying more.”
I have a different point of view on this.
If you use this computer for business, and you can’t take the risk of losing days of productivity due to bad RAM, AND you have an Apple Store near you, paying more for Apple RAM is an investment in future productivity. Being able to walk into the Apple Store and get replacement RAM in the time it takes to get to the store is worth the extra cost to some.
But, certainly, if saving a quite a few bucks seems like a better idea to you, or you don’t have an Apple Store near enough, Mitch’s suggestion of Crucial RAM is a good way to go.
debe
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You need to use a separate program, such as MPEGStreamclip, to de-mux the MPEG1 files.
Google it. It’s a free download, and it’s an easy learning curve.
debe