DESPERATE NEED-- My final cut pro does not seem to work anymore, PLEASE HELP

The particulars:

I am using fCP 4.5, I have a mac G5, dual 2.5 ghz, saving everything to my external hard drive which has 200.00 gb


I am now unable to get into my Final cut pro hd, my
external g drive is on, and when I click a file from
the g-drive I get this message

i'm getting this message, to preserve the integrity of
the data used b fcp hd, it is necessary to ensure the
existence of the following path(s): 'G-DRIVE' is
offline.

then gives me three options

quit check again and reset scratch disks

I click "check again" and nothing happens.

I click on a FCP file that is NOT on the G drive,
that's on the desktop and it's still not working. IT
seems that final cut pro does not want to work.

My capture files are partially on my computer and
partially on the g drive.

when I try to reset the scratch disks all the boxes are checked, I hit ok and then NOTHINg, takes me back to the same 3 options

quit check again reset scratch disks

I tested separate files on My g-drive, mpeg files and aif files and they work so the g-drive is operational.

Not sure what or where the problem btu someone must have experienced this issue before

PLEASE HELP

I have been on the phone with both of my editor friends and they dont have an answer either

can anyone help me?

Turn off the G-Drive, then launch FCP. External drives could interfere with FCP operation. If that doesn't work, dump FCP preferences.

If setting the Scratch Disk to the G-Drive doesn't work, then rather than try it again and again, you should change the setting to an internal drive. Then see if FCP will work. Because if it does, then you can copy the media to an internal drive or a better external drive and continue working.

> when I try to reset the scratch disks all the boxes are checked

What do you mean? Are you saying all possible Scratch Disks have already been chosen? What are they set to?

Hey Derek,

The first I tried was shuttign of g-drive and turning on fcp, in fact I did that before the g-drive wa even on to no luck.

FCP rescue does not seem to open either. DO I need to down load that again?

If so, do you have the link?

in regards to setting the scratch disks when I click on that option
the video capture, video render and audio render are all checked and highlighted in blue boxes, the audio capture is checked and in a grey box

on the right hand side it says "17.4 GB on G-Drive is offline"

even though my G-drive is on and online, I can change it I guess, since when I hit set it gives me option but I would like to know is how do I go about doing that?

Are all the settings pointed to the GDrive at this time? Can you repoint them to the internal drive for a time and see if this helps?



Post Edited (10-13-05 08:07)

THE only thing that I could think of and I could almost kick myself in the but since I feel liek I should have asked before I did it, was that I downloaded the new quicktime version for apple.

Other than that, everything was okay yesterday.

All my ther applications and web browsers and everythign runs as it's supposed to.

Whjen I double click the final cut pro icon this is what occurs, it runs until I get a grey box that says in this order


MiSSING DISKS

to preserve the integrity of the data used by fcp hd, it is necessary to ensure the existence of the following path(s): 'G-DRIVE' is offline.

quit check again reset scratch disks

clicking check again gets me nothing, I've already stated what occurs when I click on reset scratch disks so at this point I dont know if I should re-install or not since I might have the same issues but, it seems to

1.) not recognzie the g-drive

and

2.) not open any files that are not on the g-drive. It does not open at all

If the g-drive is turned off I get the same grey box with the same three options

WHEW, I dont know what to do, you think the quicktime download had something to do with it?

I think you're too close to the problem.


Shut down the machine and pull the power plug.

Disconnect all the external devices. Everything. All the drives, etc.

Count to ten, put the plug back in and restart the machine. Don't connect anything else.

Do an INFO on your System Drive. Is it full? If you added something to the machine and it suddenly had odd, unstable problems, chances are your System Drive is filling up. That drive should never be over 90% full.

Do the normal applications work? Does Photoshop launch and work? Pick a major application that's not Final Cut.

Do you have a camcorder or tape machine? Plug that into the FireWire port, launch Final Cut and see if Final Cut can see and manipulate the camcorder or tape machine.

Assuming everything worked so far, shut everything down, put the drive back in, turn it on, and start the machine.

How did that go so far? Don't leave out any steps. Each step is testing a lot of things, some not so obvious. If any step fails, write down the error screen.

Koz

the info on my system drive tells me what I already which is I ahve 18gb left and 233 taken up. I know this means it's full but that's why I'm saving everything on the g-drive.

Took 30 minutes and Followed every step of your trouble shoot, opened photo shop with no problems, opened Imovie and idvd with no problems, opened garage band with no problem, disconnected my printer, and everything else from my computer, including my g-drive and yest still final cut pro as a program REFUSES to launch.

