[Jim Press]

Hi Nick,

Our standard workflow is to make the master edit self-contained, however I’ve just checked the file size: 24GB (ProRresLT 720 25fps; 2hrs 20mins) and it should be around 45GB so something isn’t right here–that seems way too big for a reference movie and it’s way to small for a self contained movie.

The missing file is “[project name]_FIN-00000021” which looks like a render file to me??

I have on LTO the FCP Project file and the r3ds from which we made the ProRes/edit footage, so I can recreate this if necessary.

I’m actually trying to get this file to play because I want to put it into CatDV and have CatDV make a proxy of it (once the CatDV proxy is made, that proxy will stay online and give us a permanent archive/database copy of quick viewing of the content, and I’ll then delete the ProRes Master (as we already have it archived on LTO).

So it seems there’s no way to get QT/CatDV to be able to play this file, despite the fact that it plays in QuickView?

[Jim Press]

Thanks Michael- will check this and report back.

[Jim Press]

I’m on a MacPro in Finder, so no app, then click on the file to highlight it, then click spacebar and a pop up window opens and plays the video. I think its a derivative of QT… Its the OS X shortcut for viewing any file (you can do the same with image files, word files, etc).

[Jim Press]

Thanks Alexander, yes that might be possible. Given all the edit footage is offline, I’m wondering if the self-contained movie was exported with a small clip f material that wasn’t rendered, so that somehow even the self-contained file is reliant on a rendered file? Its just weird that I can play the movie, in full res, in Finder, but not in QT…

[Jim Press]

We switched from ProRes422 (1hr of 1080 24p= 62GB) to ProResLT (1hr of 1080 24p= 43GB) about a year ago. Can’t see any visual difference but LT is about two thirds the size. Moving to ProResProxy (1hr of 1080 24p= 20GB) is about a third the size as 422 although you might see some difference in high detail scene, but for proxy editing is more than good enough.

[Jim Press]

Thanks Stuart, I hadn’t thought of that- I’ll check it out.

[Jim Press]

Thanks AJ, I’m sure that would work too, although it does sound like a lot of work [cold shivers thinking of rotoscoping]! Duplicating the text layer did the job in this instance…

[Jim Press]

Thanks Gus– that’s an excellent suggestion! I’m sure it would work for video too.

I started working on the sequence and remembered a slight time-saving method, where I click through each clip in the timeline, highlighting the target clips and paste attributes to a bunch of clips at a time (although you can only apply 1 attribute e.g. crop and NOT also filters (for example, a colour grade)–FCP only applies one attribute even if you check a number of boxes).

[Jim Press]

A huge thanks to you both Robb and Bryson for all your insights– the collection of answers you’ve provided here is an incredible resource.

Robb- will you please make a post here in the CatDV forum notifying us all if you do upload some video tutorials? Would hate to miss out…

[Jim Press]

Awesome Bryson! With FCS ending, I’m sure there’s many many mid-sized productions keen as mustard for CatDV and a new video explaining its application would seal the deal. I look forward to it.