TROUBLE TRANSFERRING A PROJECT FROM FCP3 G4 TO FCP5 MACBOOK PRO

Hi,

Please help. I have this problem with transferring a FCP3 project from my old G4 to a Firewire Drive for use on my MacBookPro / FCP5.

Now the G4 wasn't reading my firewire drive with the firewire cable but it would see it with the USB cable. Using Media Manager it said it would take four days to copy the media. 95% completed (four days later) it crashed.

So we hooked up my friend's Firewire drive and this time (he either used a firewire cable or network connection) copied the media to his drive successfully. He then copied the media to my firewire drive via a network connection.

When I open the project on my Macbook Pro I immediately get this message:

Connection failed. The server may not exist or it is not operational at this time. Check the server name or IP address and try again.

I click ok and then I get the message:

The movie file "file name here" cannot be found. Without the file, the movie cannot play properly.

It searches unsuccessfully for the clip and then I am able to find it manually, finally get into the project and then successfully reconnect the majority of the project and I'm good only to quit and next time I relaunch FCP go through this same routine!

What should I do?!

Thanks,

Dylan

Hmm... having to search for files sounds like it's something to do with a network connection. Are all the media files connected to your firewire drive that's linked straight to your system?

>The movie file "file name here" cannot be found. Without the file, the movie cannot play
>properly.

Could this be a reference movie file? Or is it linked in anyway to media that is connected via a network. If all your media is on your firewire drive, reconnect all media, do a "save as", and restart the project. The new media path should be saved to the project file.

Thanks for you response. All the media should be on the firewire drive and I don't believe any of the files are reference movie files.

I reconnected everything and it played fine, saved as and then restarted project and had to go through the same laborious process of searching for a network and then manually searching out movie files

do I need to start from scratch? is there a way for my iomega 500gb firewire drive to be acknowledged by my old g4 via firewire instead of the super slow usb cable?

Thanks a million,

Dylan

You shouldn't be using USB, period, for editing. Connect by FireWire. And if you get the "movie file cannot be found" message, you have a reference file in there somewhere. You just might not be aware of it.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks for your response. Perhaps I wasn't clear. My old G4's internal drives contain the media that I want to tranfer to my firewire drive to move the project for use on my MacBookPro.

The G4 does not see the firewire drive when I connect via firewire but does see it when I connect via the USB cable. Therefore, I attempted to transfer the media using media manager over the USB connection. Four days and 95% into the process the computer crashed.

My friend then hooked up his firewire drive to my G4 successfully via firewire and using the media manager copied the media over in a number of hours.

He then copied this media over a network connection to my firewire drive.

so now I have all the media but everytime I connect to my laptop and launch final cut it searches for the network connection and then gives me the "movie file cannot be found message" on numerous clips. I click ok when it can't find the network and then manually search and find the missing movie files and eventually make it into final cut where everything works fine.

But when I quit out (and I did attempt save as) and relaunch I must go through the same laborious process.

what should I do?

thanks,

dylan

> The G4 does not see the firewire drive when I connect via firewire but does see it when I
> connect via the USB cable.

Sorry, missed that part in the original post. I assume you already ruled out a bad FireWire port or cable?

When you're encountering possible drive failure, it's my opinion that you really should leave Media Manager alone. Hook up the drive via USB and just do a straight copy to your internal drive. I'm betting the "Movie not found" error has something to do with the fact that Media Manager didn't finish; you probably have a file that had begun copying but didn't finish, resulting in a corrupt/incomplete file fragment with the QuickTime markers, but incomplete/corrupt media. I'd just redo the copy if possible, and stay within OS.

Four days to do the copying via Media Manager sounds excessive to me. How big is the drive? How much media?


www.derekmok.com

thanks I will try to copy it over in OS - I am going from 250gb of media spread out over four internal drives to my 500gb iomega firewire drive.

- Dylan