[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I guess you already tried another card initialized by the camcorder, shooting a standard AVCHD format (not 50P). I happened once to get a corrupted card giving me more or less the same problem (I had used the card with two different camcorders and something got mixed up). If not, it could help sorting out where the problem is.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Hello.
I sometimes use a Panasonic AVCHD camcorder and if I’m not wrong (I don’t have it with me at the moment) it builds the same structure, but FCPX sees and imports the files with no problem. Have you tried building a .dmg of the card somewhere on the media drive and then mount it to see if it shows up in the import window?
Regards

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I’ve just made the switch to FCP X, and I’m cutting my first two documentaries on it. I am not an early hour enthusiast. I had FCP X sitting for about one year with only occasional brief tests, and I was upset as many others about FCP X not being FCP8. I am a free-lance producer shooting and editing outdoors documentaries that are broadcasted by a satellite TV channel, about 12 per year, so there are no variables between now and one or two months ago, apart from the fact I’m a bit older :-). I am finding my FCP X experience great so far. The work, up to now, have been faster. I’d say quite faster. On a wild guess in the rough cut stage i’d say 30%. If I had to explain what makes it actually faster for me, I’d answer everything. The media organization is great. I still feel I could make much better once I arrange a tailored use of events and keywords, but it served me fine so far. The skimming is something I really appreciated, since I have to constantly move among a lot of footage looking for those few seconds. In my line of work I can’t plan and organize the shooting before playing rec, so I end up with a lot of footage I have to check later for those few seconds that are actually good. Skimming is great at that. Importing is faster, and I find that with no rendering timeouts I work better (I edit on an early 2008 MP and today I could playback three layers with graphics and alpha with no problems). The ability to review and store native clips that are much smaller is great when you work in the fields with a MBP for one or two weeks, and it is as well when you need to archive. And I also got to like the magnetic timeline. Now that I think about it, that and the new timeline tools are maybe the things that made the work faster and easier so far. I have not gone deep into the audio yet, but so far I found it easier to quickly evaluate the levels visually, plus I like fading audio just sliding the two handles instead than placing keyframes. Once I find out how to export a four channels IMX maybe using the roles (I need to deliver two stereo tracks with full mix down and two tracks with all sounds but voiceover for international use), I think I’ll give my beloved FCP7 some rest after 8 years, and I’ll be more than happy not having to move back to PC. All those “so far” are there because I haven’t finished any of the two documentaries yet. A couple of things I’d appreciate could be giving the clips a different color for each role, since the roles FCP X automatically assigns are not always right and that could be crucial if you need to export international versions with no titles or voiceover, and a small icon in the browser list view. It would also be great to have clips already used in the project somehow automatically marked in the browser.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Thank you Tom.
It was so easy I did not even think about that option 🙂

Best regards

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Thank you Jeff.
I already tried the workflow and it seems to work fine. I really cuts down the archive size compared to FCP 7 ProRes files. If it turns out to be reliable in the long term that would be great. The only downside seems to me to be in the fact i can’t really name the files with meaningful names so that I can search and use them outside of FCP X. I’ll use FCPX and “reveal in the finder” instead when I am looking for something for use in Motion or other. By the way, for the storyboarding I make on site, my 2011 MBP 15″ seems to work fine with the original clips.
Thank you

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

OK, solved.
I ran the DigitalRebellion removal tool again, and this time I added the “shared files” among the ones I wanted to remove. It found the receipts folder and I was able to delete them, and then succesfully reinstall FCP.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

After the first two or three failures, I tried and launched the DigitalRebellion removal tool, so maybe it found them and trashed them It should be all clean now, but I can’t install just the same. I have done this a few times before and I never had any problem. If I mouse over the greyed line, I get a “TTNEWERALREADYINSTALLED” warning.
Maybe I’ll have to try and install all FCPS from sratch, and that would be quite a pain, with updates and everything.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Backups and archives have become pretty crucial with the tapeless workflow. I still don’t feel safe the way I used to be when I had all the dv or hdv tapes named and lined up and two or three copied of the project I could batch capture and recover from. The LTO looks like a great choice, but the price is still very high. You save about 20,00/30,00$ on a 1,5 Tb tape compared to a HD drive of the same capacity, so it’s about 60 1,5 Tb drives before you pay the LTO driver. Years of backups in my line of work, even if I double security. And archived HD drives let sitting on a shelf should be less likely to go off than the actually used ones. I shoot outdoors documentaries so I first have to store the footage where I find myself working. I build a .dmg of each card daily on a RAID1 Western digital portable array from my MBP, and also copy them on one more drive. I keep the logged and transferred clips (I check and line up the footage daily) on the same RAID1, without copying them on the second drive (I still have the .dmg’s in case it fails). When I’m back home, I copy the RAID1 drive content onto a raid 5 “cold” NAS storage array, then the transferred clips for actual editing to the MP internal RAID, that gets synch’d onto another external backup system, so that if the RAID0 fails I do not have to find, copy and reconnect all the clips, and moreover, the graphics, voiceovers and so on. Just to feel more at ease, I keep a drive loaded with OS and FCP only, so that if I have a problem with the current system disk I can just connect that one and go on with the projects on the fly without having to wait for Time Machine restores or reinstalls (it saved my ### yesterday when FCP7 went out and wouldn’t launch or reinstall with a delivery to be completed tomorrow). When I’m done with a project I consolidate it using media manager into a drive I keep away. One drive per three or four projects. And time Machine takes care of the OS and projects on one more external drive. So far, it worked fine and I could survive to more than one drive or RAID failure. My next choice would be keeping the active projects media on an external RAID5 array like the Pegasus instead than on the RAID0 4 TB internal one.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Great, Thank you!
I’ll check the specs. If they have a FW800 port together with the TB I’ll get one, so I can use right now with both my MBP with TB and MP with FW800, and with the iMac I am likely to buy when it’s available (December, they say). I have an old one, 2008, and I just love it. When I bought it I thought it was just a toy fit for e-mail, administration and occasional light editing and graphic work, and that it would have suffered for internal heat, instead it came out to be a tank and handled a lot of heavy work with no problem at all. With the two TB ports the new 27″ iMac could be set with a second display, an external real time HDMI output via a blackmagic or similar box, and a fast media array. More or less all that I need but for an esata port.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

What leaves me doubtful about the iMac is not the ability to run FCPX. It’s in the fact that an external thunderbolt or FW800 RAID array will be needed. While the internal drives in my Mac Pro are totally quiet, all my external arrays are too noisy to work all day with, so that I only use them for storage or backup. And I have always had troubles with fanless single disk external enclosures, quiet enough but maybe not cool enough for hard editing. With the two TB ports the iMac could be completed with an external array, a second monitor, and a Blackmagic box to output a real time preview, and I imagine that would make it a great machine.

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy