[Eddie Torre]

“Also, it might be worth noting that I experienced a weird glitch with the display last week. When I turned the computer on, the display stayed black.”

Yes that is definitely worth noting. On my work authorization, that was one of the notes as well “Unit boots to no video intermittently”. That would manifest itself after using the G5 for about 1/2 hour or so too.

I’d have the issues described in the original post, then I would need to reboot and it would intermittently boot to black. The key word being “intermittent” because it wouldn’t happen every time. That’s why they had a hard time replicating it. I think that was what lead them to first replace the video card which was unsuccessful.

[Eddie Torre]

I went back and dug up my Work Authorization Agreement from 2005.

Initially they did the following repairs which didn’t work.

1 x HARDWARE REPAIR-LEVEL 2
1 x Card, Video, NV40

On the second visit they did the following which fixed it.

1 x Board, Logic, H
1 x Multiprocessor, Dual 2.5

In the notes it says “top processor fan running a bit hotter then bottom” I’m not sure if that was my note to them or their observation.

[Eddie Torre]

In the past I had a Power Mac G5 (June 2004) that exhibited these symptoms.

I can’t remember the specific console info I got at the time, but I did have the other symptoms namely, sluggish performance, sleep issues, jet engine fans, resulting in having to do hard shut downs everytime. It started with one big kernel panic and slowly went downhill from there.

Like you I ran hardware test and everything was okay. Took it in to Apple and they repalced the video card, but it didn’t help.

Then I noticed that the symptoms would only manifest themselves after a period of use (as opposed to say within the first 30 minutes of use).

I took my machine back to Apple and told them that they needed to leave the machine on for a while (I think I told them to leave it on for an hour before testing it). It was only then that they were able to replicate the issues you describe.

As a result of this, they replaced the logic board and a multiptrocessor in my machine and it was flawless after that. Not sure if your issue is the same as what mine was, but I just wanted to let you know that I tried EVERYTHING (I think I ran a few terminal commnads too), but nothing.

I can’t say whether your issue was exactly the same as mine, but just wanted to let you know that I tried for an extended period of time (days) and was never able to figure it out, but the logic board and multiprocessor fixed the issues I was having. If it is the logic board on your machine, it cold be expensive to fix through Apple so be careful.

You may want to put the iStat Pro widget on your machine to see if one of the multiprocessors is running considerably hotter than the other.

[Eddie Torre]

If you haven’t downloaded the demo yet, you may want to.

We prepared a package recently for a client that required a lot of green screen shots. We were impressed with Ultimatte as a whole, but we certainly ran into this issue (quoted from their release notes):

“Auxiliary inputs (such as the Background and Clean Plate) may fail to load in FCP 6.”

We had problems getting the plug in to recognize the background plate, which is rather important (try it out in the demo to see if it works for you). If you do buy the plug in, you may want to contact them first to see if this issue has been resolved.

I’m assuming you are talking about Ultimatte AdvantEdge 1.6.4

[Eddie Torre]

I haven’t tried this, but one approach you could try is selecting all the clips in the browser and making one huge multiclip with 350 angles (I don’t know if FCP has a limit). Then you cut the one multiclip into the sequence and trim it on each side 15 frames. Take this trimmed clip and cut it 350 times (10 times, reselect, cut 34 times = 350). Here’s the tedious part, now you have to ctrl click each clip and change the active angle 1,2,3 etc to 350. Select all the clips, ctrl click them and choose “collapse multiclips” which will restore the original names.

It may sound like a pain, but at least you’ll only have to trim once. Ctrl clicking the clip to switch the angle is a litte faster than manually doing all the trimming for each one.

Now add your multiple transitions. If you have FCP7 then you can select all the clips in the timeline, and drag the cross dissolve to your timeline onto the clips (this drag can be a little finicky, but release your drag over the center of a selected clip as opposed to its edge. The end result will be multiple transitions.

If you don’t have FCP7, you can do it the old way listed in the first post.

[Eddie Torre]

Just curious,

How come you are using the V2 driver, shouldn’t you be using V3?

I’ve had many of those symptoms in the past, but they were all fixed with subsequent updates with the driver.

[Eddie Torre]

Also, Pete’s Plugins>Fisheye

https://www.petewarden.com/

[Eddie Torre]

I think this have may have to do more with FCP than AE

In FCP,

1 select your sequence
2 cmd 0 (sequence settings)>video processing tab

There is a little heads up about color shifts.

I’m not sure what codecs you are using, but you may want to try rendering in one of the two “render in high-precision YUV” options. I think you may have your sequence set to “Always render in RGB”.

[Eddie Torre]

If you want, you could use the original tape and set this preference…

Final Cut Pro>User Preferences>On timecode break: Make New Clip

[Eddie Torre]

Cool! Glad it worked out for you…

Happened to me awhile back too, definitely not fun