[John Pale]

The best way is to not try to do this the way you do it on an Avid. Toggle clip enable on individual clips to make them invisible, rather than turn off the entire track. This way you only cause the clips you select to become unrendered. Remember also, undo will restore your renders, if you change your mind.

Agreed, its a bit clunky, but you shouldnt lose any renders unnecessarily.

[John Pale]

Don’t bother with the Avid codec. It has not been updated in many years and has be known to cause instability in FCP (many people report crashing with out of memory errors).

here are two codecs (not free, however) that support alpha channels.

Sheer Video
https://bitjazz.com/

Microcosm
https://www.digitalanarchy.com/micro/micro_main.html

[John Pale]

“I thought in FCP 5 you could import the BWF with timecode info without having to go to a 3rd part software.”

No.

[John Pale]

in your sequence settings you can turn off display of through edits, which may accomplish what you need in a different way.
Otherwise, the answer is no.

[John Pale]

The problems in making MP3’s work are fairly analogous to the problems in getting native HDV to work (which has finally happened)…the MPEG compression scheme eliminates data (vastly reducing file size) but requires the host processor to fill in the blanks with interpolation. Obviously a fairly simple processor like an iPod’s can do it, but an iPod does not have to handle video effects and a gazillion other things in real time like FCP does. AIFF files and other uncompressed audio do not tax the processor much at all.

[John Pale]

Explain the steps you took to online this project.

8 bit Uncompressed uses a frame size of 720 x 486 (ntsc) and native DVCAM uses a frame size of 720 x 480 (ntsc). If you do things the proper way, using the media manager, this should not matter…just black lines will be inserted at the top and bottom (4 and 2) to fill the difference, but in your case it sounds like things got slightly blown up instead, which indicates a possible error in the procedure you took.

[John Pale]

you can do it on a dual 2ghz G5, but not reliably.
takes significant processor speed.
Cinewave accomplished this by handling the processing on the card.

[John Pale]

Open the Audio Mixer and mute it there. (in my layout, I keep the mixer open all the time)

[John Pale]

they are not

[John Pale]

There isn’t some magical thing to do that everyone in the world is keeping from you, honestly.
Try to do what this Apple Tech note says to do, and be sure to do everything step by step, in the same order as listed…..(even if you think you already did)

http://www.apple.com/support
Apple Service & Support
Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro: Compressor – Cannot submit job from Batch Window

In some situations submitting a job in Compressor fails even though a valid source, preset, and destination have been added.

Symptom

The Submit button is dimmed in Compressor’s Batch window, or a message appears stating “Unable to connect to background process” when submitting a job. This can occur due to an issue during Compressor’s installation.

To prevent this, either completely disable or temporarily remove third-party antivirus software or disk utilities which may run background processes during Compressor’s installation.

Products affected

Compressor 1.0, 1.0.1, and 1.2 (part of Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 3)

Solution

If you have Mac OS X 10.3 or later, update to Compressor 1.2.1.

If the issue continues:
Click the Finder in the Dock.
From the Go menu, choose Go To Folder.
Enter “/Library/Receipts” and click Go.
If present, drag files which contain the name “CompressorUpdate” to the Trash.
From the Go menu, choose Go To Folder.
Enter “/Library/Frameworks” and click Go.
Drag the file “Compressor.framework” to the Trash.
Go to either the Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio Pro page and download the Compressor 1.2.1 update (you will need to have your serial number).
Install the Compressor 1.2.1 update.

If this does not resolve the issue and you have both Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 3 then do the following:
Uninstall Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro.
Reinstall Final Cut Pro 4 and download and install all updates.
Install DVD Studio Pro 3 making sure to select “Custom” and uncheck Compressor to install only DVD Studio Pro and A.Pack.

If only one of these applications is present then uninstalling and reinstalling the single application should resolve the issue.

For Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.2.8

In most situations, updating to Compressor 1.1 should resolve this. You can use Software Update in System Preferences to install the updates. Note: The Pro Apps Support package (ProKit Framework) must be installed first. Once the Pro Apps Support Package is installed, then click Check Now in Software Update again to see the Compressor update.

If the issue continues, it may be because DVD Studio Pro 2 was installed after installing Compressor 1.1. DVD Studio Pro 2 installs some components that do not work with Compressor 1.1. To resolve this, follow these steps:
Click the Finder in the Dock.
From the Go menu, choose Go To Folder.
Enter “/Library/Receipts” and click Go.
Drag the file “CompressorUpdate1.1.pkg” to the Trash.
From the Go menu, choose Go To Folder.
Enter “/Library/Frameworks” and click Go.
Drag the file “Compressor.framework” to the Trash.
Go to either the Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio Pro page and download the Compressor update (you will need to have your serial number).
Install the Compressor update.