[Joby Anthony jr]

For what it’s worth Jeffrey, as a word of moral support and encouragement–“been there, done that.” For some reason I get bit with that exact thing from time-to-time.

The other one that occasionally bites me is switching around in the Browser from All Clips to Favorites to Hide Rejected, etc. I sometimes forget the last setting I had it on and wonder what happened to my footage I just “know” was right there! So watch for that one too. ☺

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

William, these two links to Larry Jordan’s resources might be helpful to you in getting a better understanding of what’s happening under the hood of the .fcpbundle. And Mark’s suggestion about working with proxies while traveling is a solid scenario for a laptop, but run some workflow tests first so you have a good idea of what’s happening under-the-hood and how to relink back to the higher res media when you get home. Can be a little complicated till you get the steps down.

https://larryjordan.com/articles/where-does-final-cut-pro-x-store-media/

https://larryjordan.com/articles/fcp-x-v-10-1-media-management-collection/

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Could this, by chance, be related to the difference between ‘Scale to Frame Size’ and ‘Set to Frame Size’?

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

What if you apply a color board effect but not actually change anything, and then add the mask as a second effect? Would that work around the issue?

Or maybe change one little tiny thing like saturation by 1 point in the first color effect before applying the mask as the second effect?

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

I have experienced this too and thought I was going crazy. It’s been awhile since I ran across it. Pretty sure I was on 10.4.3 (maybe .2). In my instance, I was editing a 1080 clip into a 720 sequence and scaling the image a little bit. I was also working with a multicam clip, but tested it with the original clip and finally concluded it was related to masks. And I think, in my case, it was related to the Sharpen effect and its interaction with masks. If memory serves, I think I fixed it by reordering my effects (possibly putting Sharpen last?).

Anyway, sorry to not be more help other than I can validate that I’ve seen this before, and it seemed inconsistent (i.e., happening in some sequences, but not others, yet all of the clips were from the same shoot).

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Depending on size and scope of the project, you’re probably best off using the one SSD drive, and leaving the 4TB for other types of storage, such as original camera cards and such.

The other consideration too is connection type. An SSD is good and fast, but if you’re not filling up the connection pipe (i.e., Thunderbolt, Firewire, USB 2, etc.). In other words, depending on the connection type, both harddrives may give you the same performance regardless of how fast they are.

The bigger consideration might be how quickly cache/render files balloon on you. I believe by default Premiere stores cache on the boot drive, which is probably fine in most cases, but at 512 GB might dwindle quickly if you don’t stay on top of keeping it cleaned out.

Splitting across two drives might be a consideration for managing storage, but I don’t think there’s an inherent speed bump–at least not one that you’d notice. You’re probably just fine off the SSD alone. But admit, I could be wrong about this. One the plus side, it would mean only hauling around one HD.

Same for FCPX (not sure about Resolve), though for FCPX keeping the cache external to the Library might help you manage that storage better than keeping it internal, but still more a preference based on workflow and organization. Don’t think there’s speed gains either way.

For balance, I found these threads. Though old, one advocates the multi-drive setup, and the other notes SSD is fast enough for everything (dependent on connection type):

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2099128
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1039174

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Correct. For storage, anything big enough of any speed is sufficient. Keep faster drives like RAIDS for editing. Also, for simple shelf storage, I’ll even go past the 85% rule.

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

You’re welcome–good to know it makes sense (made sense to me anyway–haha).

Yep–you got both correct. Fill up no more than 85% of the drive; keep at least 15% free. I believe this wisdom also applies to SSD drives, but maybe not as critical–they work a little differently than spinning media. Also, some will even argue for 20% free space.

And yeah, once your originals are secured on the second harddrive, and you’re properly backed up everywhere. Drag to the trash, and empty. Poof–2 TBs recovered.

Also, after you copy/paste to a new drive, you should double-check that the copied ‘to’ is exactly the same file size as the copied ‘from.’ In other words, if the files in the new location aren’t the exact same size, something’s missing. I usually do this double-check at higher folder levels and only drill down when something’s not right.

And for the paranoid, there are utilities out there that will do this file copy work for you, and do double/triple checks on files sizes along the way to make sure everything got to it’s destination completely intact. Moving 2 TBs isn’t trivial. Whether you look at third part solutions, or drag and drop on your own, consider incremental chunks at a time. That way if the system burps along the way (like power loss), you don’t have start 2 TBs over.

Just a couple of hard lessons I’ve learned along the way . . .

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

If you’ve got a transition effect between the intro and multicam, it may have extended the multicam to make the transition. Double-click the audio on the multicam to expand it and look to see if there are any waveforms that show up underneath the transition. If so, likely the source of what you’re hearing. Will need to trim/keyframe that audio.

— Joby.

[Joby Anthony jr]

Sounds very odd to me as well–haven’t encountered before. If the clips otherwise seem to be there, but just an empty black box in the timeline, try deleting all of the renders as well. Maybe even Optimized and Proxy media. Also, see if toggling from Better Quality to Better Performance to Proxy to Better Quality, etc. does the trick to sort of kick things in the pants and refresh the views.

Deleting Preferences is a solid troubleshooting technique, as is rebooting the machine (do it cold, not hot–meaning total shutdown let it sit for a minute or two; I know, sounds like archaic, old-school, irrelevant instructions, but it brings me piece of mind that a hot reboot doesn’t when the system seems to burp somewhere–can’t hurt :-).

If behavior remains, try duplicating the Project or pulling something forward from one of the Backups pre-problem. Maybe there’s an effect hanging things up.

Anyway, a few extra knobs and switches to fiddle with. Definitely disconcerting to have empty boxes that otherwise work.

— Joby.