FCP output problem - help!

hi,

i have a G4 tower running tiger 4.0 and FCP studio. i am unfortunately not at home (hence part of my problem) so cannot produce precise specs for my system. i think it's 1 GB RAM, but would have to double check. so apologies in advance for imprecision...

i have a few screenings coming up and needed to output a DVCAM of my program for the screenings, and in fact i have already left town with a DVCAM, only to discover now that i am away from my editing system that the audio seems to drop out completely halfway through the tape. i have never seen this happen before - the video is fine, but audio vanishes. i thought firewire meant that the two are coming through the same cable.

anyhow. this is very troublesome because i am away from home and the editing system. so i've been trying to get someone else to sit there and troubleshoot while i tell them what to do on the phone - someone who had never used FCP before, so it's all very complicated.

basically - when i first made this bad DVCAM tape, i exported the whole timeline to a quicktime (which is stored on an internal drive with plenty of free space), then played this quicktime out to my DSR-11 deck. it looked fine, though i confess i only played back the beginning to make sure it seemed okay - so i only found out later about the missing audio. the missing audio happens about 30 minutes into it - there is a little glitch for a few frames, then the video is restored to normal but the audio is gone.

so, over the phone i had this friend of mine try to play through the quicktime to make sure it's not a problem wth the file. that seemed to be fine - there is audio throughout. then i had him try to make a new tape. on this new tape, the same thing happens. but it happens in a different place - 15 minutes in, there is a glitch and the audio disappears.

so... i need help! i have to figure this out before my screening so we can generate a good tape and fed ex it to me. what to try next?? thanks....

You need to mixdown the audio.

SEQUENCE>RENDER ONLY>MIXDOWN.

Then try again.

And learn from this lesson. ALWAYS WATCH YOUR CUT ALL THE WAY THRU WHEN YOU OUTPUT. Never assume that it will go smoothly. Too many problems can arise.

thanks, but... explain more?

the quicktime itself has no trouble playing though with sound, it's only when it goes out to tape that this happens, and it happens in a different spot every time.

does this still sound like a mixdown issue? how does that affect things?

OK...YOU explain more.

If the exported quicktime has full audio, then it shouldn't drop out when you go to tape, as you have TWO tracks. This audio dropout usually happens when you have 6+ tracks of audio interwoven.

How did you get the quicktime to tape?

<<does this still sound like a mixdown issue? how does that affect things?>>

It sounds like Shane nailed it exactly. Mixing down your audio turns into a single stream for playback and/or export. Your show is probably stuttering a bit when it gets to parts with many layers of audio and it throws it off.

I think all of us here have just had to learn the hard way to always mixdown the audio (Option-Apple-R) prior to export or layoff.



- Justin Barham -

When you send something to tape, FCP gets really really really picky about what it allows to "pass". Something that might go by simply when you play the timeline doesn't always make FCP stop and say, "hey, that's not quite right, I want to try that again".

When you're outputting to tape, FCP KNOWS you mean business and the "picky filter" kicks in. (okay, there's no picky filter, please humor me!)

So here's where the mixdown comes in handy. What is does is writes a temporary file with ALL the audio information in it and basically stores it into RAM for instant access. Then when you're outputting, FCP doesn't have to seek out all that audio information from the media drives as it's looking for all the video media, too.

It helps regardless of how "complex" your audio tracks are. Even a final mix from an audio house has to be played back from the hard drive unless it's mixed down for playback optimization.

Does this help explain it?

no... now i am really confused. either i am not getting something, or no one read my original post clearly.

i am not playing something with many tracks. i am playing a single quicktime file (exported from my original timeline). so as far i understand, that is a file with two audio tracks only. so it is essentially already mixed down, right?

so i don't think this can be related to my problem...

and, to answer shane's question, i don't know why the audio is dropping out when i only have 2 tracks! this is precisely my own question - i have never seen this happen before. i am going to tape in the way i have always gone to tape in the past - via firewire to DSR-11, manually pressing play/record on the deck and play in FCP. so i am pretty stumped - it looks like it is playing back fine, and then part way through, at an unpredictable interval (i've now tried this three times and it keeps happending at different spots) the audio vanishes - no error message, and no other helpful clues.

So you exported your QT file, and then brought that back in to FCP to output to tape? or are you exporting another way?

Even if you made a QT file, the computer could still be playing multiple files. You must make the file a self-contained file otherwise its just making pointers to other qt files and this could be causing part of our audio to drop out.

