Help!? Final Cut Issues (odd)

J

JonathanLB

Carbonite Member
So we've been working on this series of projects now all month, and had various problems before with 10.5.3, so we went back to 10.5.2 and all was working great for us. Unfortunately, today, everything crapped out and for no reason at all.

It started with trying to send something from Color back to Final Cut, and it wouldn't send any XML file or do anything. Then we spent forever trying to figure that one out, before we just took another of our internals that was blank and ready for whatever and we installed the OS and our apps on that.

Then, we started getting General Error 34s when trying to open multiple projects that previously had no issues whatsoever. We even put the projects on a G-Drive and have tried opening them up on a laptop running 10.5.3, new system etc., and same thing, General Error 34.

There are no assets that are common to all of these projects, therefore a corrupt file of some sort can be ruled out because the projects are using entirely different footage, different audio, etc.

So what is General Error 34 or what could be causing all of this mayhem? Our deadline is fast approaching and we're going to be screwed pretty soon. I can't believe this comes out of nowhere, it's just ridiculous. We started all over again on that new hard drive, so it's clearly not a hard drive issue. How can it be software when we're using two different computers' software?
 
It doesn't have anything to do with the update of Final Cut 6.0.4 does it?

Also I would maybe try to start a new project and import the sequence into it. if the master clips aren't there you can just create new master clips.
 
Hey,

We were using 6.0.3 before, and upgraded to 6.0.4 Saturday by necessity because on the new drive we created we couldn't download 6.0.3 and use Mac OS 10.5.2, which is what we also had been using (there were some major bugs on 10.5.3, having to do with CalDigit's HDOne functionality and Final Cut Pro problems, among others, that maybe 6.0.4 fixed).

Anyway, I have no way to explain this, because it's beyond the realm of being explainable, but at exactly 11:30 p.m. just after I made this post the projects would open fine on both the laptop and the desktop, at the same time. On the desktop, what I did was nothing new -- I had repaired permissions on the hard drive, checked the HDOne's permissions and they were fine, and I had deleted all of the preference files for Final Cut Pro. I had already done that about 5 times so it doesn't make any sense to me because nothing changed.

Then magically, every project opened just fine, NO errors, and we finished them all staying up until 4:30 a.m. or so. Not that I don't usually stay up that late, but when my editor shows up at 1:40 p.m. and we have to spend 10 hours dealing with computer problems, and learn NOTHING from it because we didn't do anything that should have fixed the problem, it's very frustrating.
 
We're still getting some General Error 34s, though, even though it doesn't seem to have a problem doing what we want, it keeps popping that stupid error up. There is obviously no error with anything because if there was a problem with the hard drive, well, it'd only happen on one hard drive not both. Not to mention both hard drives are about 8 weeks old. I've deleted preferences recently, which I guess can sometimes cause those errors (I mean corrupted preference files), but I'm out of ideas for what could make it keep saying that. It's just really dumb.

We're still having problems color-correcting one of our videos because it keeps having problems sending back to Color.
 
whenever i get mysterious problems out of the blue i always run hardware test (located on the osx install dvd). more times than not the problems have been caused by a bad stick of ram. you must run the extended test to really check the ram. in the past, unexplained errors and file corruption have been resolved by replacing the bad memory.
 
Well...

Well...

Yeah, I've done lots of Internet searches, but trust me it has nothing to do with bad media, bad RAM, bad hardware, etc.

First off this computer is 8 weeks old, it's a brand new Mac Pro fully loaded. Second, it went in to Mac Hollywood just 3 weeks ago to check the hardware to make sure there was no bad RAM, etc. (and RAM tests were run on it as well), after some odd problems we had, then we realized it was just 10.5.3 that was making it act all strange. After we went back to 10.5.2 it was working perfectly for a while. That may sound crazy, that a new OS update could cause so many problems, and we thought so as well, but then we did some digging and realized that the first week 10.5.3 was out, CalDigit had no support for that update on their HDPro or HDOne units, and we had just gotten the HDOne, one of the first in the nation to be using that actually, we got the first one from Mac Hollywood, and then it all made sense -- we were accessing that drive for all of our media, so it was basically crashing every program that was trying to access it, haha. They did release a patch and we've been using 10.5.3 on the new hard drive just fine now, with Final Cut 6.0.4. It's a really good lesson, though, that you shouldn't go updating your OS for no reason. If everything works just fine, no reason to update until at least 4 weeks I'd say. Let everyone else figure out if there are any problems, and then update later. I just hadn't thought of that because using Safari, e-mail, etc. isn't going to be a problem on Day 1 with any Mac OS, but when you're using a bunch of third party apps and have a really complicated workflow (the AJA KONA 3 hooked up, the CalDigit, all kinds of software, etc.), you just have to be more cautious about that. I think it's why Avid computers are kept so free of anything else, and not upgraded often. Only in the last few days have we had some odd problems with that General Error.

