[Martin Nelson]

“If you turn off spot light on a drive, ‘CMD F’ still works in the finder, just not as fast.”

Warren, as a test, I just copied the name of a file from one of the media drives that have Privacy on in Spotlight. I then went to the desktop and and used CMD F and pasted in the name. Didn’t find it.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

“There’s just no reason to do it. When computers were slower it might have been useful, now it’s just not important.”

I don’t know what you’re responding to here, David. Sorry.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

Well, thanks David, nothing would make me happier that to go back to the creative part of my job, but in getting everything running again, new issues have arisen. Without making this one of my usual long responses, I often need to find a file that isn’t in the project, but is somewhere on my 7 TB of media drives. If I can’t use Spotlight (which, again, I’ve been told here and elsewhere I shouldn’t) how do I go about searching this huge haystack for my clip?

And, yes, better organization would have helped, but I inherited the existing organization.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

OK, John, but I’m trying to figure out what I need to get rid of now that it’s already in my project. Are tiffs OK? PDF’s? JPEGs? GIFFs? How about DVCPRO HD 720p60 mixed in with DV/DVCPRO – NTSC? Animation?

I’ve got a lot of different files in here and I’m converting like crazy. Final Cut will let almost anything in; it just won’t necessarily treat it well.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

OK, Jeff, Dennis was a little stingy on his reply while I am nothing if not generous when it comes to verbiage. The answers are, “yes, a couple of ways,” and, “depends.”

It’d be funniest if I just stopped here, I suppose. But that would be wrong.

You can get timecode to super over the image in the Canvas while paused by using Dennis’ method. You can also access that setting from the rightmost of the three pulldown menus above the Canvas. Choose Show Overlays and then also choose Show Timecode Overlays.

Another means, which will keep the numbers up while you’re playing is to open the Timecode Viewer from the Tools menu. These numbers will run for whichever screen (Viewer or Canvas) is selected. Ctrl+click on the bottom half of this window to choose what information you want. I find Duration (Marked) to be extremely useful.

While capturing, you’re more or less screwed unless you have a deck with a timecode display close enough for you to view or if you have a third monitor feeding from the deck. With this arrangement you could turn on character display on the deck and the image would appear on screen. I think this is one of the great missing features.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

Yes, I have.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

“If you get vastly different causes for each crash, that is generally an indicator of much greater problems on your system.”

My thinking too and I’ve been trying to isolate that problem. I believe you’ve read my novel: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1087193
Crash Analyzer typically calls for “Graphics Card / Driver Issue” or “Corrupt / Unsupported Media.” I recently installed the ATI Radeon HD 4870 card and ran software updates hoping that would fix something in response to the first message. In response to the second, I did have a lot of unsupported files when I inherited this project. I attempted to eliminate them all several months ago, but I may have missed a few.

But why does it bail on me now? If I could just get it to launch I could migrate over a small part of the project to a new project and perhaps carry on.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

“I’m guessing it’s corrupt then.”

Well, that was my guess too, Jon. So I went looking through my Autosave folder, I found all of them refused to open as well. I do happen to have an old Autosave folder on a different startup disk and I can get those considerably older and considerably smaller projects to open just fine (by “just fine” I mean I can get them to open with the media offline; I haven’t taken them to the next step yet).

BTW, I just tried to open the project on a different earlier startup disk. It crashed and Crash Analyzer gave me the following. I haven’t seen this message on the new startup disk, but did get it occasionally when I was still running off of this earlier one:

Suspected Cause:
This crash appears to have been caused by Quartz Composer. Such crashes are most often caused by corrupt media or graphics card issues.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

Absolutely, Jon. You know I turn to your stuff first. It quickly said the project was repaired, but that didn’t end up changing any results.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20

[Martin Nelson]

“How does FCP crash? Any sort of error?”

If media is online then at the end of reading the project it just crashes out without a message. Crash Analyzer from FCS Maintenance Pack first said:

“This crash appears to have been caused by an issue with your graphics card or graphics drivers. A common cause of issues is running Final Cut Studio on an underpowered graphics card.”

I’ve just installed the ATI Radeon HD 4870 and ran software updater. And I can run much earlier versions of this project from Autosave.

The next crash gave me this message from Crash Analyzer:

“This crash was caused when trying to draw or interact with a user interface element. A common cause for this crash is a corrupt or outdated version of the ProKit or BrowserKit frameworks, but in some cases it may be a Final Cut Pro bug that should be reported to Apple. Users sometimes get this error if they upgrade their OS without reinstalling Final Cut Studio or if their HIToolbox preferences are corrupt.”

This is a fresh install of OS 10.5.8 with updates run and then a fresh install of FCP with updates run.

“Try trashing prefs, then launching.”

I did, Shane. In fact, immediately before launching I went to the Privacy tab under Spotlight in the System settings and blocked out all the media drives, I then ran Disk Warrior (all in pretty good shape, but rebuilt any directory 7% or worse out), Disk Utility (no problems found, permissions repaired), Compressor Repair, FCS Housekeeper and Preference Manager. These last two pretty much trash all the preferences. I then restarted computer, took all media drives offline and only then launched the app. That’s when I got the “unreadable or may be too new…” message.

Martin

2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20