What i recomend is take the original FCP timeline, render all video (opt - r, mix-down the audio (opt - shift - r), and then do print to video to your DVCAM deck.

If it's a different spot everytime, you might want to repair your disk permissions(under disk utility on your system drive), do a safe boot(reboot holding shift, then reboot again), and even trash your preferences(guide can be found on this website). That almost sounds like FCP went from Picky Filter to Schizophrenic Filter, which the aforementioned should repair

OK, just to summarize what's been suggested above.

1) If your exporting a QT reference file as opposed to a self-contained QT file, you're defeating the purpose in this case.

2) Check your output file to make sure that the glitches aren't in it. If so, do another one after an audio mixdown.

3) Even if the QT you're using is good, mixdown the audio first. This will still help playback.

4) If none of the above help, one (or all) the following might do the trick:

a - Restart the system.
b - Repair disk permissions.
c - Make sure you drives aren't too full.
d - Delete your FCP prefs.
e - Clean your DSR-11 heads.
f - Make sure there's other software besides FCP running when you do the layoff.

How long is your show? There's a chance that your machine just can't handle the layoff of a long piece. I doubt that's the case though.



- Justin Barham -

Two things come to mind, one is you may have a polluted timeline. Its happened to me, I copied and pasted into a new sequence and the problem went away.

The second is a piece of music not at 48 kh but 44 kh. Bringing in music from a cd will do this or a special effect sound not set properly.

My 2¢,

Kevin

P. S. Render audio as all have suggested. That solves many issues.



"A problem can never be solved by the same consciousness that created it"
Einstein

<<The second is a piece of music not at 48 kh but 44 kh. Bringing in music from a cd will do this or a special effect sound not set properly.>>

Nice one Kevin. That's another sneaky playback killer.



- Justin Barham -

> i am not playing something with many tracks. i am playing a single
> quicktime file (exported from my original timeline). so as far i understand,
> that is a file with two audio tracks only. so it is essentially already mixed
> down, right?
> so i don't think this can be related to my problem...

Irene, Audio Mixdown doesn't reduce your number of tracks, and it's necessary even if you're running only two tracks of audio from a QuickTime movie file. Think of it as being an audio render. And even a single QuickTime movie file in a timeline with no effects on it requires Audio Mixdown if you want a smooth output.

Cardinal rule of troubleshooting: Leave no stone unturned. Don't assume something isn't related until you've tried it out. Just try Shane's suggestion. In fact, did you do an Audio Mixdown before you exported your edit on to the single QuickTime movie file you're currently trying to output? Do the Mixdown (OPTION-APPLE-R), if only for the sake of ruling it out.

> and, to answer shane's question, i don't know why the audio is dropping out
> when i only have 2 tracks!

Just because one timeline with two tracks of effects-free audio can play to tape fine on one station doesn't mean that exact same setup will work the next time.

Check all options -- Shane's, Kevin's. The inconsistency of the glitch, however, suggests to me that it's the data stream not being able to keep up, and not a sample-rate problem. Also check the following:

1. Is the audio spiking -- going into the red -- at any point in the timeline?

2. Have you tried using a new tape?

3. What method are you using for the output? Just playing back the movie file in the Viewer, or in the timeline, or Print to Video, or Edit to Tape? I generally recommend Edit to Tape -- I've always gotten good, stable results with this option.

4. Do you have Antivirus, internet connections, or other applications running? If so, disable them.

5. Do you have any sleep options turned on?

6. From what drive are you accessing the QuickTime movie? How full is that drive?



Also, to modify Shane's recommendation:

> ALWAYS WATCH YOUR CUT ALL THE WAY THRU WHEN YOU OUTPUT

I'd actually suggest:

Always watch your cut all the way through AFTER you output.

When outputting, you're watching the image and sound from the computer. If your tape encounters a physical glitch, you may not see it during output, but it could be there on the tape. Watch the tape after the output. Time consuming? Yes. Necessary? Definitely.

Recreate your QT file except this time make it SELF-CONTAINED file.

Betcha that fixes your prob.

I think we beat the usual suspects to death. Let's try some unusual ones.

If "It Always Used To Work" and now it doesn't, usually, baring equipment failure, there's more stuff on the machine now than there used to be. Do an INFO on *all* your drives, not just the ones actively involved in the show. At least 10% free space on all drives. A lot of people use a higher number.

Disconnect everything that says FireWire on it except the deck.

Can you push a completely different show through the system and onto tape? If you have something wrong with the deck or the cable, you could be fixing Final Cut for a very long time.

