Help! hard disc trouble on Christmas

Hello everyone,
I have a 400 GB Hitachi hard drive on my Second bay (250GB Maxtor on my original)
Last night I finished the project, start compressing for DVD. I tried to converted to Pal, but the file was too large for DVD. In the morning there was a updater pop up for Final cut and Compressor, and I did update. After update, I continue on working FCP, it was working.

Suddenly all my original captured files disappeared, as well as my all my project files. The folders were there for a while, and then those disappeared as well. Thankfully my final NTSC DVD files are still here. (I back them up immediately to my Maxtor) Project is due to Sunday morning.Set aside Pal version, I needed to create one last little movie on NTSC.
Same Hitachi drive as another folder, which contains another project as big as this one, all there, all look fine...

What you guys think this is? Is there a way to recover? was the update the reason for this mess up?
Please help...

Power Mac G5
2GB memory
FCP 5.0.4



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

Hi Enre,

1) Repair Permissions

2) Trash FCP Prefs

[www.kenstone.net]

3) Run a disk Utility like 'Disk Warrior' on both your boot and media drive.

--ken

And never update *anything* when you're in the middle of a project. Especially if you were already at the DVD stage.

Enre,

Are the files missing in FCP or are they missing from insdie your scratch drive as well?

Also, try shutting down your Mac for 5 minutes and then rebooting.

--ken

I did and some of them came back: but I am still missing some files...

Thank you so much for your time Ken.

also thank you derekmok, I will certainly remember that

If you have any other suggestions about missing files, I will be checking here all night.

emre



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

hi Ken,
they were missing from drive as well, (and some are back now)

thanks
emre



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

Agree with Ken and derek. Especially the part mentioning to NEVER upgrade / update *anything* in the middle (or near the end) of a project.



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Emre,

Open Disk Utility, select your scratch drive on the left and 'Repair Disk'.

--ken

You might try running Apple First Aid from Disk Utility but if it need to be repaired you will need to boot from another disk OS or the installation DVD.

This is the first step to see if the OS thinks there is disk corruption. Disk Warrior also has a scavage and repair function if it finds unconnected file on a hard drive.

I did disk repair but files are still missing...

I cannot think anything else but recapturing all the media. (I have got the project files back-some footage is also back but some missing)

I did capture the footage with "capture now" (I dont have a deck, doing from cam)
Do i need to recapture everything from same time code to same? or just need to name the tape the same name?


thanks for help...

Mary Christmas everyone,
emre



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

> Do i need to recapture everything from same time code to same?

Yes! Unless you don't want to keep any of the editing decisions you've made. You must use Log and Capture, select the offline clip, and then Batch Capture. Otherwise the edits you've made will not reconnect.

Hi everyone,
Hectic day is almost over. I would like to share what happened:

(>Yes! Unless you don't want to keep any of the editing decisions you've made. You must use Log and Capture, select the offline clip, and then Batch Capture. Otherwise the edits you've made will not reconnect.)
1- I went ahead and recaptured some of the missing footage before derekmok posted the note. I basically recaptured the tape with the same name; not exactly same but close time-codes. (Of course, I made sure that all the used takes were in) just like derekmok pointed it out, it did not reconnect - automatically. I went the sequence, and reconnected it manually: I said "yes" to all warnings saying that "this that doesn't match" and chose reconnect anyway, and it worked. That part of the movie is back just the way I cut it.

But I do not want to ruin my camera anymore, I will go ahead and buy a mini DV deck. (My client said OK for next week for the rest of the project)

Once I have the deck, I can do it right way - log and capture the offline clip.

My budget would be around 1K, what would you guys suggest? I am located in LA, and used one would be fine as long as the head is OK...


I thank you guys for all the answers...

emre



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

The best low-end DV deck is the DSR-11, but even with LAFCPUG discounts and/or B&H low prices, it would set you back $1600, not $1000.

You might consider what some of us recommended about a week ago -- spending even less money on a very bare-bones, cheap DV camera and use it as a deck. And just consider the camera not to be a shooter.

Hi Derek,
I just read your previous posts about the decks:
Everyone seems to agree on DSR-11
No one even mentions Panasonic DV-AG2500, which is about the same price. Any thoughts?

I have Panasonic DVX-100.

thank you



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

DSR-11.

Love mine.



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I have a JVC S-VHS and Mini DV deck I don't know what the model number is. You can get it for about $850.00 and it works better than a camera as a deck, not as well as a DSR 11 it's faster and it's quite nice for digitizing those old VHS tapes. The main thing is it's within your budget, Not Professional but affordable.

Hi,

I've got that same JVC deck. It's handy for digitizing my older SVHS footage and making quick dubs etc., but it does have that dropout problem when capturing mini-DV that I've seen mentioned numerous times. The dropouts are very annoying.

Thank you guys all,
I bought a little sony camcorder, loving it. It is literally size of a palm, and it has Carl Zeiss lens on it. ( little panasonic camcorder does not have Leica on it)

It worked just fine as a deck so far. (except little late response to batch capture) No drop frame though.

In fact, last night I used it as second cam on my shooting. Just set it up a different angle, and used remote control to capture some audience reaction, or just something to cut to for a 5 second or so. I am not editing that project yet, so I dont know if it will look so obviously ridiculous by next to DVX-100: I will see, I will post here.


Thank you guys all, again.

( everyone tried DSR-11, happy with it, some tried JVC, not happy with it, but nobody said anything about Panasonic deck? - DV-2500 i guess-)



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

> It worked just fine as a deck so far. (except little late response to batch
> capture) No drop frame though.

Emre, as a test, output something from your timeline using the camera to record, then log and capture the output tape into FCP. I've just run into an issue where a tape output three years ago on a director's editing setup (with small cheap camera as capture/output device) dropped timecode like crazy. We couldn't tell at the time because there were no image jumps, but the timecode on the resulting tape was unusable -- not acceptable for an editing setup.

I just want to make sure that I understand what do you want me to test:
I will record something back into a mini DV tape using little sony camcorder from FCP, and then capture the same tape back into FCP: see if we have any timecode problem...

Is that it?



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

Yep. Preferably you'd want to test the output tape on a proper deck -- cameras can usually deal with tapes they themselves have output -- doesn't mean they're OK as output decks.

ok Derek Mok,
I will test it and post it here...

emre



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.

Test results:
little Sony dcr-hc21 worked fine.
I simply record the timeline to a tape, and captured back into FCP, timecode was there. I also used "print to video" it was also fine. By "fine" I mean: I had 3 minutes clip and time code was 0-3.00.
If you were meaning the generating the external timecode to the tape, FCP manual says you cannot do that with Firewire; you would need RS-422 serial port... (and plus there is little adjustment to make)

emre



Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.