[Joe Marler]

For markers in the Event Browser, you can hover your mouse over those and see your marker info. Simply enable View>Browser>Skimmer Info.

If you assigned custom names for those markers, you can then search them using the search bar above the Event Browser.

You can create a Smart Collection that filters on markers by doing File>New>Smart Collection, name it, then double-click on that in the sidebar to enter the smart collection criteria. Press the + key and assign “Markers”. Thereafter clicking on that Smart Collection will show all clips in the Event Browse containing markers.

To create a library-wide smart collection (IOW one that searches through all events in the library, not just the current event), select the library in the sidebar, then do File>New>Library Smart Collection.

If you toggle to List View (OPT+CMD+2), the Event Browser will show more info about each clip. If you press OPT while spinning down the disclosure triangle by the event name, it will unfold all ratings and markers on all clips. You can then scroll down and see all your marker names.

If you have many clips without markers, just use your marker smart collection to filter only on markers. Then with the Event Browser in List View, you can see the distilled version of clips only containing your markers and read the names.

[Joe Marler]

Kyrina, the 3rd-party MacWhisper utility can not only transcribe with high accuracy to an SRT file, but it can also translate at the same time. You can easily produce English and Spanish SRT files, import those to FCP via File>Import>Captions, and flip between them. Each one automatically becomes a separate audio role, visible in the timeline index. You switch subtitles by opening the Timeline Index (SHFT+CMD+2 toggles), then press “Roles”. The English and Spanish subtitles will have a separate button to enable or disable them. I’ve used MacWhisper extensively and it works well: https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper

The latest version has an optional translation feature using the DeepL AI tool. It supposedly produces higher-quality translations than the built-in MacWhisper translation. That is a paid upgrade but you get 500,000 words per year free.

I think the most recent update to MacWhisper requires Ventura.

Another item I recently found (but have not tested) is SRT Importer 2, which lets FCP import SRT captions as titles. That’s in case you want the flexibility of a subtitled presentation vs the more restrictive caption display options. In theory, if the SRT output of MacWhisper was good enough quality, you could then convert it from captions to subtitles. FCP SRT Importer 2: https://ulti.media/fcp-srt-importer-2/

There is a new plugin from FxFactory called “Transcriber”. It supposedly does AI-based translation and optional conversion to subtitle format (not just caption format). I have not tried this yet: https://fxfactory.com/info/transcriber/?fbclid=IwAR1hpl9FUI-boHmbpk4Ofqpd17c45TTlxrQZS8oER-2fy3bq8oQzT3nXa2Y

[Joe Marler]

I don’t think this has anything to do with FCP or video editing, but you could possibly follow some of the advice in this series of articles. If you need further help, you could probably get better advice on a MacOS forum.

https://www.makeuseof.com/mcafee-virus-pop-up-scam/

https://www.makeuseof.com/remove-quick-search-tool-hijacker/

[Joe Marler]

Thanks, Ben. We gave him the same answer over on Apple FCP forums. Tom and I could not reproduce the problem.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254791414

[Joe Marler]

The issue is when the black timeline thumbnails happen, does the multicam have footage on the MONITORED ANGLE? When you select a monitoring angle in the angle viewer, you are telling FCP “show me only this angle in the viewer”. Inside the multicam there may be footage at the playhead position — but if that footage is not on the monitored angle, it will show black thumbnails in the main timeline.

You can see the effect in real-time by clicking on different angles in the angle viewer. The moment you click another angle, the timeline thumbnails will change to that angle. If at some point in the timeline there is no footage for the monitored angle inside the multicam, the timeline thumbnails will go black.

Some camera codec formats have metadata that identifies the camera and you don’t need to label the camera in the inspector. However many (maybe most) do not, so it’s always necessary to label all the clips from each camera or recorder with a camera name or angle name in the inspector — before creating the multicam clip. Then the multicam will assemble correctly, it won’t have that “stair step” appearance, and you won’t see large black regions in the timeline.

[Joe Marler]

Doug, you are correct! The thumbnails shown on the timeline will switch based on the selected monitoring angle. If monitoring an angle where the parent clip stretches across the timeline, then no timeline thumbnails will be black. If monitoring an angle (yellow box in angle viewer) where it’s a short parent clip, then only that short length of the timeline will have thumbnails. The others will be black. That is expected.

You’re right the OP’s case was only two cameras and was not assembled properly when the multicam was created. In turn that was likely caused by not labeling the clips correctly with a camera name or angle name in the inspector. E.g, cam 1 for the long clip and cam 2 for all the short clips.

[Joe Marler]

This is just a guess, but I think the timeline thumbnails are not deleted by deleting render files. Also I think the multicam clip has separate thumbnails vs those for the parent clips. It might be possible for the multicam thumbnails to be corrupt or missing, yet the thumbnails for the parent clips to be OK.

There is no FCP command to delete thumbnails but you can do it manually by using Finder (carefully). Go inside the library package, Render Files folder and delete the two folders Thumbnail Media and Peaks Data. Restart FCP. See if that makes the multicam thumbnails reappear.

There was a fix in FCP 10.6 about thumbnails would sometimes not appear in the browser or timeline. So people running FCP versions before 10.6 might see that.