This type of audio problem screams having tried to use an MP3 or 44.1 CD file as part of the show without proper conversion. FCP will try to play nice with an MP3 file and just when you let your guard down, blammo, distorted or dropped audio.

Are you very sure there is no video disturbance at the point that the audio crashes?

If you put your *self-contained* movie on an internal data/media drive and it failed, try pushing it over to the System Drive and play it from there. I know there are gasps of horror all around, but remember, *Apple* expects that to work. Keep peeling emails and pictures of your nephew in Detroit from your System Drive until the show fits.

Koz

okay... let's see. i really don't think it's the "my hard drives are too full" problem. there's 25% plus at least free on every drive in my system and i just did a huge drive house cleaning a few weeks ago, so by the "it always used to work" logic, things should be more likely to work now, not less. and i don't think it's 44.1 audio either, but i will double chech that. i have, in the past, had no trouble getting the same exact show onto DVCAM. anyhow, i'll be home tonight so i can actually troubleshoot this in person. thanks for all suggestions, i'll see what happened once i cen get to the FCP system myself.

could someone explain self-contained vs not quicktimes? which one is the default? i would have thought i amalways making a self-contained quicktime, but is that not right?

i think it's one of two - or both - things.

1 - jacked render files and or jacked seq/timeline. it is hell when you have a screwed up timeline/bug thing. it hasn't happened to me in a long time, but whatever.

i would dump ALL render files and then as per advice above - cut and paste your seq into a new timeline - then re-render all.

export a self contained movie.

2 - your FCP/qt movies are not self contained. FCP is very.....fragile on layoffs. i think much of it has to do with 'user error' of putting media all over creation (not saying that's you) and additionally and more so - 1 billion renderfiles. basically what i mean is the program hunting around for files during playback is the killer. that's an opinion based on observation and nothing else. cleaned up drives/prefs/permissions and space buffer 'helps' fcp race around and grab those files. my theory.

in the end - i'm with reed and kevin above.

fp

could someone explain to me the difference between self contained QT and not?

i really sort of find it hard to believe that this has to do with media files all over the place in this case... i only say this with confidence because i just did this huge drive clean-up a few weeks ago. this was a project i had worked on for a few years, so at that point definitely my drives were too fulll and my media all over the place. so i media managed my final timeline into a new project, copied only the exact media files needed, re-rendered everything from scratch, and wiped out and disk warriored every one of my media drives. oh, and did an erase and install of tiger on my system drive. so beyond any doubt there is plenty of space on my drives and all the media being used is nicely organized in one folder on one internal media drive that has been freshly reformatted.

maybe something has gotten corrupt in the media manager copying process? but that also seems strange because when i output it is not choking in the same spot every time- it's seems really random. isn't it right that if there were one particular file where the sample rate was off or the media was corrupt it would go out when it reaches that point every time?

also, i thought the whole thing with firewire is that video and audio come out together - so what would cause the video to be fine but the audio to drop out?

anyhow... i'll try a bunch of these suggestions tonight when i get back home and see if anything helps...

thanks.

> so i media managed my final timeline into a new project, copied only the
> exact media files needed, re-rendered everything from scratch, and wiped
> out and disk warriored every one of my media drives. oh, and did an erase
> and install of tiger on my system drive.

Whoa whoa whoa...was your system malfunctioning before you did all this? If your OS wasn't misbehaving, you should not have done the Tiger erase/install. That's like doing a preference dump when FCP is working properly.

> also, i thought the whole thing with firewire is that video and audio come
> out together - so what would cause the video to be fine but the audio to
> drop out?

It's all data. If the overall data flow can't keep up with the real-time video playback, any part of the output can drop out, distort, or otherwise get skimped over.

> could someone explain to me the difference between self contained QT and
> not?

A self-contained QuickTime movie file contains all the media information (image, effects, audio) necessary to playback the edit. A "reference" movie file only creates a QuickTime movie in name -- that file is simply a link to all the components of the edit. So if the file is removed from the file system where the original media is, the reference file becomes useless.

