[Neil Ryan]

But what are you making? Is it a non-standard video format? Are you delivering some kind of portrait video file?
You need to work towards your end product, so tell us what that is…

Neil.

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Neil Ryan
Post Production Protagonist

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[Neil Ryan]

You need to edit this as regular 16:9, because that’s what you’ll be delivering it as, I’d reckon.
Is that the case?
And that means you’ll need to rotate your viewing screen as you edit; the same as will happen with the final display. (I’m assuming you have a separate video monitor.)
*You can always nest your timeline into another, custom-made 9:16 seq, render it and play that or export that as a file, in order to watch it as a portrait aspect. But that would be simply for preview or approval purposes.

Neil.

[Neil Ryan]

“the timeline (animation compression 720×486 at 23.98 fps)”
You mean your timeline is set at Animation?
I thought that was a no-no…

Please confirm.

[Neil Ryan]

[Tommy Martiniere] “I added the 3 2tb WD hard drives but… “

Have you checked the format of these drives?

[Neil Ryan]

I thought it was a Disk Full error – can you check that?

But also, double check you do not have any of the following in file names or disk or folder names etc.

Characters you should not use in filenames:
| ; , ! @ # $ ( ) / \ ” ‘ ` ~ { } [ ] = + & ^

[Neil Ryan]

How many audio tracks do you have in FCP?

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Neil Ryan
Post Production Protagonist

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[Neil Ryan]

Firstly, I agree with John Pale’s comments about making Avid/FCP work together. Take that on board.
Secondly, you said: “most of my colleagues (finishers) are FCP-based.”
Then you’d be best with a compatible edit system.
I’d like others to confirm this, but rather than FinalCut Studio, I think FinalCut Express will do the job for you, given you want to do simple edits. (FC Express does quite a lot; you don’t need the extra applications/expense of FC Studio.)

Neil.

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Neil Ryan
Post Production Protagonist

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[Neil Ryan]

Could they have Macrovision?

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Neil Ryan
Post Production Protagonist

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[Neil Ryan]

What OS version are you running?

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Neil Ryan
Post Production Protagonist

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[Neil Ryan]

I believe error 35 is a volume error.
Have any of your volumes gone offline, or even asleep?
Are you trying to media manage some files that are on unmounted volumes?
Did you import anything directly off a CD/DVD which is not mounted?

Neil.