Reconnect pain, even with 6.0.4

I've been having a bear of a time trying to clean up a 3500 file/160m project. I checked out the threads on reconnect problems in 6.0x, and upgraded from 6.0.3 to 6.04.

All of the master clips in the original bins (corresponding to tapes when logged) have been copied from the original old, fat, broken project into a new, empty 6.0.4 project, and reconnected. Works fine. Yay! Project can be opened and closed and everything stays reconnected.

But oh, sequences....

I have a 10 minute sequence containing hundreds of clips. When I copy and paste the sequence (in the browser) from the old, fat, broken project into the new, connected project it looks like FCP fails to even try to find master clips in the new project. That's not what I was expecting. Every clip is offline. Hmm #1.

So I select the sequence in the Browser window, right-click on it and choose "Reconnect Media". I dutifully find all the files again. When I have eventually found them all and choose "Connect", FCP thinks on it a bit, then finally says "Operation not allowed". Urgh. When I open the sequence into the Timeline, it looks like nothing has been re-connected.

OOOookaaayy, so I try selecting the sequence clips in the timeline (smaller batches of clips), and reconnecting. In smaller chunks I can avoid the "Operation not allowed", but still saving and re-opening the project makes the sequence clips forget they were ever connected. Hmm #2.

And the "Operation not allowed" only comes up on clips that claim to have a mismatch in rate or channels (but I am 95% sure there are no true mismatches).

I've long out of patience with this. But that's OK. Worse, I am out of ideas on how to track this bug down and work around it.

Any suggestions? Are my assumptions correct in the Hmm points above? Thanks in advance!

-Frank

System: 10.5.4/FCP 6.0.4/QT 7.5
2x2.0 G5, 4G ram. All footage is DV, mostly 24pa.
all SATA drives, Mac formatted

[ into a new, empty 6.0.4 project]

And all settings between projects and sequences matches? You didn't overlook, say, a Drop Frame checkbox, or something easily overlooked?

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Play from In to Out with Shift - \ (Backslash) !

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

select the sequence in the browser and go to Tools > create Master clips.

you should then be able to work in the browser to do your reconnecting.

not really a solution, just a way of dealing with the problem a tiny bit easier.


nick

Nick is right.
Just a copy/paste won't keep the masterclip relations.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Thanks for the replies on the weekend, everyone.

Project properties are the same in both the old and new project.
I coped the sequence via the browser, and verified that the sequence settings are the same in the old and new project.

Quote

Just a copy/paste won't keep the masterclip relations.

That's not how I read Volume 4 Chapter 4 Page 53 of the FCS manuals:

Quote

Moving Clips Between Projects
...
Clips match exactly: If the destination project contains a clip that exactly matches the
new clip, Final Cut Pro adds the new clip and makes it an affiliate of the master that
already exists.
...

To me that reads like the majority of the clips I have which DO match exactly in every way but source location SHOULD retain their masterclip relationship. Only the clips with conflicts (a handful) should not become an affiliate of the already existing master clip in the destination project.

As Nick suggested as a stopgap I created new masterclips from the sequence clips. They showed up in a new folder, but even reconnecting these clips does not stick. After a save/close/reopen project the masterclips are looking for their media in the old drive location. ARGH.

In related news...
I think I have tracked down at least part of the "forgetting reconnected clips" issue. My experience with 6.0.4 has been that if you try to connect 100 clips, and 99 match but one has a conflict, even if you try again/skip file on the conflict clip, the other 99 will not be reconnected. This seems a bit glaring, perhaps not a 100% of the time bug. But it is 100% in this project.

And to be clear, even connecting a handful of newly made master clips with no conflicts does not work after save/close/reopen. There is something about these set of clips that refuses to allow their source media location to be updated. Frustrating!

>Clips match exactly: If the destination project contains a clip that exactly matches the
>new clip, Final Cut Pro adds the new clip and makes it an affiliate of the master that
>already exists.

I recall reading this bit a while ago. Though I haven't been able to shift assets between two projects and still keep the master/affiliate clip relationship. Not a biggie, but I do wish there was someway to reset that link once they are broken.



www.strypesinpost.com

> Though I haven't been able to shift assets between two projects and still keep the
> master/affiliate clip relationship.

In this case, since the goal was to clean up and not to fix a corruption in the old project, I would have duplicated the original project file, renamed it, and then deleted the unwanted components from the smaller new versions. What remains will still retain the original master/affiliate relationships.


www.derekmok.com

sorry for going OT, Frank.

