What version of OS X are you running?

Sir,

10.3.9.

I know that 10.3.9 broke some things with FCP 4.5, Apple issued a patch for it. I'm sure they didn't bother to patch an old application like FCP 3 however. Did you ever have this problem before updating to 10.3.9? You could go back to 10.3.8 but it might be a pain. AFAIK, you'd have to reinstall from whatever version of 10.3 you originally bought, then install the 10.3.8 update here:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxupdate1038combo.html

I had this same problem today on FCE. Boyd - I followed a link you posted in another thread - http://www.apple.com/support/finalcutexpress/

Here it addressed this very problem in FAQ. It turns out using a solidus (i.e. a forward slash ' / ') in your captured file description (say 'WS dog/child'), it causes problems with the Capture Scratch directory leading to this error message. I in fact had used a solidus and once I renamed all files minus the '/' I am capturing without problem (touch wood.)

"Solidus?" Wow - you just taught me something.... never heard that term before.

That wouldn't have occured to me, but never would have happened to me either. MacOS X is unix, and the / character is the path delimiter. In other words, if I have a file named "example" in my Documents folder the full pathname of that file would be /Users/ostroff/Documents/example. Of course DOS and Windows use the \ character instead, which is the mark of the Devil ;-) MacOS 9 and earlier versions used the colon : for this purpose, and wouldn't allow you to put it in a filename.

MacOS X is pretty good at dealing with these issues so a regular user won't normally run into them. For example, there are lots of reserved characters you can't put in real unix filenames, like blank spaces, asterisks, question marks, etc. These reserved characters can be used in filenamesif they're "escaped" by placing the \ character in front of them. So normally under OS X if you name a file "I'm not sure?" the user interface will automatically convert it to I\'m\ not\ sure\?

Apple had to build this into MacOS X or there would have been lots of problems when the switch came along since unix can be very unforgiving about filenames. In fact, they made one big kludge in OS X which can actually be a compatability problem with other versions of unix. MacOS 9 didn't differentiate between upper and lower case. This little hack, which pretty much dates back to a time when people used teletype machines without lowercase (same with MS DOS) was a big oversight in MacOS I think. But Apple had to grandfather it into OS X. Under every other version of unix a file named "Example" would be completely differerent from one named "example", and you could have them both in the same directory without conflict. But under OS X you couldn't have both of those files in the same directory, the operating system would view them as being the same. MacOS X simply ignores case.

OK, now I've strayed WAY off topic and told you much more than you ever wanted to know. But if anyone is still reading... it's probably safest not to use the / character in file names. Use a dash, and underscore, etc. It shouldn't be a problem to use the / however you've just seen that certain software may have bugs which don't properly filter out reserved characters. With my unix background, I just don't use any of those characters in filenames, and I don't usually put blank spaces in them either. For one thing, if you upload files like that to a unix/linux webserver you're asking for trouble.

Final bit of trivia... if you're curious as to how MacOS deals with these names, or what it translates the full path of a directory to, open the Terminal application (in the Utilities folder). Drag any file or folder into the terminal window and it will display the actual file name.

Anyway, thanks a lot for uncovering this glitch Daniel, it may save someone else a lot of trouble!

I'm editing a film in FCP3. It consists of mainly pics I took with a 5.0mp digital camera. When I imported them into FCP and put the stills into the timeline, they become so blurry. Can anyone recommend the perfect pixel size and combination of filters to make the images crystal-clear? Thanks.

Hi Michelle and welcome to DVinfo! I moved your post to our regular FCP forum since you had put it in the high definition FCP 5 forum.

Have you viewed your stills on a TV monitor (like through your camera via firewire) instead of on your computer screen? If not then try it; they may be fine actually.

Otherwise, what are the proportions of the stills and are you editing a 4:3 or a 16:9 sequence? Assuming that you're working in 4:3, using Photoshop resize the still image to 720 pixels wide while constraining proportions. If your still is also in the 4:3 proportion you should now have a 720x540 image. If not then you may need to crop to that size. Now resize again WITHOUT constraining proportions to 720x480. This will put the image in the proper size and proportions for FCP. One problem (especially with FCP 3) is that the program does a rather poor job or rescaling images, so it's best to prepare them as 720x480. However you need to remember that video pixels are not square which is why we need to squash a 720x540 image to 720x480.

