[Ron James]

[Chaz Shukat] “The other thing you definitely want to avoid is duplicate time code on a tape. That’s something that the Avid will not be able to figure out and will require your manaul supervision and make your life A LIVING HELL!!!!!!”

Chaz,

That’s the case with FCP, too, of course. You have to treat the reel as multiple reels. How would you do this with Avid, call the reel “001a,” 001b,” etc.? That’s what I do with FCP. Actually, FCP is pretty good at rolling back and forth over a break to figure out what’s going on, then starting a new clip and changing the REEL number to b or c, etc. Hasn’t always been that easy, though.

[Ron James]

Sounds like user error somewhere in the mix. I work on many different machines and have *never* had this problem. I have more trouble getting FCP to match the source. I find it can easily be off by 1 – 5 frames on some clips for no good reason, when using a DVCAM deck via FireWire or RS-422. I’m wondering if it’s a problem with the source tapes, but I do a match back to the source with every clip I capture now so I can modify if needed.

Never lost Media In or Media Out info, though. Some people mix Media and Out with “In” and “Out” but I assume this isn’t the case since you specified “Media In.”

[Ron James]

[Peter Wiggins] “most editing takes place by moving things around in the timeline. It requires heavy use of a tool palette.”

That’s hilarious. I haven’t used the tool palette in years. I’d love to sit down and train this guy how to really use FCP.

[Ron James]

[bogiesan] “And not a single consultant has told them to stop using 20th Century weasle words!”

Okay, I’m dying to know…what are “weasle words?”

[Ron James]

Mike, thanks a million. I’ll try that. I actually didn’t see anything about this in the Avid help file. Believe me, I looked and looked.

I appreciate your help!

James

[Ron James]

Jon, I’d love to try that, but I don’t own Windows XP. I’m thinking of buying a copy though and taking the Windows plunge. I think it’s a great move on Apple’s part. I was using Windows on a demo iMac, though, and the interface was a lot snappier than any other windows machine I’ve been on.

Jon, here’s a question for you. I’m not sure if you’ve used Avid Free, but I gave it a try last night (on a G5 1.8 ghz, Avid Free v. 1.8) and was following along in the documentation regarding log and capture, and some key controls are missing from the capture tool set. There’s no Log Clip icon! Also, the documentation describes a logging method that use the F4 key. It says to play, F4 for your In, then F4 for your out and once again for Log Clip. However, this doesn’t work for me at all. The only thing I managed to do was mark In and Out, then hit the F4 to capture it, which did work. Perhaps I better check and make sure of version compatibility again.

I’m guessing I’ll find Xpress Pro much easier to use. Strangely, I can’t use iMovie for more than five minutes before going crazy. I find it’s just too simplified and I’m pretty much useless. I need full control!

[Ron James]

You could do a search for “capture” and “render” and see if there are any others, but generally they’d be located in one spot on each drive, unless you specified otherwise.

It sounds, though, like it might be the project file that’s corrupt. If that’s the case, the only way I know out of that is a backup, unfortunately.

Try this article, though, to see if there’s any help there:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/restore_corrupted_project.html

I hope that helps at all. My only other recommendation would be to try and find another FCP 5 workstation to try and open the file.

[Ron James]

You can check your boot drive to see if there are any render and/or capture files on there. If there are, just add a dash into the name of the folder (with FCP closed) and that should be enough to force them offline.

It sounds like you might be having a RAM problem, though. How much RAM do you have? Is anything else acting up?

Also, did you try trashing your FCP pref’s? And do you have another FCP workstation available which you can use to try and open the file? Any autosave files you can try?

(sorry if you already answered these questions previously)

[Ron James]

I would try taking your media drive right offline. Drag it to the trash to unmount it (and any other media drive) and then try opening.

[Ron James]

Thanks a lot, Jon and Mike!

This is great to hear. I’m not expecting any editing power with the free Avid, just want to get familiar with the way things work.

[promoboy] “Word of advice: don’t try to make the Avid act like FCP. It won’t. They are different programs, have different ways of doing things, and both have their strenghts and weaknesses”

I’ve been training FCP for years, which includes editors coming from Avid, and this is the first thing I tell them! So I hope I’ll obey my own rules.

Now to see if it will launch on my MacIntel. I think it will install, but isn’t supported by Avid on the MacIntel platform. As long as it runs, I’ll be happy.

Thanks again!

James