[Graham Read]

Yet to try it but Apple released FCPX 10.4.1 today adding a couple of new features but addressing a lot of bugs including the spanned clips XDCAM issue and the crashing in High Sierra. Only downside is that the new version only works in High Sierra and above which is why I’ve not tried it yet as I still need DVD Studio Pro for regular work. Going to have to look at a dual boot system…

[Graham Read]

Hi Josh,
Sorry to hear you are crashing in Sierra too. I’ve certainly not had that.
Try the XDCAM Browser way – you can get it from the Sony website.
1 Use the browser to navigate to either a camera card or a HD copy.
2 Right click on one or more thumbnails and select the 2nd option “Import into Final Cut Pro”
3 Select Execute on the next dialogue and the default is to create a folder in you Movies folder
4 Once that’s done it gives you the option to import into a Library and will launch FCP if it’s not already open.
5 You could either quit FCP, eject SxS card, launch FCP then import from the new Movies folder file or just try to eject the card before FCP finishes launching. (assuming is still crashes)

The crucial difference is that this method re-wraps the file into a regular MPEG2 MOV and doesn’t create the BPAV structure so it should import fine.

[Graham Read]

Hi again Josh.

I’m starting to see a pattern here which may help.

1 – Before FCP 10.4 I never had these problems
2 – The crashing problem only happens with FCP 10.4 and High Sierra combination.
3 – The crash only happens if there are camera clips that are longer than 4GB – because the BPAV folder structure of EX-1/EX-3 cameras use FAT32 format so the camera “seamlessly” subdivides them into 4GB clips and most editing software apps hide this complexity and present long clips as just a single long clip instead of the _01, _02 that is there if you browse the folder structure in Finder.
4 – FCP 10.4 does not crash in High Sierra if the media card only has short clips.
5 – FCP 10.4 has lost the ability to interpret correctly the BPAV folder structure.
6 – If recording really long clips that are larger than one camera card, the camera spans to another card – This is unworkable in FCP 10.4 even on Sierra as at least one 4GB mp4 sub clip will not appear in the import browser and therefore not be importable. This is infuriating.

My workaround: I now use Adobe Media Encoder to transcode my long form XDCAM EX files to ProRes then import into FCP 10.4 – reminiscent of FCP 7.0 10 years ago with XDCAM Transfer! Can also use Sony XDCAM Browser to Export to FCP 10.4 but Browser is discontinued so doesn’t fully support FCPx since introduction of Libraries. You can however export to a folder and then import from there into FCPx.

Advice to Sony BPAV camera users – Don’t upgrade main edit system to High Sierra – If I knew about this I would have not upgraded to FCP 10.4 either – colour tools are good but it’s screwed my workflow.

Please everybody experiencing this file a bug report from within FCP 10.4 then maybe it will get fixed!

[Graham Read]

Hi Josh,
I’m using XDCAM Browser V2.1 (2.1.0.248) on both a Sierra MacPro and a clean install Retina MacBook Pro with High Sierra and both work for me including being able to export to FCPx although I don’t use that facility.

[Graham Read]

Never a good idea mid-project.
If you use Sony XDCAM EX don’t upgrade yet – there are a number of issues regarding importing footage that are causing me problems. I’ve not tested with XDCAM HD (MXF).
I get issues with 10.4 on Sierra but a more serious complete crash on a clean install with High Sierra when connecting camera media either via a card reader or a HD backup copy.
As Mark says above, we’re forced to transcode by other means before importing which is like editing on FCP 7.0 again – Progress they say!

[Graham Read]

Hi Mark,
Yes, I’ve discovered this too. I’m a long time FCPx user and FCP 7 before that.
I first had problems with 10.4 on Sierra whereby the import browser was not seeing all the clips on the SXS card. I was in the habit of using XDCAM Browser software from Sony to merge spanned clips rather than the camera archive method that Apple suggest and had been doing this for years.
The way FCPx 10.4 interprets not only spanned clips but also the forced splitting of clips into 4GB or less due to the FAT32 format of XDCAM EX cards is broken.
As I have been using this for years I was in the habit of also installing the Sony XDCAM plugin.
I was keen to try a clean install of High Sierra and on checking the support site, it suggested that the plugin was only required for 10.2 and older versions of FCPx so I have not installed the plugin on my new clean build but curious if it would solve the problem.
I’m going to file another bug report with Apple – there are not too many people shouting about this problem which is odd.
I was hoping that a clean install would solve my first problem of not interpreting the SXS card files correctly in 10.4 on Sierra, but sadly not the case – it’s worse with a total crash out.
Fortunately I’ve got my Sierra system still running and I can import onto a library there and take the drive with me and it then works on my MBP with High Sierra.
Any thoughts on the necessity of the Sony XDCAM Plugin?

[Graham Read]

Hi there,

I’ve got similar problems. Never had any problems with Compressor 3.0 but ever since upgrading back in September to v3.5 (now v3.5.2) I’ve had a lot of issues – seems a backwards step to me. I have tried the “Compressor Repair” utility, uninstalling & reinstalling but just can’t get Compressor to encode my 40 minute HD video for DVD. I’ve had to just let DVDSP do the encoding (from full HD to m2v & audio in one step).

My system disk has about 80GB free space but I was starting to think that is was a disk space issue as in the odd occasion when compressor was working away, it would take ages to “merge segments” if I was using qMaster – often it would just fall over. There seems to be no heads up that there isn’t enough disk space for the temp files required.

Anyway, I’m getting this “3x crash service down” error consistently regardless of a “This Computer” encode or using 4, 6 of 8 virtual clusters via Qmaster. My system is 2008 MacPro 8 core 2.8GHz 8GB RAM.

I’m still on Leopard 10.5.8 but have Snow Leopard waiting to be installed – am I likely to have better luck with a clean install of FCS under Snow Leopard.

I enclose a compressor log:-

Thanks for any advice.

Graham Read