FCP insight needed

[Glen Elliott]

1- Sometimes the composite mode option was greyed out on a clip. I moved the clip around then back in place and it eventually started working again? Is this a glitch?

2- Using the motion tab and changing the scale attribute I usually get dynamic feedback, in other words as I drag the scale I SEE the clip growing and shrinking. Sometimes however it wouldn't give me the feedback as a dragged the slider, like normal, and would only update AFTER I let go. ????

3- I made an extra video track above my edit to composit some Art Beats Film clutter into the edit. I wanted to speed up a clip that resided on the top track above the rest of the edit and it woudn't let me. Gave me some sort of "trimming" error. I'm assuming because of the way speed changes auto-ripple the timeline. So I was forced to move the clip to the END of the timeline- change the speed...then move it alllll the way back into position. Is there any way around this madness?!

4- I was able to drag the end of certain clips beyond the media limit. I noticed this because the motion in the clip would freeze for a split second at the end of the clip. After investigating I realized somehow I was able to drag the edge of the clip beyond it's actual "end". Is this a known glitch?????

[Nate Schmidt]

Try this technique for the speed issue http://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/podcast/

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

1- Sometimes the composite mode option was greyed out on a clip. I moved the clip around then back in place and it eventually started working again? Is this a glitch?

I have no idea what's up with that. I've had many, many interesting things happen to my in FCP since v1.01, but not that one.

I'll offer this (and you can roll your eyes, if you like), more often than not, when FCP doesn't allow me to do something, it's usually for a good reason and I forgot some important law of editing physics. See item 3 for an example.

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

2- Using the motion tab and changing the scale attribute I usually get dynamic feedback, in other words as I drag the scale I SEE the clip growing and shrinking. Sometimes however it wouldn't give me the feedback as a dragged the slider, like normal, and would only update AFTER I let go. ????

Graphics subsystem bug.

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

3- I made an extra video track above my edit to composit some Art Beats Film clutter into the edit. I wanted to speed up a clip that resided on the top track above the rest of the edit and it woudn't let me. Gave me some sort of "trimming" error. I'm assuming because of the way speed changes auto-ripple the timeline. So I was forced to move the clip to the END of the timeline- change the speed...then move it alllll the way back into position. Is there any way around this madness?!

Yes, this is a ripple issue. If it won't do it, it's because it would have to make decisions about certain other things to trim (multiple audio tracks, for example) that FCP just isn't willing to make assumptions about. See page 335 from the manual. The solution involves locking certain tracks in order to tell FCP what it can and can't do in order to make the ripple work.

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

4- I was able to drag the end of certain clips beyond the media limit. I noticed this because the motion in the clip would freeze for a split second at the end of the clip. After investigating I realized somehow I was able to drag the edge of the clip beyond it's actual "end". Is this a known glitch?????

Wait. Are these your AVI clips from Vegas, by chance?

I've never, ever had that problem in FCP except for a couple times with corrupt media. Don't let FCP use those AVI clips. Re-render them into Quicktimes. Compressor can do the lot of them for you without actual recompression.

In fact, I just realized the other weird problems you might be having above is because of AVIs. Something you should know about FCP and Quicktime...they will both make amazing efforts to read media that they don't officially support. So you can drag and drop some wacky format file into a timeline and get an image, but it doesn't really work. You'll have all sorts of odd behavior while Quicktime thrashes in the background trying to make sense of, say, an AVI created by a PC app that didn't stick to the textbook definition of an AVI file. Or at least, maybe in your case, doesn't fit the one or couple implementations of AVI that Quicktime manages to support.

I even, for yuks once, dragged an MXF from a HVX into a timeline once. Yes, an MXF, something nobody at any time ever said would work directly in FCP. I managed to get an image from it and get it to play (unevenly). But it was clear FCP wasn't happy about it.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

1- Sometimes the composite mode option was greyed out on a clip. I moved the clip around then back in place and it eventually started working again? Is this a glitch?

That's a new one. What sort of clip is it?

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

2- Using the motion tab and changing the scale attribute I usually get dynamic feedback, in other words as I drag the scale I SEE the clip growing and shrinking. Sometimes however it wouldn't give me the feedback as a dragged the slider, like normal, and would only update AFTER I let go. ????

Perhaps the computer is performing some background task at the time, like an automatic backup of your project file. That happens occasionally to me, it's a very minor annoyance.

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

3- I made an extra video track above my edit to composit some Art Beats Film clutter into the edit. I wanted to speed up a clip that resided on the top track above the rest of the edit and it woudn't let me. Gave me some sort of "trimming" error. I'm assuming because of the way speed changes auto-ripple the timeline. So I was forced to move the clip to the END of the timeline- change the speed...then move it alllll the way back into position. Is there any way around this madness?!

Lock the other tracks and then do the speed change. It's clumsy but it works.

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

4- I was able to drag the end of certain clips beyond the media limit. I noticed this because the motion in the clip would freeze for a split second at the end of the clip. After investigating I realized somehow I was able to drag the edge of the clip beyond it's actual "end". Is this a known glitch?????

Not with a normally captured video file. I'll second that this might be FCP issue reading another file format. The only files that this ever happened to with me were some weird MPEG1 files from a security system. FCP for soem reason removed the audio from these files so I used Cleaner (remember that?) to extract the audio which I simply dropped on the timeline.

[Glen Elliott]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Not with a normally captured video file. I'll second that this might be FCP issue reading another file format.

Actually the clips I saw this particular irregularity on were ArtBeats Film Clutter clips which were QT files. ????

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

Actually the clips I saw this particular irregularity on were ArtBeats Film Clutter clips which were QT files. ????

Ah ha! Those are probably transcoded from who knows what. AVI, Avid, something.

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

The only files that this ever happened to with me were some weird MPEG1 files from a security system.

You put MPEG-1 directly on the timeline? And it worked at all? Heh. That would fall under what I was talking about above.

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

FCP for soem reason removed the audio from these files

Quicktime has had problems with muxed MPEG1s forever.

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

You put MPEG-1 directly on the timeline? And it worked at all? Heh. That would fall under what I was talking about above.

Quicktime has had problems with muxed MPEG1s forever.

It was for a Dutch documentary and they were try to get these security cam files onto tape and they couldn't figure out how to do it with their copy of FCP.

The strange thing was Cleaner couldn't export the video properly and my DVD/VideoCD player couldn't play the video while FCP ran the video fine after a render. I didn't know about MPEG Streamclip at the time or it might not have existed yet.