Subclips and sequence errors in FCP7

Hello everyone,

It's been a long time since I've posted on here, apologies if I miss anything off.

First off, system I'm running:

FCP 7.0.3
OSX 10.6.8
Quadcore Mac pro with 4GB ram.
Rushes 4K red epic, downconverted to prores 422 LT 24P
Synced with pluralise

I've taken over from another editor, who alas, thought it sufficient to chuck a load of pluralise sequences into bins and consider his rushes good to go. I'm going through, correcting the erratic frame offsets with the audio etc. and generating my subclips. Inconsistently, I have an error message pop up saying "sequence error: Unable to add clip to sequence. Possible media limits problem in clip or sequence." This doesn't just happen when I try to add a clip to a sequence, even trying to delete a clip from the original sequence that I have just generated a subclip from gives the same message. Most of the time I just restart the project and it sorts itself out. I've trashed preferences, and the problem immediately returned. I've seen other issues discussed that generate this message, not using a media manager to copy media (I imagine this wasn't the case given the state of the project and I'm working off a dup drive). I'm not working with multicam, just straight up subclips from synced rushes. This is 24P all the way through so I can't see how any pulldown/drop frame issues might have crept in. (project is in the UK but shot in Argentina) I'm following a workflow I've used a bunch of times before, the only difference being the LT proxies rather than the usual prores 422 HQ, and I didn't do the transcoding. I'm a bit stumped as to why this message keeps cropping up, I've also noticed a couple of times it seems to trash my undo list.

Any advice gratefully received.
Thanks,
Kate

It sounds like your system is getting pretty stressed out. What are you running the media off? Do all the connected drives, and your system drive have a good amount of free space? How much?

The thing where your undo list is getting trashed sounds to me like a processor struggling to remember everything at once without enough brain to do it with.

how are you generating your subclips?

we used to sync in a timeline,
then link, open into viewer, and make sub from there,
but that is now asking for trouble in FCP7:
it eventually makes FCP buggy.

workaround is to copy clip to a browser bin,
open into viewer from there to make the sub.

bit of a drag, really.

not sure if this is your problem, of course, but the fix works if it is.


nick

I'd like to ask how you are making a subclip. I've done it quite a lot of times, but usually we'll sync in the timeline, make independent clips and then drag them to the bin to make master clips.



www.strypesinpost.com

This is part of the Pluraleyes meta-data corruption. It might also be just a FCP bug. You'll find some of these subclips will magically go wildly out of sync for no reason as well.

The subclips have to be made with perfectly matched ins and outs of the audio and pix, to keep this from happening. You will also notice that what you choose in your source window is not what is cut into your timeline, this can not be corrected as far as i know. So you'll need to polish all choice in the timeline. Also, the trim window choices will not match as well. So all frame accurate editing has to be done in the timeline.

Hopefully I have overstated the problems but what you described came along with these other problems.