Also, everything we worked on that had those General Error (34) things showing up all went away after I repaired the disk permissions and deleted Final Cut's preferences. Then, of all things, all of the previous projects from this client (all done this month) report General Error (34)s now while all of the ones we just did this weekend work fine. So it basically flip-flopped on us.

There are, in all, 16 different projects in Final Cut for these 16 videos we've been working on. There is no media in common with them all, except for an audio track that's a stock song from Digital Juice. We tried deleting that to see if that fixed anything but it didn't. That was the only element in common. Not even any logo files or anything like that were common to all of the projects. Plus, it wouldn't make sense now that 6 of them open fine, or maybe it's 7, and the remaining ones have General Errors.

I will say those general errors don't mean anything at all. We exported the files just fine, compressed them for the Web, created DVD exports, burned a DVD, etc. with no problems. Nothing seems affected at all.

The only continuing error we keep having, for these projects and my last music video, is with Color's workflow through Final Cut. When we take anything with more than one track (sometimes two will work, but three will never work), then send it to Color, then color it, and send it back to Final Cut, we get random black frames added throughout the project. It's not like it's all over, but it will appear on maybe 10-15% of the clips where it will go black for maybe 12 frames, not an entire clip, just some little stretch of frames. I'm not sure what would cause that exactly.

We had finished 15 out of 16 of these projects completely, on the Web, DVD menu design done, and DVD mostly ready to go except that final 1, and we finally decided with that since Color wasn't working properly that we'd just color it in Final Cut and finish it there. So that worked ok, we were able to get pretty decent color correction, albeit with more work required, and the project is finished!

The only thing that remains tomorrow is we have a 17th project that was paid separately by this client, it's separate from the other work (a training video / industrial), and that needs a DVD menu created as well. We already have the DVD front / back cover done and the DVD disc graphics done. I just got a Primera Bravo II disk publisher so we'll be ready to print DVDs tomorrow, but we need our Epson 3800 that's scheduled to arrive Monday via UPS so that we can print the DVD front and back covers and slip them into the cases. I'm excited to see how everything works on that front, never done this before, but we had money left over in this budget and wanted to offer the client something extra. This wasn't requested so all of the DVD work is bonus for them, basically. It was either that or pocket too much extra cash they paid us and I'd much rather offer a better service in hopes that they are pleased with the whole experience. With the training video they really needed the DVD creation and duplication anyway, they just never discussed it with us so it would have probably been an additional expense when they realized they were just paying for a finished training video, not a bunch of DVDs to distribute to 17 different properties in 7 states! Haha. That was partially my bad for not asking them how they were planning to go about that and offering to do this for them, so I'm rectifying that for free. Going forward, I also realized that it's just not professional when a client pays you many tens of thousands of dollars to give them their project on some DVD-Rs with Sharpie written on them, "Training Video" or something like that. It just seems really hokey to me and below my standards. I know our DVDs can't rival, say, Gladiator or some studio release where it's all professionally replicated on ridiculously expensive machines, but I think we can certainly provide nice, small print runs of DVDs that look good, anyway.

Of course since this is my first time with all of this, and I shopped around somewhat but had to put together this workflow quickly, now I realize I really like Primera's waterproof DVDs, they're twice as much as the standard matte ones that I got from Amazon (Memorex printable DVDs, which are themselves twice as much as normal DVD-Rs, grr, still only $42 for 100), but for corporate work I think these DVDs we have will work just fine because these are not products for sale anyway. But it's a good thing to learn as you do this kind of stuff, what looks best, what works, etc.

Right now I don't care anymore about those General Error (34)s, I was just concerned it was going to be a problem somewhere along the way, but everything is finished now and all is well! I've spent the last 10 weeks working on this project almost non-stop, this weekend my editor and I put in almost 30 hours on just Saturday and Sunday! I was working on Friday as well, but that was almost a day "off" for me as I only really did about 4 hours of work. Besides that it's been 80 hour weeks. So I'm really excited about my two-week vacation (might have three projects waiting for me when I get back, we'll see) and the final 50% payment on this project. Yay!!
 
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Jonathan over the years of trouble shooting I have found that sometimes when you get an erroneous error message that can't be figured out but will cause problems you can create a new user and poof everything works just fine under the new user. Same hardware and software and plugins and every thing else is the same but things just won't work when you need them to the most. Its very frustrating.

We have had these intermittent problems from time to time and discovered that when things don't work that should we just create a new user and it bypasses whatever has been corrupted in the old user and will work fine. It has save my bacon more than once.

Good luck.
 
Hey Michael,

Thanks! That's a good idea too, we'll have to try that. We often use our laptops (two fairly new MacBook Pros, one is slightly faster than the other, both 4 gigs of RAM, etc.) as backup editing stations (we got them for field editing / capturing), but the problem now is our workflow doesn't really work that way. We use the CalDigit HDOne RAID for our project files, so we need to get a cable or something to connect the HDOne to the laptop because it's not a standard eSATA cable, it has this sleeve thing on it that cannot be removed near as we can tell. We have an Express 34 to eSATA adapter or whatever for our two G-Drives, though, but just can't hook up the RAID.
 
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