P2/FCP/QuickTime issues

B

bovtv

New member
Right...bear with me, this might take a while.

We own an HVX200 camera, shooting 720P/25P CINE D mode on 16GB P2 cards. Initially, uploading went fine - mount the P2 card in a PCMCIA slot, drag and drop the .mxf files and associated Content files straight into a HDD. Up until about a week ago, that worked fine. Recently, however, this process stopped working - we're wondering if it's to do with an update on either Qucktime or FCP.

We tried to import in the above manner, but found that when we tried to put the .mxf's into FCP through Log and Transfer, we came up with an error saying 'No Data'. We then tried to use P2 CMS to get round this to convert from .mxf to .mov Quicktime files. This saw the files, but aftern running the conversion process it had just copied them straight across as .mxf files.

The next step was to use P2 Log Pro. This seemed to work fine as a work-around - we're now able to bring the P2 files across, convert them to .mov (Quicktime) files, and 'Import files...' into FCP. However, we'd really appreciate working out why we're having to go through this process in the first place, given that the import should be straight through FCP.

Tech specs - we're running FCP Studio 2 6.0.2, Quicktime 7.4, P2 Log Pro 2.3.4, and P2 CMS 1.1.9, all on a 2x3GHz Dual Core Mac Pro with 3GB RAM, using a 1.4 Terabyte internal RAID drive.

Having done some browsing, it seems that quite a few people have had problems with P2 formats and importing, but we're quite stuck now. Any light you can spread on this for us would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
BOVTV.
 
Are you purposely shooting to a PAL frame rate?

Are you write protecting the p2 card before transferring?

Are you copying over the LASTCLIP.txt file along with the CONTENTS folder?

Finally, do you happen to clone your install BEFORE you moved to QT 7.4.1 and what OS are running?

If it is Leopard, how was it installed? Clean or update or archive and installl?
 
Hi

Yes were are using a PAL frame rate.

No we have not but we have run tests write protecting the cads during the data transfer and the problem still remains.

Yes we have very careful to copy the exact contents of the P2 cards to our Powerbook external drive we use on location.

Quicktime 7.4.1 was downloaded from S/W update. We are running the latest Leopard 10.5.1

Leopard was installed as an update.

We have used our 'drag and drop' workflow on a previous drama shoot with no problems. FCP ingested the data through log and transfer and we had no need to go to P2 CMS or P2 Log pro to convert to quicktime.

Hope this gives you a bit more info

Regards

BOVTV
 
If you had no issues before an "update" install of Leopard, and now have one, then that's the first thing I would address.

Update installs invariably cause issues when moving to Leopard and FCS2.

The latest version of QT is 7.4. There is a 7.3.1. Which are you using?

Finally, did you upgrade to Leopard mid project, and do you have an FXFactory plug ins installed?
 
Thanks for your response. We've had the system working on Leopard just fine for quite a while. The only thing that got upgraded recently before the problems
started was Quicktime - we're now running 7.4. We can't be sure as to when Quicktime was upgraded exactly, but it's the only bit of software that has changed in our system since we had a full, functioning workflow.
As for FX Factory, the only thing like that we have is Magic Bullet (Red Giant). Still unsure as to where our problems are lying. Has anyone had anything like this before? Thanks for your time,
Regards,
BOVTV
 
I'm having a similar situation: I've been using P2 Log Pro 2.1 with FCP 5.0.4. I would simply log my clips in P2 Log Pro by marking the clips I wanted to use, assign appropriate User Clip Names to them and then export an XML for FCP. Then I would import the XML to FCP.

Worked like a charm until I upgraded both programs today.

The first thing I did once everything was installed and I rebooted, was to open an old FCP 5.0 project to make sure everything was okay. The project updated and everything looked okay at first, but it' wasn't.

The clips looked normal in both the browser and the timeline, that is to say, they were there, but both the canvas and viewer windows were black. When I tried to play the timeline I'd get a general error message. When I double-clicked a clip in the browser, it would "load" into the viewer (I can see my old in and out points) but the screen remained black and there was no audio either.

I tried reconnecting the media, NG.

I then created a new project and went back to the original P2 volume and used the Log and Transfer function in FCP to load the clips into the browser. I was then able to load clips into the viewer and timeline without any problems.

My problem is I don't want to start from scratch if I ever have to revisit any of my old projects.
 
A lot of people have been having issues with QuickTime 7.4.
I'm using 7.3.1 which most people find works just fine but quite a few people have had issues with 7.4

I don't think anyone is really having issues with the P2 Format, it's QuickTime that's screwing things up.
 
Hi all:

QT 7.4 is broken. You need to downgrade back to QT 7.3. 7.4 is causing all kinds of havoc for AE users, P2 users, etc. It all has to do with the DRM that they installed in 7.4 Download the Pacifist utility here http://www.charlessoft.com/ and read about how to downgrade step by step here http://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/cats/20/

It's a huge mess. My friend "upgraded" to 7.4, then he could not playback or capture any P2 clips over 10 minutes long, it crippled his system prefs pane, he could not even open it.

Or you can always just do a clean re-install of OS and QT and all of your programs but that's a pain.

DO NOT USE, TOUCH or INSTALL QT 7.4 and later, so far, according to MacFixit.com Until Apple gets it together and can run pro apps with QuickTIme and not have it screw up, stick to QT 7.2 or at the latest 7.3.

Dan
 
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