[Randyp]

I also had a large project nearing completion which began to crash on me. I know what you’re goin’ through. Rather than rehash here what I tried in dealing with the problem, please check my previous posts for possible suggestions or clues about what to do. Maybe something there will help.

Randy

“You are:
1. Untalented but excessively persistent
2. Unbelieveably stupid
3. An artist
4. All of the above”

–Norman Rockwell

[Randyp]

I’ve done some retrospective video projects using photos and documents scanned from the archives of the college I work for. It’s been my experience that motion graphics programs like After Effects, Boris Red, or Motion have been much more versitle than what FCP alone has been able to do. (Why did Apple come out with Motion in the Final Cut Suite, if FCP was capable of in depth Motion Graphics creation and manipulation?) Anyway, if I were going to do sophisticated work with images like you are about to, I’d do it in After Effects.

Randy

“You are:
1. Untalented but excessively persistent
2. Unbelieveably stupid
3. An artist
4. All of the above”

–Norman Rockwell

[Randyp]

If it’s a matter of merely reloading clips from source: right click on the missing clip, choose “batch capture” and reload the media from source reel(s). This is basic FCP.

[Randyp]

Here are some steps I’ve implemented after experiencing problems opening FCP project files myself. They won’t help you open a corrupt file, but might help you avoid file corruption in the future:

I agree with the suggestions already posted, especially regularly saving copies of the project. Auto Save is not always a “lifeboat,” because I found that I could be running an already corrupted project (corruption I wouldn’t discover until after closing FCP and trying to re-open), and Auto Save would faithfully copy multiple already-corrupted-versions to the Auto Save Vault. I’d discover the project wouldn’t reopen and that the Auto Save files also wouldn’t reopen, and would have to search back in time through those files to finally find one auto-saved before the corruption set in. After learning this sad fact, I finally began regularly saving the project file to a new version name in the morning and a new version name after lunch. (I add the date and “AM” or “PM” to the file name in the new versions.)

As a routine preventative step I also restart my computer first thing in the morning and then once or twice during day to refresh all the cache files, the connections to my Medea, and the FCP application software. If I start getting drop-frame warnings, a restart will usually correct those too.

I also found if I leave FCP running for untended for long periods sometimes something corrupts all by itself, so I try to avoid leaving the software and project open overnight or on weekends.

A sign of impending trouble I noticed in particular with my FCP 4.5 was that after working on a project for a while I could no longer “undo” changes. Whenever I noticed this, it was time to “save as” and restart the system. Occasionally I would “Select All” and bulk copy my entire timeline of video and audio clips over to an new, empty sequence. (This is something I used to have to do when I edited on the old Turbo Cube and the Stratosphere to rid my project of “ghost” files, the traces of files deleted and changed which seemed to accumulate over time. I don’t know if FCP has a “ghost” file problem, but I do it anyway, once in a while, just in case.)

I sent dozens of messages to the Apple debuggers in the past when FCP 4.5 “Unexpectedly Quit,” so they will be happy to hear that last month I completed the major FCP project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half, and this week my Mac has finally been updated to OS X Tiger and Final Cut Studio. Maybe I’ve left some previous FCP problems behind, but I’ll continue to guard myself fo a while at least using the procedures mentioned above.

Randy

“You are:
1. Untalented but excessively persistent
2. Unbelieveably stupid
3. An artist
4. All of the above”

–Norman Rockwell

[Randyp]

[debe] “Also try an audio mixdown of the audio. That’s OPT+CMD+R. Even if you only have one track, it can be helpful with dropped frame and mysteriously disappearing audio issues.”

I’ve also experienced the audio drop-out problem when exporting a QuickTime Movie from my FCP project. At one point along the timeline the soundtrack is busy with layers of music and several sports sound effects. The sound effects would drop out or the music or both at that point. A co-worker suggested the audio mixdown, as mentioned above, which solved the problem for me.

Randy

“You are:
1. Untalented but excessively persistent
2. Unbelieveably stupid
3. An artist
4. All of the above”

–Norman Rockwell

[Randyp]

[Dave LaRonde] “Particularly over the past 3-4 years, it has relied on formulaic plotlines for its feature films, and they weren’t even good formulas.”

I heartily agree.

