[Petter Stahre]

Thanks, thats a good idea.

I was hoping there was a way to force effects being calculated after the standard color correction, but I guess it’s just wishful thinking. To be forced to use an “adjustment layer” or to create a compound clip when using masks and effects together seems a bit awkward from a workflow point of view.

But at least it works 🙂

[Petter Stahre]

While I hope someone else has got better ideas, here is what I would start with:

– first make a backup of the disk containing the faulty project before trying to start up FCPX. From what I understand FCPX only keeps one backup meaning that if FCPX should succeed to open your project but it contains errors (or worse: is empty) then FCPX will overwrite the backup of your “problematic-but-potentially-recoverable” version of your project.

– After the backup … can you open the project on another computer with the same version of FCPX? If so then there still seems to be a problem with your software installation and not the data on the drive.

– The backup should be in root/Final Cut Projects/your-projectname/Backups/
If there is any backup there, replace the “CurrentVersion.fcpproject” file in root/Final Cut Projects/your-projectname/ with the backup file and rename it to the same name. (After you made the backup of the disk!)
Note: I haven’t tried this but I would suspect this is how you “activate” and old backup-version again.

– If this doesn’t help I would still suspect it’s the project file that causes the error. Maybee clearing the /Render Files/ folder can help, before starting FCPX.

– As a last solution I would try to move away any event-file from the disk, that is in use by the project and then start FCPX. If you’re lucky then maybee there is a serious problem with one of the event files and you could then try to bring them back to your disk in groups and restart FCPX to see when you get the spinning beach ball again.

… none of this is tested, but this is what I would try.

And again … I hope someone else has better advice.

Good luck!

// Petter

[Petter Stahre]

I don’t think you can feather a standard crop in FCPX. Instead, use the Mask-filter, which can be feathered (and as a bonus cropped irregularly). I just tried and it should work fine for what you describe.

Workflow: Duplicate your clip and place it on top of the original, add the Mask-filter and edit the corners as you like, reposition the clip to the area you want to patch, change the feather-setting to what you like and then add the Gaussian-filter and try different settings.

Tips: If you do all this from within a compound clip (either created from your projects timeline or even better created from the event browser (right click and choose New compound clip…) you can then handle the compound clip containing the patch as one unit, which saves time when color correcting etc…

Last note: If you’re using 10.0.6 then theese “ready-baked” compund clips will be global, meaning that if you edit them from the event browser the changes will appear in all timelines/projects that are using that compbound clip. Although I have yet to test this, it’s how 10.0.6 should work from what I’ve read, and I think it’s awesome.

[Petter Stahre]

Depends on what type of skin tone you like/would like to create, but this is a test I did, using two corrections including a color mask (for the face color):

(If it looks to red it’s probably a browser thing, when I tried to preview my post the small embedded image in my post looked ok, but when I clicked on it and viewed it in full size it looked very red. If possible, download it and open it up i Photoshop. If the ICC-profile is lost it should have an sRGB profile appended to it.)

I hope it’s ok for you and the person in the video that I did this test, otherwise let me know and I delete the image.

Cheers,
Petter

[Petter Stahre]

The loss of project data sounds all to familiar. I had a similar experience as documented here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/7667#7667

Apple contacted me and fetched some data although I never got any info regarding status of the issue.

However, only a few weeks after I contacted Apple I decided to upgrade to Lion, and since then (three months) I haven’t had any project data loss. I also completely reinstalled FCXP (trashed the software and then download a new copy from App store).

My system is a MacPro 12-core 2,66 GHz, 32 GB RAM and at that time Snow Leopard 10.6.8 was installed.

If Lion could be an alternative for your FCPX-computer then maybe it’s worth a try?

Best,
Petter

[Petter Stahre]

I second what Bill wrote. That’s how I work. FCPX on a Mac Pro at work and on a iMac at home. The projects I’m working on (events+project files) are all on an external FW-drive. Both on work and at home I use TimeMachine so even if I should damage or loose the FW-drive along the way all should be fine.