Master Affiliate stuff:

Quote
Strypes
I haven't been able to shift assets between two projects and still keep the master/affiliate clip relationship.

i talked about this in a thread a couple of weeks ago
what seems to be the problem with copying stuff between projects, is copying clips AND a sequence at the same time.

that confuses FCP, and you lose the Master/Affiliate link
if you copy one at a time, FCP doesnt get confused.

this also goes for Multiclips.
if you copy a multi, AND it's component clips into a new project,
then the multi cant track back to the component clips.

again, you have to copy one first, then the other.

i am doing this every day on the project i'm on and it's a bit of a drag.

copy "Single" clips,
copy multis,
copy sequnces.

Quote
Strypes
but I do wish there was someway to reset that link once they are broken

me too!
you can "Create Master Clips" from a sequence, but they wont have any markers, and maybe no log notes, comments, etc.

best might be to blow off the browser clips, and copy them across fomr the orignal source again.
that might work if you havent dne too much work in the new project.

otherwise you have to replace/overcut all your timeline clips

Quote
Derek
I would have duplicated the original project file, renamed it, and then deleted the unwanted components from the smaller new versions. What remains will still retain the original master/affiliate relationships.

yeah, and a lot of other "Dark Matter" as well.
also mentioned in a recent post was this issue of Projects hanging onto *something* when you delete stuff from them.
copy a big project, and start emptying it out.
you'd think it would get significantly smaller, but it doesn't.
you can even delete everything, and still the project size can be big.
weird.
i suspect it's hanging onto old render linkages, but that's really just a guess.

anyway, this method that used to work, now doesn't.

again it's something im going to have to deal with on my current project.
and i think we're going to have to filter out the clips, multis and sequences and copy them all individually into a new project,
then re-sort them all once in there.


all the best,
nick

Nick,

You can test your theory anytime by opening your project in a text editor. Since FCP project files are .xml it is easy to see if they hold the old connections and deleted stuff or not.

Quote
nicknasty
You can test your theory anytime by opening your project in a text editor. Since FCP project files are .xml it is easy to see if they hold the old connections and deleted stuff or not.

FCP projects are not XML. To see something about the relations you should open them in a hex editor.
Though you can export as XML - depending on project size and kind this may take seconds, minutes or hours - and then use a text editor.
From there you can really change masterclip relations - but that will be a tedious work. You may also need to enter new XML data, and so you should know about FCP XML.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Andreas, you are right, they are not .xml... that's why they are called FCP project files, not xml Still, unlike most other files (like .psd, .mov etc.) you can open a fcp project in text editor (.xml style) and see/understand the main ingredients. You can use search/find to look for media links and their paths, very useful in a situation Nick Meyers described above related to "Dark Matter".

I do not recommend tampering with raw .fcp files to make any adjustments but for informational purposes (and to find the source for all that dark matter) it may be useful to take a peek.

Quote
nicknasty
Still, unlike most other files (like .psd, .mov etc.) you can open a fcp project in text editor (.xml style) and see/understand the main ingredients

Interesting. How do you do that?

Andreas

>that confuses FCP, and you lose the Master/Affiliate link
>if you copy one at a time, FCP doesnt get confused.

The goal isn't always to clean up.. Sometimes I enter a project after tape loggers have logged and created timecoded sequences from which clients select their shots from. Not so bad, except that recently I started a project where the loggers did that in like 3 different project files. Tried copying it a few ways (clips, then sequences and vice versa), to consolidate the 3 different projects, and it didn't seem to copy the master/affiliate relations. Or maybe i got the order wrong- is it clips then sequences or the other way round, or must they be copied one at a time?

>After a save/close/reopen project the masterclips are looking for their media in
>the old drive location.

Did you try trashing preferences?



www.strypesinpost.com

This is a readout from an example FCP project... Quite easy to determine if scratch disks are OK and what kind of media links you still have within your project. All "Dark Matter" will be revealed here...

Okay - see what you mean.
But you can open any file in a text editor, and it will show up as you showed above, but that's no XML - in other cases it might be an XML.
With FCP projects it might be easier to open them in a hex editor.
With your way you'll have a hard time to figure out the masterclip relations as the they are not visible "as human readable". It would be better to use the way of exporting XML - there you really can change relationships.

Andreas