Sync Problems when relinking subclips.

I am fairly new to FCP and have just started to re-edit a film previously cut by another editor.
The whole project, media etc has been copied from it's original drives, but how this was achieved I do not know.
The problem I am having is that, whilst all the edited material, that is various cuts of the film play perfectly, the subclips, which are my individual shots will not play in sync.
If I open what should be a synchronised subclip in the viewer, the picture is there and looks fine and plays correctly, but is mute.
If I scroll to the end of the timeline, way past the end of the picture, there is the sound.
It is as if the picture has been laid in from the first frame in the viewer and the sound laid back from the last.
To be sure that no corruption occurred to the project when it was transfered, I got the previous editor to send me a copy of the project directly from their back up, and still the same problem.
I am also getting a General Error warning window when I try to open some subclips, and this is followed by Out of Memory.
Apart from FCP asking me whether I want to update the project when I open it, the other probably more important message was after I had reconnected the media which read:
"some attributes do not match the attributes of the original and may cause problems. The attributes that differed are:
Media Start and End"
Any help on this would be much appreciated, technical data:
My equipment: Dual 2GHz G.5 running OS 10.4.8 with 2Gbs RAM and my version of FCP is 5.1.3.
The project was originally created on FCP 5.0.4 in DV PAL 24@25 and the sound went in at 24bits.

> It is as if the picture has been laid in from the first frame in the viewer and the sound laid
> back from the last.

That's a new one. Never heard that before. I think it's more likely that somebody used the wrong tool on the timeline (eg. used the All Tracks Forward tool when the audio tracks are locked, or vice versa) and pushed all the audio clips to the end.

This should be an easy fix. Get them to find a backup copy of the project where the sound is correct, and just directly paste to your new timeline. If they'd used Media Manager to trim the clips already, however, the relinking could go wonky. Media Manager and subclips often don't like each other, especially if the clips had not been captured with the strictest discipline in terms of timecodes and logging information.

If that doesn't work, you can always Match-Frame the audio back shot by shot.

> "some attributes do not match the attributes of the original and may cause problems. The
> attributes that differed are:
> Media Start and End"

This message sometimes doesn't mean anything. More importantly, you guys should check that the edit points are where you want them. If they are, and if you can Match-Frame the audio back and it matches, then the message is irrelevant. The General Error is a bit more worrisome -- could indicate corruption, misformatting, and other nasties. Make sure they don't erase their original media and project files from the old drives. You may need them.


www.derekmok.com

Hi Derek
Thanks for your reply, I have got a good copy of the scene bins from the project file but not the whole project, so I'll get hold of that.
I happen to know that the media drives have been erased, I think if I could have got hold of them there would be no problem.
David

> I happen to know that the media drives have been erased, I think if I could have got hold of
> them there would be no problem.

Not smart at all! They had erased the drives before you could verify that the copies were viable?
Kick their butts. That's unacceptable. Was the previous editor completely inexperienced?

> I have got a good copy of the scene bins from the project file but not the whole project, so I'll
> get hold of that.

Check older backups. If they don't have other manual backups other than the one you had already checked (which would be another not-smart thing to do), check their Autosave Vault. Unless they worked really hard at being incompetent, it's unlikely they would have wiped that out as well. Of course, if they're inept, they might have stuck the Autosave Vault on the same drive as the main project (yet another big no-no) and wiped it when they erased the drives.

This is what happens when "everybody can be an editor".

So I'm thinking you can't rule out the possibility that their initial captures might have been mishandled as well.

Sounds like you're in for some hairy salvaging work. Good luck.


www.derekmok.com