Even if it’s inconvenient to physically move the FW-drive I prefer this to managing new/updated clips in my event at two places.

The only thing I have to manually duplicate is when I use Motion to create new effects. These have to be copied to both the Mac Pro and iMac. (Or does anyone know of a better way – could Motion effects be stored outside the drive that holds the software?)

Regards,
Petter

[Petter Stahre]

Maybee iZotope RX 2 can help? I’m about to buy it myself since I can’t get Soundsoap to fit my workflow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hFpil2x8T0&feature=player_embedded

The graphical way to reduce unwanted noise looks awesome, but I don’t know if you can isolate the particular noise in your case.

// Petter

[Petter Stahre]

It happened to me again today – a project I created in 10.0.3 yesterday is empty today when I load it.

This time I did a screen capture (movie) of the whole incident until FCPX crashed (while duplicating the defect project and then loading it).

Extensive bug report has been sent to Apple.

For those interested, here’s what I wrote:

On two occations since upgrading to 10.0.3 I’ve lost project data. The second time when I suspected I’ve lost data I started to record my screen. I’ve published a movie in which you can see what happens untill FCPX crashes.

First occation:
I created a new project and a new event and imported video and audio. I synced the video and audio and placed 6 clips in the timeline. I color corrected them and let them be for further editing the next day. I can’t remember if I closed FCPX or if it was on all the the time, but next day when I opened up the project the timeline was empty.
The playhead was positioned some 31 seconds into the project, but that was the only trace of any “data” I could see.
I looked into other projects to see if I had been editing in another project without knowing, but no.
All timeline data was gone (but the events where still there).

Second occation:
Since this happened I’ve been very observant of what I’m doing in FCPX just in case it should be a user error. But it now happened again, as documented in a screen capture.
Yesterday I created a test project “Test 3” to try out the new green screen masking function. I imported only one clip and applied the mask and played with the settings.
I closed FCPX and today when I startup FCPX and load the project there’s nothing there. This is when I thought I might start capturing the screen before doing anything else.
You can se my screen capture here:
XXXXXXX
… what happens in the movie in short is:
1) I can play from the timeline and see the video in the viewer (on a second screen, but I soon corrected that).
2) The timeline is empty.
3) When I close the project and look at all my projects in the Project Library I can see that my project contains video (thumbnails are showing) …
4) … but when I load the project again there nothing on the timeline.
5) I try to duplicate the project into “Test 3b” and then load my new copy of the project …
6) … this is when FCPX freezes and I get a spinning color wheel (which Screen Flow software couldn’t capture – all you see is the regular mouse pointer).
7) I start up the Activity Monitor and show you different tabs of information, and then save “spot checks” (or whatever it’s called in english) as textfiles. These can be found here:
XXXXX
XXXXX
8) After I aborted FCPX and reloaded it again both the new projects were recovered (!) and now showed information in the timeline, as you can se. This was not the case with my first project which is permanently damaged/empty.
9) In the movie you can see I sent in a crash report, and tagged it XXXXX, I guess you can find it that way.

Bottom line: FCXP 10.0.3 looses/corrupts project/timeline data.
(This never happened in 10.0.1 for me.)

About my system:
For what it’s worth the two projects were on separate hard drives so I suspect no hard drive failure.
I just sent in all my system data to Apple using the functionality in the tool Systeminformation. My computer has serial no XXXXX, I guess you can fetch it that way, or?
In short: MacPro 12-core 2,66 GHz, 32 GB RAM, Snow Leopard 10.6.8

[Petter Stahre]

[gary adcock] “Thanks Peter.

I am mostly found here on the Cow, but writing for MW isn’t all that bad

gary adcock
Studio37 “

Ah, I didn’t know the author came from “the family” 🙂
Thanks for a good article.