[Steven Lambion]

I’ve run into this many times. First delete the preferences they are located in:
User Account > Library>Preferences.

Delete these files:
com.apple.finalcutpro.plist
Final Cut Pro User Data (Folder)

If the above doesn’t help you might need to reinstall Final Cut Pro. If this is needed, drag the application to the trash, then go into Macintosh HD>Library>Receipts

Delete this file:
FinalCutPro.pkg

Hope this helps

Video Specialist
Mac Specialist
Apple Developer(ADC)

[Steven Lambion]

Sometimes, if using OS X, it sees a file as a unix executable. I’ve seen this with audio, flash, and text files. It should still work in Quicktime. Open up the info panel of the file(s)(command-I), then go down to name and extension. Make sure the extension is “.mov”. If it isn’t this or doesn’t have an extension, change it.

I hope you get it all working again.

Video Specialist
Mac Specialist
Apple Developer(ADC)

[Steven Lambion]

This sounds like your sequence is lowering it’s quality, probably due to it being set on dynamic. This is so you have few rendering times and can be more productive. If this is the case, then what your seeing is not going to be the finished look, but is un-rendered video that brought it’s quality down so you can edit/play it with out rendering.

Check to see if the render bar(At the very very top of the timeline) is either green or orange. If so, then you need to render the sequence to see it in full quality. If it is light grey, or a grayish blue, then it’s probably something else.

I hope this helps!! and good luck

[Steven Lambion]

Actually that’s the loop cursor used when the active process is in a loop(When nothing else can be done in the application), similar to Apple’s old Clock cursor. The spinning beach ball was to replace the Clock in OS X, it came from NeXTStep, the OS that evolved into OS X.

Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks

[Steven Lambion]

Like the other person said, h.264 is an advance compressed format. It’s codec is to complex to edit with on computers these days. You need a less compressed format that uses an easier algorithm like DV.

Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks

[Steven Lambion]

You probably already did this, but install the 6.02 update to Final Cut Pro. On Apple’s info site, it says this update makes Final Cut Pro Leopard supported.

Good Luck

Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks

[Steven Lambion]

It sounds like your HD might be going to sleep. Go into System Preferences, then Energy Saver. At the bottom, you should see a check box called “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible”. This is on by default, check it off.

Another thing you might want to look at, is the speed of the hard drive. 7200 rpm is a good speed for video editing. If your working with HD try to get a 10000rpm.

Hope this helps!!

Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks

[Steven Lambion]

Make make sure the photoshop file is the right aspect ratio. Normally in photoshop, the aspect is squared by default, while in Final Cut Pro it could be 3:4(or something else like this). If you want, you can also change the final Cut Pro aspect to square, but normally you don’t want to.

in Photoshop goto: The menubar > Image > Pixel Aspect Ratio > and select the one that matches Final Cut Pro.

hope this helps.

[Steven Lambion]

A Mac Pro should only get up to about 70c or 160F, any higher there might be a problem. I do know the case can handle quite a lot of heat, the powermacs got up to 180F-190F. The new intels though are much cooler than the PPCs, and use less electricity.

If you need to you, you can always reset the SMC(another option I forgot about): https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304123

This normally does fix or help much, but in your case it might. Every time I have a computer that shuts down like this, Apple always says I need new parts.

[Steven Lambion]

I have a few ideas that might help:

1. Delete Preferences, currupted preferences can crash FCP or even crash Mac OS X(not sure about it shutting down)

2. Make sure your computer is has enough breathing room. If it is in a room that is small or gets hot this can over heat the computer.

3. Use a free widget or app like iStat to make sure none of the components are over heating, this happened to me a couple times.

4. Go to an Apple store, your motherboard and/or power supply might not be functioning right. My Mac Pro was shutting down by itself; I found out that my Power Supply was faulted(Although I doubt this is the problem for you).

5. Another option is to use the project manager to create a new copied project of this. This can help if your project file is currupted.

Hope you fix the problem, good luck!!

Video Specialist
Apple Developer
Owner of GranitWorks