[Joe Marler]

It crashed in thread 59. That was in a deep call stack involving “Helium” functions. Helium is a private FCP framework that is apparently related to video processing or rendering. It was processing a queue of items managed by Grand Central Dispatch (GCD). IOW it was likely a worker thread managed by GCD on behalf of the FCP application.

The crash was in ProGL::ContextHandle::getVirtualScreen() const + 0. ProGL is a private FCP framework that might be a wrapper for OpenGL calls. With the advent of Metal I don’t know how that fits in, whether they retained former method names for compatibility with upper layers, or what.

Prior to the crash point it was in the private FCP framework “TextFramework”. That is a Motion framework, which implies Motion functions might have been processing some kind of text or title.

At the top of the crash log, it lists error code “KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000010”. That suggests that the application tried to access an invalid memory address (0x10) that is not mapped or is in a restricted memory area.

It then said “Termination Reason:”, which indicates the process was terminated due to a segmentation fault (Code 11), which is a specific type of memory access violation that occurs when a program tries to access an invalid memory address.

“VM Region Info” indicates that the address 0x10 is not in any region, which may confirms an invalid memory access.

The crash point might indicate a null pointer dereference or an uninitialized pointer in the ProGL library, specifically in the ProGL::ContextHandle::getVirtualScreen() method.

Why that happened in this case is unknown but that’s a typical failure mode when multithreaded software crashes.

Can you give any additional info on what you were doing when it crashed? If it’s reproducible, is there anything in common? Can you export a project XML, create a new library, import the project XML and see if it happens there? If it does, duplicate the project, open the duplicate, select all clips with CMD+A and remove all effects with Edit>Remove Effects. Then see if that project crashes.

I didn’t see any references to 3rd-party plugins in the crash log but if you’re using any, state which ones.

If your computer has multiple monitors, as a troubleshooting step unplug that and any outboard video hubs and see if it crashes without that.

As always try the usual stuff such as reset FCP preferences, verify that all disk volumes have plenty of free space, etc.

[Joe Marler]

There are two ways cameras shoot slow motion: (1) Sensor and encoding frame rates are increased, with intention of retiming in the NLE, and (2) Sensor scan rate is increased but material is encoded at a lower frame rate and bit rate. IOW the slow motion is “baked in”. That is how the FX6 handles 120 fps material.

The FX6 can only do that frame rate in S+Q mode. I believe the reason for that restriction is the XAVC-I codec and MXF container format do not support the required encoding bit rate to shoot and record true 120 fps. In return the MXF container has much richer metadata than the MP4 container and better supports timecode.

The metadata which indicates the FX6 sensor frame rate is unfortunately esoteric, but it can be seen using Sony Catalyst Browse or the 3rd-party tools MediaInfo or Invisor. In Catalyst Browse, the metadata field is denoted “Capture frame rate”, as opposed to regular “frame rate”. In the other tools the metadata field is called “CaptureFrameRate_FirstFrame”.

Invisor: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/invisor-media-file-inspector/id442947586?mt=12

I tried using the command-line utilities ExifTool, ffmpeg and ffprobe but they do not reveal that metadata. If they did you could batch process a bunch of camera clips and rename them to indicate the 120 fps stuff. Then you could use Finder tags or an FCP filter to keyword those.

I also investigated what video metadata is indexed by MacOS Spotlight search and what metadata fields Finder can search. Unfortunately they don’t handle sensor scan rate in XAVC-I/MXF.

However Invisor can display metadata from about 10 clips at the same time in a spreadsheet-like grid, so you can find them like that.

MediaInfo is a GUI tool but has an available command-line interface, but it’s limited and I don’t think it handles sensor scan rate.

FX6 in S+Q mode at 120 fps does not record audio, so maybe you could find them like that (maybe even in FCP). In hindsight that might be the simplest method but I didn’t think about it until just now.

Of course that doesn’t consider all the camera operators who shoot normal frame rate and forget to turn on their camera mics 🙂

[Joe Marler]

I have observed this problem when certain Thunderbolt arrays are plugged in, I begin a normal MacOS normal shutdown, then it reboots. Upon reboot it displays a kernel panic error log which sometimes refers to a shutdown I/O stall or (more recently) “Halt/Restart Timed Out @IOPlatformExpert.cpp:883”.

Unlike user-mode code where exceptions can crash that app, the involved code here is kernel mode, so it will crash the entire OS. Of course it’s in the process of shutting down anyway, but it might cause an ungraceful shutdown — I don’t know where in the overall shutdown sequence it happens.

Fortunately this source code is open source and examination of it indicates that within IOPlatformExpert.cpp it was attempting to get the machine name from the device tree using the key value gIODTModelKey. For some reason that returned a NULL value, it dereferenced that variable which caused a crash. I don’t know the underlying cause; maybe it’s interrogating all I/O devices as part of sending dismount or shutdown commands and some Thunderbolt I/O devices do not respond within the expected period. It would seem a bug in the MacOS code because IMO it should continue the MacOS shutdown and log an error, not crash.

I have several RAID arrays and it only happens on one of them, an OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini which contains 4 x 4TB Samsung EVO 870 SATA III SSDs. It is using regular AppleRAID not SoftRAID.

This is on an M1 Ultra Mac Studio running MacOS Monterey 12.6.2, but it also happened on my iMac Pro on several prior versions of MacOS. My workaround is manually dismount and unplug that Thunderbolt array before I shut down or reboot the machine.