Each step was successful, there were no errors until I attepmted to launch FCP. Obviously did it as stated without the g-drive attached and then did it with, seems like final cut pro does not want to launch under any circumstance.

Should I at this point just uninstall FCP and re-install it? This is something that I have been trying to find a solution to for the last 5 hours with no answer in sight.

will re-installing it help at all?

Let me know

you guys have been great with your suggestions but has anyone ever encountered anything like this?

Please let me know

I think you may have answered the problem when you said you downloaded a new quictime version from apple. Was it quicktime PRO or just the free 7.0.2 upgrade. IF it was the free upgrade, you have probably overwritten your pro version that comes with FCP.

Yes it was the free version of quicktime pro and this was the first thing I suspected so what do I do now?

Do I ahve to reinstall final cut pro?

I dont think it was a free version of Quicktime PRO as far as I know there is no Free version. I believe it was just the free version of quicktime. I was going to upgrade myself 'till I read that it would overwrite any previous version. Anyway I'm not sure what the fix is although it did say in the software update section you could go to apple and purchase QT PRO. So I would call apple support and see if there is a way to uninstall and go back to your PRO version or get the update to the latest PRO version.

1. Trash FCP preferences
2. Repair Permissions on Mac HD(Disk Utility)
3. Zap PRAM - (reboot and hold down Command|ALT|P|R)

I meant the regular version, sorry for any confusion.

I willd definitely call apple right now and see what's up. Otherwise it seems that i'll have to reinstall FCP, right?

That seems to be the only solution unless anyone can tell me otherwise

Hey Mark, how do I trash FCP preferences if I cant get into FCP, is there a way?

Please tell me, I am going to try any and everything at this point

have you or anyone you ever encountered this problem?

Hi Here are Ken's instructions for trashing the FCP preferences.
[www.kenstone.net]

Hope this helps.

Rob

THANK YOU EVERYONE

ROB YOU ARE THE MAN

YES THE ARTICLE HELPED,


I AM NOW ABLE TO LAUNCH

THANK YOU ROB, DEREK, FRANK, JOHN, GREG, MARK AND THE ACADEMY

I can now get to florida film festival deadline!!!

Here's another tip (courtesy of Evan, I think): Once you've trashed preferences and FCP's created fresh ones, and you've reset all your user preferences to your favourite settings (eg. Levels of Undo, Scratch Disk settings, Audio/Video Settings, customized window/column layouts, customized buttons and shortcuts), go to those preferences in the Finder, press APPLE-I, and lock them.
I don't do that on my own system (I change Scratch Disks all the time since I use the "one-drive-per-project" approach), but apparently that prevents you from getting corrupt preferences.

what can I say about this board and the awesome people on this board is that you're lucky I'm straight 'cause I love you all peeps!!!!!

Excuse the sentimentality but I have been around "professionals" you know the ones you pay and DONT KNOW WHAT THYE'RE DOING BUT SOMEHOW CHARGE YOU FOR THEIR TIME???? you guys really do make an effort to help

thanks again

You're just way too cheerful.

Cut it out.

Now that your system is running, it's probably not going to stay that way. Preference files don't just corrupt themselves. Something in the machine is unstable and causing this problem. This is a symptom of a larger problem, not the problem itself.

There's no shortage of people who "need to trash preferences all the time" and turn out to be using ratty drives, bad connections, damaged cables, odd memory, daisy-chained external drives, Full Drives anywhere, etc. OSX and Final Cut hate that and if you play your cards right, will start to eat their own setup files.

And will keep eating them.

We have three (and a half) machines in active service and have had forever. I know I'm jinxing the operation, but I think we've trashed FCP preferences on one machine once. That's one time in spite of all the different people and high workload going through this shop.

You might run the OSX Disk Utilities on your machine and see what it says about the health of the drives. Also owning a license for DiskWarrior is highly recommended for more serious problems, rescues, and optimizations.

Koz

> Also owning a license for DiskWarrior is highly recommended

Oh yeah -- don't use pirated utility software, people. It ain't worth it. My current bosses own one, and it does diddley squad -- wrong version (and can't be updated, because it's pirated), and since we don't have the disc, we can't run it on the system drive.

You don't have to reinstall FCP.

There are QT 6.x.x reinstallers on the Apple site.

These are the two I have links for. There may be a new one on the Apple download page. These will at least get you in the neighborhood.

[www.apple.com]

[www.apple.com]

deb