[T. Payton]

Marcus,

I’ve been in your shoes, almost exactly. I had a student feature I was helping with across about 8 events. I had the exact same thing happen. I did get it figured out, so hang in there.

I’ve tried opening one of my own created backups, one even as far back as october, still won’t load it.

This would lead me to believe that something is up with your system, and not the event DB files. Could be your OS itself, but more likely third party plugins? Not just the motion stuff in “Motion Templates” but FXPlug or even third party audio plugins?

Is there anything in /library/plug-ins folder?
Also look in /library/application support/final cut pro/templates/effects

Also tell me about that event. What is in it? Straight footage, or are you storing compound clips in there too? How big is the CurrentVersion.fcpevent file?

My first step in troubleshooting would be to create a new user account, login to it and see if the problem persists. If that didn’t work try on another machine. If you don’t have another Mac, create a new partition with a fresh install of the OS on it.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Humm. This should work without a problem. The data rate on FCP X proxy from 1080p footage is only 1.6 MB/sec. Your FW drive should be getting between 60-80 MB/sec. You should be doing 8 streams without any trouble at all.

Can you check the read speed on your FW HD? Use BlackMagic Disk Speed Test or the AJA System Test.

Also open up activity monitor, watch the Disk Activity during your attempt at playback, and let me know the read data rate.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Indeed. FCPX doesn’t write back metadata to the original files.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Actually the CRT is a standard def 15 in. Sony broadcast monitor. Nothing special. Blue only let’s me get in the ballpark for color.

My LCD is a 47″ Best Buy brand monitor. El cheap o. I think it was $480. I got it because you can turn off all the crazy extras like “dynamic contras” and sharpening that you see on consumer TVs. It is by no means color accurate (I use the CRT of that) and simply a client monitor but it is definitely in the ballpark with the Matrox color calibration.

Since the financial crash in 2008 I have done a whopping total of 1 broadcast spot. Everything else is destined for the web DVD, BlueRay or theater. Those mediums are frankly all over the place as far as color consistency.

I have a fairly simple method of color correction. I will correct it to the best of my ability technically at my edit station at the office.. Then I will watch it on the screens I normally watch. That means YouTube on my Apple TV at home, a DVD in my MacBook Pro, or on my iPad. I can instantly identify color problems when I see it on the screens I am used to. The other thing I do is rip movies and shows and bring them into Final Cut and watch them on my broadcast monitors, paying careful attention to levels and the scopes. That gives me a good benchmark and guide to shoot for when I correcting.

I’m also a firm believer in reference material. I’ll import stills and footage from looks that I like and match it by eye and the dual viewer scopes in FCPX (which as far as I know is the only app that has it.)

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Mine is in horrible shape. I had a CRT repair guy give it to me back when they were going for $1000+. The transformer must be bad because it buzzes when it is on. Plus there are white horz. lines near the the top of the screen. However the color is good and it is super sharp!

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Hi all,

Just wanted to thank you again for your input. After trying both for a couple of weeks, I decided to go with the Matrox. It is more expensive (silly expensive) and not quite as slick as the Blackmagic Mini Monitor. But the Matrox handles my workflow better.

The Matrox allows playback a range of frame rates, 23.98, 24, 35 and 29.97 without having to change settings of relaunch FCP X. Plus I couldn’t give up my CRT monitor as you can see from the screen shot below (it’s under the Perry the Platypus)

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Odd, there should not be any issue with this. I just did a project just yesterday that mixed these two frame sizes.

Can you post a screen shot of what you are seeing? I’m thinking these are horizontal lines, ie interlacing.

Have you tried exporting a small portion as a 720p or 480p movie for Apple devices?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Do you just need tracking for color correction?

I have “plain” Slice X and with it you can duplicate a clip, add a shape layer mask and then use your regular FCP color board controls, with Mocha tracking you should be able to get very close to Resolve for basic tracking for color correction tasks. Of course it adds complexity and possible slowdown on your playback.

Also by watching the sample videos at coremelt, It appears seems to be using Mocha’s shape tracking (the shoe tracking for example) not just position. i.e. it will change shape as the object you are tracking changes shape.

If apple would add a few more little icons to the correction: track, b-spline & bezier shape, that would be mighty sweet. In the mean time however, Slice X I think is going allow some amazing things to be done in FCPX.

FYI. I actually started working on a conversion for Mocha tracking data to import into Transform Parameters in FCP via FCPXML. Won’t work for Color Correction however, as you can’t copy and paste those keyframes from one clip to another.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

AVCHD is in fact a low data rate version of h264. No transcoding was done, but of course you can create optimized or proxy media if need be.

Here is what it says on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

For video compression, AVCHD uses the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 standard, supporting a variety of standard, high definition, and stereoscopic (3D) video resolutions. For audio compression, it supports both Dolby AC-3 (Dolby Digital) and uncompressed linear PCM audio. Stereo and multichannel surround (5.1) are both supported.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton]

Bret – I am guilty of reading your post to quickly. You were right, I was wrong. Words cannot express how right you were and how wrong I was.

I deserve to be repeatedly struck by a wet noodle.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque