diaster caused by apples latest FCP update
by George Mizzell
on
Jul 25, 2008 at 12:21:45 am
has anyone suffered from all the render disasters that Apples latest FCP 2.06 upgrade caused? having never suffered from this kind of disaster from apple before does anyone know what to expect? I am trying to render a simple slideshow of about 200 photos on a 4gb ram mac pro with a few motion effects and transitions and compressor cannot render to almost any format that I have tried and FCP cannot render any of the basic cross disolve transitions. Thisis for my daughters wedding tommorrow
Thanks
George
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Richard Sanchez on Jul 25, 2008 at 12:37:19 am
A little more information would help. Are you working in an HD or SD sequence? Are you trying to make a standard def DVD? Also, if your photos are extremely high res, sometimes that can cause Final Cut to choke. We had that problem on a program I was working on recently, so we started using After Effects for photo pushes (especially since you need a higher res image to achieve that Ken Burns effect).
Richard Sanchez
Arcadia, CA
"We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution." - Bill Hicks
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 3:15:32 am
Richard
Thanks for reading the post - This is standard def - 720 x 480, compressor - DV/DVCPRO -NTSC. I am not using any effects that are not native built into FCP. I am only using the basic cross dissolve and every 5th or 6th photo I use one of the other basic effects transitions.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Michael Alberts on Jul 25, 2008 at 1:13:17 am
FCP 2.06 came out about seven years ago! Is this what you are using? Other things to look at are the size of the photo's themselves. What is the resolution of these photos. With that many photo's on a timeline you should really try and keep the dimensions down. If these are 4000x3000 sized photo's you're in for a world of hurt when trying to render.
We need some more details to go on in order to offer up some useful help.
Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.
www.ambidextrous.net
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 3:09:43 am
Michael
Thanks - I have pondered that but I have done large slideshows from all 2MB jpgs before without problems. i have split this into 2 sequences and the first one - done before the "update" had no problems. When I did the update then tried to reopen the file it has been nothing but disaster.
A little more info - The total of all the jpgs is around 400 MB - about 80 photos are 200-700 K and the rest would be 1.2-2.2 mb each. If I need to resize all photos in Adobe PS i can do that - of course it complete erases the 30+ hours I have already done in animating all the photos and resizing them since some are portrait and some are smaller that others. This is the slide show for my daughter's wedding and I started in plenty of time to be done now but the past 18 hours of fighting Apple have thrown me way behind and don't really have time to redo the entire show by 3pm tomorrow. The real problem is the Apple "update" and I am extremely interested in ANY solutions or suggestions that get me to the point I can complete the rendering in any form.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Chris Poisson on Jul 25, 2008 at 2:05:46 pm
George,
You spent 30+ hours on a slideshow in FCP? Do yourself a favor and look at Fotomagico. It could do this all by itself in about a minute. I believe iPhoto can do random movement too, but Fotomagico is really great, lots of options, SD, HD whatever you want.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 2:46:34 am
Jeremy
Actually i have not heard of doing it that way. i have always rendered straight to compressor. None of the 5 or 6 books I have on FCP mentioned doing it that way. What do you mean by Reference movie?
Thanks
Oh, BTW sorry for the multiple posts. I submitted from the iphone and got no indication that I had tapped the button until the last one.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Jeremy Garchow on Jul 25, 2008 at 2:53:06 am
[george mizzell]"What do you mean by Reference movie? "
A reference movie is basically a QT movie that references all the hard media on your computer. It is a small QT movie that contains all the pointers, resulting in a much easier and more quick way to export a movie from FCP and will save you lots of disk space. You cannot move a QT ref movie to another computer as it references the media on your capture scratch drive.
File > Export > Quicktime Movie. Choose current settings, then leave recompress all frames and make self contained UNCHECKED. Take the resulting export to Compressor and then do your compressing.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 3:23:50 am
Jeremy
I tried that and when I did 3 second movies it was OK, 10 seconds was OK, but when I went to a 1 minute movie - I get the usual "General Error". This was rendering to QT. It does the same thing if I try to render anything from the sequence menu. If I just select a single cross dissolve transition - and chose Sequence - Render Selection - Video - it gets the same General Error with no other info.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 3:44:59 am
Jeremy
All photos are located on the same 1 TB drive with 185GB free. That is also the render drive. I do not know what you mean by "trashed prefs". I have not done anything to them and they appear to be exactly what they were before the disaster by Apple
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 4:28:50 am
Jeremey
I just followed your excellent instructions to the letter and pulled up the file again - reset everything like it was and it has now tried to render a 10 second Motion fire effects clip. At about the 2 minutes remaining mark out of a 6 minute render - I get the same General Error message. I am now going to try rendering as a Quicktime movie and see if it does that any better.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Jeremy Garchow on Jul 25, 2008 at 4:38:19 am
[george mizzell]"At about the 2 minutes remaining mark out of a 6 minute render"
ALright. That probably means that one of your picture files went corrupt somewhere.
Try this.
Quit FCP and navigate to your FCP documents folder on your scratch disk. Throw away any of the files in the render files folder that pertain to your project (there'll be a folder named exactly the same as your project, throw away all the files in that project named FOLDER).
Also, trash your thumbnail and waveform cache files which also resides in your FCP Documents folder.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 4:58:05 am
Jeremy
It is starting to connect the dots. I was starting to remove the photos which have the red bar above them - even though nothing was happening with them - no animations or anything but they now have the red bar over them. When I double click them all i get is a white screen. When I find them in finder the photo is there. i deleted it from FCP and reimported it and it has the same problem with not showing up. It is a 1600 x 1200 pixel jpg - only 208KB in size.
BTW - when I trashed the prefs i set up another 1 TB drive which had 95 GB free on it as the render drive and so FCP has already created a new render folder and everything associated with it before starting the last render. Do I need to still clean it out?
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Jeremy Garchow on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:06:07 am
[george mizzell]"BTW - when I trashed the prefs i set up another 1 TB drive which had 95 GB free on it as the render drive and so FCP has already created a new render folder and everything associated with it before starting the last render. Do I need to still clean it out? "
Yes as all the old render files are still associated with your prject. Throw out the other files on your other drive if it's still connected.
1600x1200 @ 208kb seems a bit small, but it's possibe I guess. Does that photo open up in Photoshop?
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:12:55 am
Jeremy
OK - as I fix a photo and resize and reimport it seems to work. I can't imagine why they were working and then quit working. I really think you are right about the preferences. I will go back and do that again on the new drive as well. While it does give me hope that I can just fix the 50 or so bad clips I don't have any assurance that the same thing would not happen again, so I want to try and fix it so that FCP recognizes them correctly.
BRB right after this set of changes.
Thanks again - I am beginning to think there is a light at the end of this dark long tunnel.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:24:39 am
Jeremy
Yes, but I copied the original back from my pc where i edited it in PS - CS2 originally and recopied it back over and FCP had the same error. For some unknown reason resizing to 640 x 480 is working. Of course I have photos in the show that are not a problem and they are 2592 x 1944 and they are doing great. As I learned about 25 years ago in computers - forget about figuring out what went wrong and just try to figure how to get out of the mess they put you in.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Jeremy Garchow on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:35:22 am
[george mizzell]"Yes, but I copied the original back from my pc where i edited it in PS - CS2 originally and recopied it back over and FCP had the same error."
Dude. There's your problem. Sorry I didn't ask earlier. Your pictures stemming from a PC version of photoshop can screw up a Mac sometimes (at least it used to a long time ago). By you opening them and resaving them you are changing the format making the Mac able to read them. It's not the file size that's the problem.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:49:44 am
Jeremy
I just copied using an 8gb USB memory stick. Of course I copied about 2,000 photos and I have only used 350 in this presentation. All of them worked fine before the UPDATE. I had already size about half of them and rendered them without problems. I started the project on my MacBook pro with 2GB ram and when I started having problems I moved the entire project over to the Mac Pro thinking it must be a resource issue. Since I had started with the project and everything was fine until the other day when I updated. Immediately after updating the rendering issue ocurred. So the pix might be the result of the problem caused by the update. But I think it is obvious that file corruption is the culprit and there is a quick fix to help me get through this major crisis.
I can't thank you enough for hanging in here with me even this late at night. I think it will take me another couple of hours but that is much better than where I was 3 hours ago with no solution in sight.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:54:31 am
Jeremy
Further confirmation that you are right - I am now just opening and resaving the file back in the same folder and now resizing them and as soon as I do that FCP clears up the render bar and the transitions on both sides. Cool - I am still not through but it is looking great at this point.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 6:27:15 am
Jeremy
I can't thank you enough for your help, but tomorrow night 67 people at the After Rehearsal Dinner will be thrilled at the video that you helped me pull back from the grave:).