Your stills are probably fine as is and do not need a trip through Photoshop, though Bord's advice is absolutely correct. FCP will scale (and not distort) your stills to fit within the video frame automatically, which usually means they will fit properly side to side and have some black bars top and bottom (in a 4:3 timeline). You can easily scale them in the motion tab or by dragging the wireframe to the size you want. The wireframe view also allows drag placement of the image within the frame so you get just that part of the still you want. You can do this in PS as Boyd describes, but then you are locked with the scaling and framing that you did there. If you import the still directly into FCP, then you retain the ability to frame and scale with FCP tools.

Now, about your blurry look. This is an issue that FCP has (had) when working in the timeline or in the Viewer where stills are involved. The scaling code does a terrible job when the still is anything but the scale that FCP decided to set as the default when the still was imported (and sometimes not even then). But fear not, because when fully rendered out to tape or as a QT movie (and this is not the same as forcing a render in the timeline with option-R) it will be beautiful, as you expect.

To test this assertion, export your timeline of stills as a QT movie and then import that back into FCP and see for yourself. They should be crystal clear.

I have found that FCP5 is much improved in this area as I can achieve a WYSIWYG view of scaled stills in the timeline by rendering (option-R).

That would be "Boyd's advice" not "Bord's". Sorry.

I am working in FCP3. I exported a project to a QT Move to burn to DVD. The project has been removed from FCP but the QT Movie is still on the Hard Drive. Can I import the QT Movie back into FCP?

Thank you.

Gary

Yep no problem it will just be one big clip though so it will be hard to edit ;-)

Just start a new project hit Apple I and choose the file.

Sorry it's been a long time to reply, i've been on the road. The problem I run into is a message- File Error: Unknown file. during Import. Any suggestions?

Thank you

Gary

Can you open the file in Quicktime itself? - just by double clicking on it?

Yes. Double clicking brings up thr movie in QT Player and I am able to watch it there. I just need to import back to FCP3 to edit a few things.

Strange. Try "Saving as..." (selecting "Self-contained Movie" and giving it a new filename) from Quicktime, and see if that file can be imported by FCP?

Hi
My problem is this;
The movie is being exported from FCP3 as a QTime file and then tranferred to a CD using Roxio Toast.
The movie plays fine from a PC which is where I'm trying to upload from directly from the CD. I cant work out any way of saving the movie from the CD to the PC. It plays fine from the web as long as the CD is still in the PC, as soon as it is ejected, the web movie will no longer play, all you see is a blank screen. I can see by looking at the CD that there are 2 other files associated with the QT movie, but these don't seem to upload.
Any idea's?
Regards, Dave

Sounds like you've uploaded a reference movie and not a self contained film. Check the file sizes match.

Hi Liam, you're right. There are 3 files shown on the disc although I save it as a self-contained movie. I must be missing a setting tab somewhere, but where?.
Dave

All sounds a bit odd. Can't you copy the QT movies from the CD on to your hard drive?

While capturing audio and video footage the video footage will pause for a few seconds on the computer screen but the audio will not pause. Everything looks good on the external monitor. When the footage is brought into the timeline, the audio and video come in together but the audio is not in sync with the video. The audio and video tracks also do not move together when I want to adjust them in the timeline. This is a new problem I have with FCP3. I have heard that this version is full of bugs but this has never happened before. Any suggestions?

Thank you

Gary

From your description it might be a video dropout on the tape or an issue with a hard drive which can't keep up. Doing a long capture once I got a message about dropped frames and the capture aborted. At first glance the capture file seemed fine, but looking more closely I realized the video and audio were out of sync.

What kind of computer and what version of the system software are you using? FCP 3 is getting really old and FCP 4 was a huge improvement in terms of responsiveness. If you're using old system software then things may work OK, but I think you will have a variety of issues trying to use it with newer versions of MacOS X and Quicktime. FCP 3 is not an OSX native application... I used to run it on OS9. When I tried it under OSX (which was an early version) I had some problems, but we're going back a number of years here.

Also, what kind of hard drive are you capturing to? If it's the system boot drive then it may be fragmented and not performing as well as it used to. Same thing goes for an external drive if it has a lot of small files on it.

For starters you might try capturing to a freshly formatted external firewire drive and see if it helps. Also, if the drive is slower than 7200 RPM you will probably have some issues. Older firewire drives also had problems related to the speed of their firewire interface chipsets.