I appreciate the creativity of folks like the late Walt Disney and Jim Henson and bemoan the dregs Disney Productions has been making lately. It’s almost a return to the sad days under Ron Miller when the best they churned out junk like “Gus the Field Goal Kicking Mule.” And the past few Muppet productions have been shadows of their former glory.

I’m fearing for Pixar’s creativity in this deal. Will there be a well-defined role for them or in-house competition with Disney’s already exisiting animation division? I head months ago that Disney was set to produce (with a likely drop in quality) a “Toy Story 3” apart from Pixar. Does this mean Pixar will take over that project?

[Randyp]

I still haven’t solved this particular problem, even though I eventually wiped the hard drive and reinstalled everything (backing things up first, of course.) After reinstalling, I ran into a render problem. See my posting “Troubles when rendering in FCP HD 4.5” from September 14, 2005 to find out about that.

Randy

Your are:
1. Untalented but excessively persistent
2. Unbelieveably stupid
3. An artist
4. All of the above

Normal Rockwell

[Randyp]

I believe we’ve solved this rendering problem.

It came about after wiping the hard drive and reinstalling software on the G5 in an effort to solve another, bigger problem I am having with FCP HD 4.5 (See “Can’t Open some FCP Project Files after changes have been made and saved” I posted on September 1, 2005).

Here are some of the circumstances which led to the rendering problem referred to in this posting; I hope by recounting them here it might give a clue to someone else with similar problems:

I found that the reason I was getting the “No Movie in File” error was because FCP was not recognizing some of the LiveType .ipr files I was using for titles. Once before I had a problem with FCP not recognizing LiveType .ipr files. At that time it turned out that I was trying to use an incorrect version of Quicktime (too recent an upgrade–QT 7.0) and could not activate Quicktime Pro with the software key that came with FCP HD 4.5. That problem was solved by reinstalling an older version of Quicktime (QT 6.5.1) and then activating the Quicktime Pro key. This time the reason .ipr files were not recognized was partially due to losing some of the fonts LiveType had been previously connected to. This loss of connection came because of another reinstall of OS X 10.3.9.

OS X 10.3.9 was reinstalled because I had run into a problem while reinstalling software and firmware for the AJA IO connected to the system. After reinstalling AJA IO software and restarting the G5, I kept getting the shaded “restart computer” screen over and over and had no choice but to reinstall OS X.

After OS X 10.3.9 was reinstalled, AJA IO software and firmware was reinstalled, and AJA IO settings were made in FCP HD 4.5, I tried to edit in FCP and ran into the rendering problem mentioned in these postings. At first it was one small area on the timeline indicated in red which would not render. I tried a number of things to clear it up including dumping all the render files from the scratch drive. That aggrivated the render headache, but it eventually led to discovering it was an .ipr recognition problem. I closed and restarted my FCP project and saw a message stating that a font (Book Antiqua) was missing from the titles made in LiveType.

Opening the Font Book, I discovered that font and some others were gone. Checking the font folder revealed that those missing fonts were no longer listed as font files but as “unix executable files.”

I called for help from our in-houe IT guy. (He didn’t set up the system, but inherited it from a techically-savy former employee who is sorely missed at times like this.) We checked our Quicktime version (see above) and saw it still good. We tried reinstalling Font Book, the font folder, and downloaded and ran the Fontbook Helper program. We were able to reinstall the font I needed. We opened Livetype and saw that the fot worked. We resaved the Livetype file but FCP still wouldn’t recognize it.

Finally we reinstalled FCP HD 4.5 and LiveType, thinking maybe we’d lost some connection after reinstalling OS X. Evidently this is true because FCP is now recognizing the .ipr files and is rendering them without any trouble. (by the way, our AJA IO settings remained intact after the FCP reinstall.)

Hope some of this painful saga helps someone else in troubleshooting FCP in the future.

Randy

Your are:
1. Untalented but excessively persistent
2. Unbelieveably stupid
3. An artist
4. All of the above

Normal Rockwell

[Randyp]

Correction, the error message I get is “no movies in file.” (I just tried rendering again and that’s what pooped up)

Randy

Your are:
1. Untalented but excessively persistent
2. Unbelieveably stupid
3. An artist
4. All of the above

Normal Rockwell