unable to save in FCP - unknown file

On a large project, on saving, the screen says unknown file type and will not let me save in any way. this only happened to me once on a large project but I then hear from my coworker who had the same problem at home. another worker had the exact same problem on another machine. after quiting and restarting, the orginal file was still there and intact, changes not saved of course.
all machines are Macpros Intel FCP7.

Lawrence Lau
Coordinator, TV Studio Brigham Young University - Hawaii

When that happens, don't quit FCP. Copy all the contents of the project file, paste into a new project file, and save. Usually that gets around the problem.

If that doesn't work, export an XML while the project is still open.


www.derekmok.com

Where are you saving the project file to? What sort of volume is it?



www.strypesinpost.com

My worker and I were using a san system. the co worker was at home with an external hard drive. the project had been saved a short time before and nothing was different in out methods.

It could be a permissions issue on the SAN. You can try doing a "save as" onto your system drive, eg. desktop.



www.strypesinpost.com

It is not the san. coworker had same problem at home with different drive. also, save as did not work either at that point.

Just curious, is the FCP user logged in as administrator?



www.strypesinpost.com

both users were not at the time. both instances happened at different times. both recovered after quiting. the third instance was from a totally different system. All three were alike and all three were on different computers. All were large projects, small project do not seem to be affected.

I believe mine was first, about 2 weeks ago. I thought it was a san glitch. It happened to my worker a couple of days ago, and the system administrator (the co-worker) told of his same problem he had a home about a week ago. He was not working on the san.

It could be SAN related, it may not. What sort of errors does the Console report?



www.strypesinpost.com

Console had no errors reported. error said that file format unrecognized. saving was not possible. media managed BU was not possible. same error. it appeared as if FCP stopped recognizing the file that it did minutes before.

consulted with system administrator and he said that he was able to save to a different hard drive. Even on his own computer, this was the case. I had just saved previous to the crash, so I did not try to save to another hard drive.

I think that that with what Derek said above, the problem will at least be able to be managed.

>it appeared as if FCP stopped recognizing the file that it did minutes before.

I had it once a long time ago. I think the RAID got tripped and I powered it up a little fast, and for some reason I couldn't save the project on the RAID, so I saved it onto the system drive. It may not be solely a SAN issue, just that a SAN would complicate it.

Go to Console and switch to "all messages", something should be written at around that time if the issue is caused by the drives.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks for the suggestion.
I has have trouble saving audio file. Now it worked out well.

HI everyone reading this note...
I've been troubleshooting the following matter for the past 3 hours.
I've never had this problem occur at the office and I am hoping someone can shed light to this issue.

Story: we've been editing a large project..

Hardware/Software information:
MAC PRO computers using FCP 7.0.3
Drives connected are 4 Gspeeds (SATA), 1 GSpeed (FW 800) and a VideoSan (FIBEROPTIC)

As of tonight we were finishing the edit and as we were looking through new footage added the system just crashed.
We had to turn it off manually and once we turned it back on...the spinning wheel was still spinning and it did not stop.
After that...we turned off the system again and once we opened the project...we went to autosave to retrieve one from there and unfortunately we can work on the project but we can't save it. We tried several exercises as we troubleshot this issue. We created another project with the another name...copy and paste the sequence...closed (didn't save) the original project...and the new project would not save. It's frustrating after a while (4hours+). I am hoping someone can shed some light to see how I can keep on working on this project...the thing is that another presentation that's done is in the same project...and I can't even work on that presentation without me being able to save it. It continues to crash...over and over again. Any advices would help greatly.
Thank you...Onix M. Padron

Onix M. Padron
Otv Creative Services

Try these in order:

1. Can you try saving to the system drive instead of the media drive? That would mean a problem with the media drive.

2. Try copying everything into a new project and saving it to the media drive. This would mean the project file could be corrupted.

3. Shut down, disconnect all peripheral drives including the drive on the SAN and all the media, and see if you can save. This would mean you may have a read error on one of the media files, maybe a corrupted file.

Let us know which works.



www.strypesinpost.com

Strypes...thanks so much for your prompt reply.
I tried your suggestions but modified them on my end...

I did a play by play log of how I took care of the issue for now and here you go:

5:35am - Onix - I turned on the computer with no drives on and the FCP saved though nothing was connected to it. Changed the scratch disk from VIDEOSAN to the HARD DRIVE on the computer (Edit2). - I WAS ABLE TO SAVE REGARDLESS

5:40 am - I am now turning on the 3 Gspeed drives (SATA) and the smaller GRaid drive (800 FW) to see if it's probably something corrupted on the ACTIVE STORAGE. It is saving...therefore, I will be transferring all the media used in the FCProject onto another GSpeed. I think this is where the problem is...the VideoSan and it's where it started since the moment we attempted to watch the added footage and that was when the first crash occured and I even got an error message on my ACTIVE (videosan) FIBER CHANNEL not being connected. So...to avoid all this I am going to transfer the footage from the VIDEOSAN (Active) onto another GSpeed.

6:24 am - Re-confirming that the Active Storage is the issue. I am now turning on the 3 Gspeed drives (SATA), the smaller GRaid drive (800 FW) and the VIDEOSANS. I'm going to try to work on this sequence and save. SURE ENOUGH...it's NOT SAVING and it's crashing again...

SOOOOO...CONCLUSION...the Active drive is the problem with this particular FCProject. So, I went ahead and transfered all the media from the Active and...since I am working on a deadline...I rather be safe and I'm refraining myself from working on this project with the Active connected.
It works perfectly without being connected to the Active...so that's the solution I've found to the problem.

I also checked that other FCProjects work and save with the Active and they do.

If anything else should arise...I will let you know. And thanks so much for giving me the three steps at the beginning. Oh...and I keep all my FCP Project files on the actual computer...they are NOT saved on the drive for safety purpose.

Again...thank you for your time and sharing your suggestions.

Onix