[Nick Henry]

Thanks for the replies everyone! Its definitely helping through this tough process. Now on 8 days and counting of diagnosing this 🙁

Took until about 6am this morning to do a fresh install of final cut 6 and removing with the suggested FCS remover. The problem still persists, however it now seems to be ONLY the smoothcam renders that go missing now, not other random ones, so at the very least the trace is coming down to the filter.

I am going to read though those threads and try the baking method you guys talked about. I have been using the smoothcam method of exporting the clip with zero effects, importing in, and applying effects to the small clip, but perhaps you are right in that baking it into the clip may help. I shall report back in after, as that is my final idea outside of jumping off a cliff.

Side note (for weeks to come), is my only option to upgrade the OS looking for a disk of Snow Leopard on ebay somewhere? I know its considered EOL’d and apple doesn’t seem to offer it anymore, which sorta locks you out of upgrading.

My edit rig:

Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card

[Nick Henry]

Hi Harry, thanks so much for responding. I am indeed on FCP6.0.6. I think we’re pretty much on the same page, because this post was a last ditch effort before doing an entire Studio 2 reinstall. I am looking to upgrade to both Snow Leopard (or above) and FCP studio 3 after this project, so I will definitely look into that program, thank you.

To answer your troubleshooting questions:

1. My internal hard drive that stores the final cut project data and prores media files are 7200prm. Internal boot drive is the same I believe.

2. I should have been more clear there, the render files are indeed being written to the external drive, it serves as my entire scratch disk (including capture of tapes for other projects that aren’t as imperative.

3. My base drive for my internal is as old as the computer, about 5 years. Definitely something I’ve been looking to upgrade, but haven’t had the cash yet. The other slots (2,3, and 4, used for media and this type of stuff) are less old, I’d say about 2 years, 2.5 max perhaps. The old one does host the applications, however.

My update as of tonight:

I have gone back to the last previous sequence and seem to be having better luck. However, I am getting new error messages, including “codec not found, you may be using a compression type without the corresponding hardware card”, and the newest one “Smoothcam failed to render: your hardware cannot render at the requested size and depth”. Both of these are new error messages to my system. Along with that, the crashes are still happening. So, unfortunately, things are pointing to a hardware upgrade (and I’d assume a OS upgrade, as OS’ above Leopard are supposed to use hardware and cores much better).

To that end, does anyone have any recommendations on programs to perhaps do hard drive and/or graphics card diagnostics?

[Nick Henry]

I’m on FCP6, and I didn’t import right into the edit system because we were just using an offsite Macbook for ingest and data storage. I would have LOVED to just have the edit system right there with me and Log and Transfer, but it wasn’t in the cards.

Hours after the original post, everything is in and organized, so FCP did indeed take the .MTS files just fine, as long as its done with the Transfer window. I was under the impression that only FCP7 took them natively, and 6 would throw a fit. Great to know for the future!

My edit rig:

Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card

[Nick Henry]

Ah, I see. Didn’t realize I could use that command when the file structure was the same. Seems to be working fantastic, thanks for the help! I figured the problem was somewhere in processing the footage twice, which never seems to be a good thing.

Side note: I’ve bookmarked your blog, great and interesting stuff!

My edit rig:

Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card

[Nick Henry]

Thanks for your reply Shane!

Unfortunately, I only got the footage on a hard drive dump from the camera op, no cards. Would it pay to put it back on a card, and then try for log and transfer?

I used Streamclip for my other footage, but it doesn’t recognize the .MTS file format. Haven’t heard of clipwrap, I’ll give that a search and see what it turns up.

My edit rig:

Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card

[Nick Henry]

Interesting update!

I’ve gotten the problem to alleviate, only using 90min fastest encode preset, one that I usually stay away from for obvious reasons. Nuts, because that means that the “motion estimation” command is actually downgraded from best to good. Now if i can translate these findings into a better compression technique. Any thoughts?

My edit rig:

Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card

[Nick Henry]

I appreciate any and all shots in the dark!

Just tried the recompress all frames tick. No luck. It honestly looks like the fields are shifting and resetting in one second increments, until the end of the dolly shot and everything settles down.

Since it only happens when it touches compressor, I’m starting to (reluctantly) consider a re-install.

Here’s the shot properties:

[Nick Henry]

Unfortunately, I don’t have a DVCpro50 deck, so recapturing is out. I did try to export the shot, reimport it to the timeline and have it live as a single shot (instead of effects, moving parts, etc.), and it still showed up.

[Nick Henry]

Hi Jerry,

Original cut was in a DV50 sequence, final export as uncompressed 10-bit because it makes my text look better. Both exhibit the same issues, however. This literally crops up ONLY when going to mpeg-2. I’ve actually tried a few exports to h264 in compressor just to test, and the shot looks fine.

[Nick Henry]

I finished my test with field dominance set to none. As I assumed, all text looked great but the video quality took a hit. So, I’m back to square one. I suppose I’ll look into using motion, but I don’t even know where to begin with that. To the interwebs!

My edit rig:

Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card