When you have the storage space, always opt for a full-quality, self-contained QuickTime movie. The mobility, stability and versatility you gain from the process far outweighs the extra time it takes to output such a file. And always render everything -- video as well as Audio Mixdown -- before exporting the file.

self contained means that fcp wil create an movie that is a single piece of media. not self contained means that it kinda creates a single file to which all the original files are referenced. including render files.

it's not thatr the media and render files are all over the place it's that there are a lot of them for fcp to refer to. a self contained file is only one file for fcp to reference.

when exporting a movie via NON conversion - there is a check box on the bottom of the dialogue screen that says "make self contained".

btw - i assume the media on your system is dv?

for what it's worth - in the past i and others have had enormous difficulty laying dv back to tape. it is/was so very very unstable. we had to do an uber checklist before doing it as we would get random skips and stops and problems. things like what you have done like repair permissions/disc warrior/full reboot/ etc.

additionally we would create a very very pared down version of fcp that had no bins open, viewer & canvas at 50% made all real time stuff safe and tried to turn off ANYTHING that used system power. i used to have a fcp 3 version on my harddrive that was pre set JUST for layoffs.

i just don't do layoffs too much anymore so i don't know if there have been improvements since fcp4.5 but aside form an x-raid type deal layoffs have been, in my experience, very very iffy. a huge weakness to fcp in general IMO.

fp

yes, my system was horribly misbehvaing at the point when i did the erase and install. this was a month or so ago and many things were going wrong, my media was everywhere, my drives were too full, i had some awful os 10.3.9 plus QT 7 incompatibility that was making everything go haywire. erase and install was as per suggestion of people on this forum and it did fix things that were not working at the time. no need for alarm.

You cleaned out **all** your hard drives?

How many drives are there on your system and how are they connected?

Koz

"choking in the same spot every time"

this has happened to me.

a file is unhappy.
maybe it's fragmented.
maybe it;s sitting on a part of the drive it doesn't like.

sometimes its a rendered section.
simple - force a re-render by making the clip invisible, then visible again (Control B, Control B)

sometimes it;s the clip itself.
copy it to another drive,
delete the original,
reconnect to the copied version.
or
duplicate the clip in the existing drive,
delete the original,
rename the copy
reconnect in FCP.

cross you fingers this works.
nick

i have two internal media drives, one system drive, one 250 GB promax firewire drive that is connected only when needed - more for storage and archiving than for playing media in current FCP projects. all recently cleaned, erased etc.

thank you. this seems helpful. will let you know if i get this sorted out. media on my system is dv, yes.

okay. so now i am back home. i have checked , and indeed the quicktime was self-contained all along. so that all those problems people have been mentioning abotu referencing other files, i don't think that should be the problem. also, i should mention that i had almost nothing else running at the same time when trying to lay off. i made a new project that was basically empty, closed all other projects and windows, and was just playing the self contained quicktime within this new project.

now i am rerendering everything and will try to make a new quicktime export. but i still don't think i have any plausible explanation of why this is happening. nick, you misread my email, it does NOT choke in the same place every time - it's the opposite - somewhere different each time - which makes me think it is not some specific corrupt clip that makes the pl ayback screw up.

frank, what exactly is your uber checklist for laying off to tape?

i've really never had this problem before and have done this many times. baffled and stressed...

ok let's see.

drive had plenty of room, like i said before. my editing computer is dedicated to editing - this means i do not keep it networked at all, so no internet is running and nothing else running either. audio does not spike - i've already gone through with a fine tooth comb to set all audio levels throughout. dvcam tape is brand new (and it's now happened on three different brnad new tapes, so a tape glitch would not likely be the culprit).

i am trying now to re-render everything, do the audio mixdown as suggested, export to a new quicktime and then try again. will report back. thanks.

<<i am trying now to re-render everything, do the audio mixdown as suggested, export to a new quicktime and then try again.>>

Thank you.



- Justin Barham -

it involved:

-make sure breathing room on all drives
-dumping all renders
-dumping all prefs
-shutting anything off in fcp that used cpu of any kind.
setting viewer/canvas to 50%


then re-render all in one sitting
disc warrior system and media drive


re boot

attempt layoff
watch layoff without blinking.

people will think i'm crazy, but back when i mastered to dvcam or laid off vhs screeners i ALWAYS had problems with layoffs. i use dvd screeners now. may take a bit longer, but always works.

[www.lafcpug.org]

fp

ps - strange note - i always always had better luck laying off in FCP3. don't know why. have never laid off in fcp5 tho.

OK. i am happy to report that my latest attempt at outputting seems to finally be fine. don't know what did the trick, since i did a bunch of things at once (threw away all render files and re-rendered form scratch, rendered audio mixdown, exported a new QT, put it on a different totally empty media drive, trashed prefs, repaired all disk permissions, and rebooted). so - who's to say which of these things helped, but the problem seems to be gone now. thanks to everyone for suggestions.... irene

<<attempt layoff
watch layoff without blinking.>>

Haha things haven't changed too much.



- Justin Barham -