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 6:07:20 pm
Wayne
I KNOW! Creative Cow ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!
I was telling my videographer for the wedding about last night and he said - WOW, you really are a video geek - online with the Cow at 1 am! I am just so happy that it worked. I got the final version out of DVD Pro at 4:30am and proofed it and then everyone who has seen it today has had glowing praise for it, so it was well worth it.
I will be using DVD pro to integrate another 200 or so pixs and make the slide show that will play during the reception now! So many ways to get the job done:) I love this stuff - maybe one day I can do it for pay:)
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:27:21 am
I just finished rendering a 1 minute and 29 second long that did not have any offending photos and it worked correctly. Hopefully that is a sign of progress.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 5:04:56 am
Another piece of info - I could not even copy the file back from my source file and get it to work. So I used the little HP photo edit program and resized it to 640 x 480 and it worked. I am going to try a section of photos and try to do the same thing with the offending clips and see if that works. BRB
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 2:58:41 am
Actually I have processed hundreds of videos from 2 minutes to 3 hours long on this computer and with the previous version before the deadly update yesterday. All of the rendering drive locations and everything as far as I can tell are still the same. Everything looks OK. I have gotten lots of Apple crashes where FCP dies and asks to send the report to Apple which I have done about 20 times so far and I only send the report about every 10th crash. I changed the Sequence settings for the timeline options - Thumbnail Display to name from Name + Thumbnail and that has stopped the relentless crashes. But now it will not render. Before on the 1 out 15 times that it would stay up it would render transitions while it was up. Then when I changed the thumbnail display option it stopped crashing but now will not render.
I have just selected very small segments - 3 - 10 second clips and it is rendering them to quicktime. I am not sure if that leads to a loss of quality or not. I had always tried to keep things to the highest quality and thought that rendering direct to compressor was the way to do that.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Santiago Gutierrez on Jul 25, 2008 at 3:10:07 am
For Slideshows of any kind, I always use ImageFlow from Core Melt. It runs under the FX Factory FX Plug architecture. It creates fantastic slideshows with tons of options in minutes.
Here's the link if you want to check it out.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 3:26:43 am
I can really appreciate all of these "Other product suggestions" but this is not the time. I am now down to 33 hours before this show has to be ready (if I do not sleep) and it is 99.9% done except for the disaster caused by Apple's thoughtlessness. Quick workarounds inside FCP will be the most helpful at this time - please.
Again, this is my oldest daughter's wedding and I am trying to get this ready.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by Chaos Wrangler on Jul 25, 2008 at 3:54:16 am
First- fix your permissions (Drive Utility). I may have missed it in earlier post but I did not see an answer to the question about trashing FCP preferences. If you have not done so Trash them now.
If you have then save your project using "Save as" and change the name, this will reassign render folders and you can start clean. If this doesn't work do a "safe" boot. Reboot the system holding down the shift key, after it ask for a password, enter it, let it start up fully and then ReStart again. If these options do not work download the latest version of the 10.5 combo update (make sure it is the combo update) and install it.
Hopefully one of these steps will solve the problem.
Best, Drew
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by george mizzell on Jul 25, 2008 at 6:02:37 pm
Bob
Thanks - the update corrupted (or revealed) corrupted photos. In the end, all I had to do was open and save the files back. Of course every time I rendered it found a new corrupt photo so it took about 20 render attempts to finally get one good run.
Re: diaster caused by apples latest FCP update by todd reid on Jul 26, 2008 at 1:09:30 pm
I feel for you, I can't tell you how many nights I've spent doing the last 95% of a project cause something has gone wrong that required troubleshooting just to figure out the problem. I LOVE having the cow as a resource. I don't know what I'd do without my daily reading of the cow.
now that it seems you have figured out and solved your problem, I will solidify what you probably have learned from this situation (and many others are waiting to tell you-its not something you want to here in the middle of a crisis)
NEVER update in the middle of a project!!!! Especially if things are working correctly.
Also, before you update, you'll want to clone your hard drive. That way if there are any troubles, you just reverse the clone and your back to square one.
Best wishes for you daughter's wedding. Kudos to you for doing such a thoughtful thing, and incurring all this grief to make sure your daughter's day is special. She will treasure it for a long time.
