FCP and Broadcast Ready filter

I'm having a heck of a problem getting FCP 4.5 HD to render clips that have the Broadcast Ready filter applied to them. I have not had this problem before but it is currently haunting my system and I can't seem to get it out. I apply the filter, apply Render and the render box comes up and gets to about 1% before FCP freezes up (spinning wheel of death). I have removed the fcp.plist and FCP Users folder from the preferences several times with no luck. I also used Disk Utility on the Application drive, from the system disk. The clip in question is about 12 minutes long and is a QT movie made from a FCP project. I have used this filter in the past on 60-minute shows with no problem, but I can't figure out what's going on. Here are the specs:

PowerPC Quicksilver G4
OS X 10.4.10
1.4 GHx Processor
1.5 GB SDRAM

Thanks,
Stan

[The clip in question is about 12 minutes long and is a QT movie made from a FCP project. I have used this filter in the past on 60-minute shows with no problem, but I can't figure out what's going on.]

Possibilities:

A) you're rendering to your system drive and space is tight. Don;t redner to your system disk! Render files are just like media files, same bandwidth, etc.

B) You're rendering to a media drive and space is tight-- even though it might indicate you have the room, it may not be contiguous space. Your media drive may be too fragmented for efficient writes (and reads!)

Look at TechTool Pro or another drive utility which cna optmize and defragment not only files but also disk fragments.

On three occasions over the years this nailed the capture and render out issues I encountered.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:
Set Video In & Out separate from Audio with Control I & O !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Lauren:
I made sure I was sending rendering files to a non-system firewire 250GB drive (which has 100GB remaining), plus I successfully rebuilt the main drive with the latest version of DiskWarrior. I opened FCP, brought in the QT movie to the timeline, applied the Broadcast Safe filter, and clicked Render. The render box came up and, as before, FCP froze up with the spinning color ball. Nothing has changed from before. Perplexing!

I?ve had similar problems. They were caused by Magic Bullet ?plug in and various font problems. Got MB updated and rid all the bad fonts. Life is good?.

You should do some testing with significantly shorter clips. Do a 30 sec QT export (self contained) and bring that to a new sequence. Throw in Bradcast filter and report back

I was able to do several 8-minute clips, but the 16-minute clip was absolutely impossible. It froze FCP immediately after the Render progress bar appeared (with spinning color ball). I have, in the past, used this filter on 60-minute shows with no problem, but all of a sudden this has happened. Scratching my head!!!

More ...

I stripped an mpeg off a DVD and brought it into FCP where I had to render the entire 45-minute movie. This clip seems to be rendering just fine. Could it be that the QT movie that froze my FCP when I tried to render it is bad?

It could be - it's a very hard thing to diagnose. What you could do is to blade the long clip into sections and render in sections. This could help narrow down if it's the clip, the sequence, or just a few frames in the clip itself.

So, break it into, say, one minute chunks, select the second chunk and try and render that (I say the second one, because it's possibly the first section that has the problem, if this is the problem). If that works, continue with all the other clipettes until you hit a problem. It could be that you don't have a problem at all once you render in shorter chunks.

I would not be running Tiger on a G4 - I've seen Tiger rip G4 apart never to be running again.

> I would not be running Tiger on a G4 - I've seen Tiger rip G4 apart never to be running again.

I doubt that Tiger is the cause of the problems -- I've seen several G4s with Tiger installed and they don't have any issues I can detect. Unless somebody botched the installation/upgrade, or crossed FCP/OS/QuickTime versions. Even then, not likely to "rip the G4 apart" so much as make FCP run poorly.


www.derekmok.com

I agree. I can, have and do run tiger on a G4. No problems. I have no idea what an operating system could possibly do to a computer to make it never be running again. It works, or it doesn't. Those are the basic parameters.

In fact, I know someone who is running OSX on a G3 wallstreet laptop. It's very cute.

> I know someone who is running OSX on a G3 wallstreet laptop. It's very cute.

Click.
Lunchtime.
Set Scratch Disk.
See you tomorrow.
Oh no, it crashed.
Click. Lunchtime.

One friend of mine tried running FCP2 on her G3 years ago and that was what she had. We were going to edit her reel on that thing but I had to surrender because it crashed four times while I was in her apartment!


www.derekmok.com