fcp 6.06 failing to boot

mac pro running snow leopard. was just running a project and closed it.
tried to load another project from a different set of drives and fcp just
hangs in the boot process. the boot splash starts to appear but only gets
as far as a white rectangle on the screen with a continuous beachball.
computer seems to be running fine otherwise. any help appreciated.

thanks,
BabaG

First I'd disconnect all the drives and try to boot FCP. You could be getting a hangup because you had "Open last project on application launch" checked in User Preferences, and if something's wrong with the last open project, that could choke you. Disconnecting the drives also takes the media out of the equation. If FCP still won't boot even with no media to access, then you can narrow the problem down to the software itself or the system drive.

If FCP does launch with no projects and media to access, then try remounting one drive at a time, or open the project file from a different location with media disconnected, see if it works.


www.derekmok.com

thanks derek.

i actually tried just what you say about booting without media and it also hung up.
i also always make it a practice to close projects before i quit fcp to avoid the exact
issues you describe regarding opening previous projects so i assume that has not
been the problem.

now, however, it's booting ok. it's the project that's having playback issues. the
sequence is somewhat complex, with large format stills with moves and resized
mov's overlayed. thesequence is rendered and would play to a certain point and
after that only plays for a couple of seconds before dropping frames and putting
up its warning to that effect.

i disabled all of the clips and rerendered the sequence, it's only about 90 seconds
but takes 20 minutes. same behavior after rerender. i emptied the render folder
in the fcp documents (which is on a pair of raided drives) and still no luck. i then
opened the rendered file in qt player and it plays fine.

one thing i noticed is that when i keep restarting the sequence by clearing the
warning message and hitting the space bar or l key, with each restart the audio
is behaving oddly. with one restart it will be properly in both channels, with the
next only in the right. it keeps checkerboarding with each pair of restarts. the
audio render folder has nothing in it. the raid has 125gb of free space.

<edit>
another piece of info: the meters on the audio mixer do show the low channel
level on one side when that side drops out. this would lead me away from
concluding it's a system problem and is something internal to fcp.

<edit 2>
just exported the sequence and reimported it to see if it would play any better
than the edited clips in the sequence and it has severe sync issues, primarily
in two places. the clips at those places are a merged clip, an audio file that's
been linked to a video file rather than having been captured together, and a
music file that's sample rate converting from 44.1kHz to the sequence's 48kHz.

<edit 3>
just rerendered the sequence and played it back with all of the audio tracks
turned off. played back fine. when i turned the tracks back on the problems
reappeared so it would appear to be some kind of audio issue.

any further ideas welcomed,
BabaG

[ and a music file that's sample rate converting from 44.1kHz to the sequence's 48kHz. ]

Sounds like you've isolated it nicely. I'd batch export that and any other "off-sample" rate audio. FCP likes 48K. Anything else means more CPU load converting on the fly-- the first sign of that is often synch issues.

The other thing that will make a project file hang on load is too many versions of a complex sequence, especially longform. I had a project with 20 versions of an hour long doc stored in the project file. I was concerned that some overscanned stills were contributing-- but it turned out both the load time and the file size went down by over half when I archived the older cuts to a second project file.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Nudge a Canvas layer by SUBpixels
with Command-Option with Arrow keys !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

thanks loren.

it's also doing it on the linked audio clip. i unlinked it and it still has problems
playing. i'm starting to think that there are combinations of issues, some of
what you describe but, also, i'm thinking my drives might be getting too full
and have reached a tipping point where they are into parts of the platters that
are just too slow. am starting to look into more drives.

thanks again,
BabaG

Your stills are RGB and not incredibly massive? I've had stills up to 10k wide run OK, but only a couple at a time. Anything that's CMYK or greyscale will make FCP narky.

thanks jude.

i've been pursuing the idea that my drives have passed the point where they're performing well: too full. just brought back some drives twice the size of the ones the project is on and transferred the entire project and media to the larger drive and it opened and played fine. i think that's likely the problem. will upgrade my raid, where the fcp documents live, as well.

thanks again,
BabaG

[ I've had stills up to 10k wide run OK, but only a couple at a time. Anything that's CMYK or greyscale will make FCP narky.]

Narky is a terrific word.

But 10K??? Danger! Danger! The project file may store it okay, but hauling one of thos eaorund in RAM, oooo...

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Nudge a Canvas layer by SUBpixels
with Command-Option with Arrow keys !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com