[Kevin Mcroberts]

So far, one huge positive is that this will save me a great deal of money at my next upgrade cycle for Final Cut and Adobe CS, since I’ll only be needing one of those now….

[Kevin Mcroberts]

No, it wasn’t a version issue (hasn’t changed since these projects were created) and wasn’t an add-on issue (haven’t installed anything since these projects were created).

What appeared to have happened was that the floundering RAID lost its directory structure, and with FCP preferences pointing to these “there-yet-not-there” directories on the RAID, the program became utterly confused and denounced the misguided project files as unreadable or maybe of a newer version. I changed nothing else about the system aside from temporarily repairing the RAID’s directory structure, and the project files worked again… albeit now pointed to the main hard drive instead of that soon-to-be-trashed-POS RAID.

Not sure why a simple FCP prefs trash didn’t resolve it initially, but oh well.

[Kevin Mcroberts]

I had a few project files on the RAID (old projects), most others on the system drive.

While it was having the problem, EVERY project file, even archived on hard drives and optical media, was displaying the same error.

The “broken FCP Docs” was in reference to the FCP Documents folder directory structure being broken… it displayed on the RAID as an empty, 0-byte folder, despite actually containing about 2TB of captures, renders, etc from various projects. DiskWarrior fixed the directory structure.

But yes, I need to find a much better way of backing up all these large finished projects rather than tossing them on a large RAID and praying it won’t go belly-up or that I’ll be able to recover when it does.

[Kevin Mcroberts]

@ Chris: There is no newer version of FCP than what I have. It was simple weirdness.

Permissions + PRAM zap + DiskWarrior on the RAID to recover the broken FCP Docs directory structure got the projects open again as normal… at least enough to save elsewhere and recover the captured video (a multi-cam 4+ hour HDV presentation that I’d rather not recapture).

So yay for that.

[Kevin Mcroberts]

After exhaustive testing, the problem is with my RAID, not FCP or the GH2 footage. When I copy the PRIVATE directory to the laptop hard drive, it L&T’s without issue. When copied to the RAID, files sometimes become corrupt and won’t L&T properly.

Serious problem, but little to do with the camera or the software.

[Kevin Mcroberts]

I didn’t have illusions of reverting to AIC in daily workflow, but figured, “hey, if it’ll let my client access the footage…” No go anyway, so it remains dead to me.

Also no go on the disk repairs/permissions/pref trash. The issue appears on the same files, as though the files are being corrupted somewhere in the transfer, but where? Flaky card reader? If so, why can I preview files faultlessly with everything BUT FCP (or MPEG streamclip, or Cinema Tools, or anything I have that could rewrite a file if only it could read AVCHD in the first place)?

Any other ideas for workarounds until I iron out the root cause?

[Kevin Mcroberts]

Exactly.

This is essentially how I’ve worked with P2 for years now. Have worked with clients’ HMC150 footage without problems on this setup as well.

Apple’s site had this suggestion:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2672530

It’s FCE, but thought there might be some carry-over… suggesting to transcode to AIC/Plain Stereo. That failed exactly the same way.

[Kevin Mcroberts]

Hm. Yes.

The picture is a sample still image export. The “SAMPLE TEXT” layer is distorted to fit just underneath and in perspective with the “_ORDSTROM” marquee… in fact, it looks fine until the image is actually exported or rendered. Once rendered, I get this:

[Kevin Mcroberts]

SPLENDID!

but…

I’m still running 10.4.11.

Carp.