that sick, sinking feeling...

[Brian David Melnyk]

i've got that sick, sinking feeling in the final stages of a huge project that something is very wrong...
HDV 30f (XH-A1), iMac 17" 2 GHz duo core 3 GB, FCPS2 Lacie 1TB (with plenty of room to spare). Many subtitles, slow-motion, 3-way CC, transitions, all rendered in ProRes.
I have had suspiciously few problems. Always smooth playback. Was overjoyed, but now worried.
What i did:
created a sequence duplicate of the Final Edit. In duplicate sequence, control clicked audio track 1's visibility and exported>quicktime conversion>Aiff:
linear pcm
mono
16
best
Then repeated for all 6 tracks so i could tweak them individually in Pro Tools. maybe not the most efficient way, but that's the route i took. When clicking 'export', the computer said 'preparing video for display' took some time (the bar) said it again, took some time and then again... maybe normal? gave me an uneasy feeling, anyway...and lots of green and red 'needs render' bars on duplicate sequence (settings same as original)...
fine. i exported all the tracks. BUT, when i closed the duplicate sequence and tried to play the original, it ALL needed to be rendered for playback (a lot or rendering!!!). I did not re-render out of paranoia, i saved and closed the project and then went back to an earlier autosave. it opened fine and the original sequence showed it did NOT need to be rendered, BUT when i tried playing it back, it stuttered at the first transition and when stopped, showed everything needed rendering.
I know, i know... why don't i just re-render?? well, i have visions of being stuck in a 'render loop', where i always render my final edit (half hour per render), but it ALWAYS needs rendering...
just thought i'd ask if anyone has experienced this before i proceed, or any ideas WHY this should occur. seems pretty fishy.
Thanks!

[Shaun Roemich]

Not sure how related this is but I found that FCP6 sometimes "forgets" renders and certainly doesn't always pass along render information to nested sequences (I haven't tried duplicated sequences). I've always re-rendered with no issue but I can't with any authority state that you will be problem free if you do.

What I tend to do at the END of a project is clear the render queue and re-render everything from scratch which makes for a cleaner render "profile" as I won't have all my render this, change this, re-render segmentation. And yes, this takes nearly forever but it's my piece of mind that render files will be as sequential as they can get, especially since I am using external FW400 drives instead of a fibre channel RAID or internal SATA drives.

Just my opinion. No warranty is implied or given. Caveat Emptor, E Pluribus Unum and all that jazz...

[Robert Lane]

What you're experiencing is one of FCP's achilles heels; media management both internal and external isn't fully optimized in the app (yet) so things like how it handles render files especially when transferring between clips/sequences/projects isn't exactly 100% - as you're figuring out.

Shauns advice is good, to force FCP to create a new render "batch", if you will. This will delete and rebuild the meta-data associated with where those render files live and how they're used.

Keep in mind that every bit (literally) of data in any project has meta-data associated with it. This tells FCP what it is, where it lives and how big it is. Unfortunately this data often gets it's bits in a *bit* of a tizzy and FCP starts to get amnesia with it's own management. It's been a common complaint about the app for years, the hope is on the next iteration Apple will create a more robust, data-solid version to keep integrity in-check.

This is also why using good manual media-management procedures (placement and naming conventions of all your assets) is really important to help FCP manage itself.

For now, follow Shauns advice and download FCP rescue which will help rebuild things if your project gets really fizzled.

[Brian David Melnyk]

thanks for your great responses!
I have found an autosave that does not suffer renderosis, and am thinking of just continuing without trashing and re-rendering, and save that route for an experiment when this project is in the bag. I guess the paranoid/superstitious philosophy of 'if it ain't broke (anymore), don't fix it', formed a decade or so ago when i was constantly 'toasted' by an Amiga Toaster, is over-riding all else...
are there any potential problems with trashing renders, or am i being crazy?
Shaun's advice makes total sense, and i would definitely like this to be a part of my work flow.
and, though i may be punted back to 'new boot' status for this question, would a copy project or an old autosave share the render files? if i trashed the renders, would they be uummm 'universally trashed' (i also have sequence versions coming out my ying yang, and would like them to stay rendered for further editing options...)?

[Shaun Roemich]

"Trashing" renders DOES universally trash them, if you mean using the Render Manager tool. If you open the Render Manager, you will be given a list of all the folders created for your project (based on file name at time of render).

For example, when I start a project I name it Project Name 1.0 and update the filename after every major revision. So after 4 revisions, I'll have these folders in Render Manager:
Project Name 1.0
Project Name 1.1
Project Name 1.2
Project Name 1.3
Project Name 1.4

which contain all the renders in use in my Project Name 1.4 project, based on WHEN I rendered. In order to clear ALL renders , I need to add the check mark beside EACH of the folders and allow FCP to delete them. Then I get to re-render everything from scratch. YAY! <Snore>

Hope this helps.