Can't see my sequence in the canvas or viewer...

[Shane Coburn]

Just got set-up with 5.2.1, and when I opened my project from a previous version all was well. The next time I opened it, the canvas auto-sized the view of my project down to 21%. Bringing it up tp 100% bled off the canvas. Weird, but no biggie -- I scaled it down to 75%. (However, the text was still at 100% and bled off.) Today, I opened up the same project and I can't see a damn thing. There is nothing in the canvas when I play the timeline, just audio. Moreover, I can't see clips in the viewer when I double-click them. The timleine looks fine and the audio is there...I just can't see the actual video.

- External Video is "Off"
- When I switched Video Playback from "None" to "Display - Main" it went to full screen. When I escaped out of it, neither choosing "None" or "Display - Main" does anything at all. Just a black viewer and canvas.
- It is an SD project, so I switched the default settings to DV NTSC 48 khz, but it didn't make any difference.
- Went from "Standard" window to "Two Up", and then back again. Nothing.
- Closed, quit, re-opened, etc. No picture, just audio.

I have no idea what is going on...

Please help.

[Andy Mees]

click on the canvas window and press Shift-Z (shortcut for fit to window)
if that doesn't fix it, look down to the timeline and see if you haven't inadvertently toggled off the monitoring (the small round button at the far left of every video and audio track, should be bright green ... if not then the track is disabled)

[Shane Coburn]

Originally Posted by Andy Mees

click on the canvas window and press Shift-Z (shortcut for fit to window)
if that doesn't fix it, look down to the timeline and see if you haven't inadvertently toggled off the monitoring (the small round button at the far left of every video and audio track, should be bright green ... if not then the track is disabled)

Andy -

Thanks. Shift Z worked for the canvas window, and the viewer. However, the Fit In Window function only makes them 22% (which is just barely over half the size of the window). And this is made to seem even smaller since I am on a MacBook. Also, anytime I have text, it bleeds over the 22% frame and in to the black canvas greatly. This is something I've only seen in 5.2.1. All of my older projects were able to occupy the full size of the window and the text was always proportionate. Any thoughts?

[Andy Mees]

<I> the Fit In Window function only makes them 22% (which is just barely over half the size of the window). And this is made to seem even smaller since I am on a MacBook. Also, anytime I have text, it bleeds over the 22% frame and in to the black canvas greatly. This is something I've only seen in 5.2.1. All of my older projects were able to occupy the full size of the window and the text was always proportionate. Any thoughts?</I>

the percentage scale required to fit the video within the window depends on the resolution setting of your monitor and the size of the cnavas/viewer window.

it sounds to me like the pixel dimensions of your sequence settings do not match your source clips. the text cannot display outside the canvas area ... if it is bleeding over the edge of the picture into the "black" then it is still within the canvas, but rather, your video does not fit the canvas edge to edge? check under the Sequence menu > Settings... what are your settings? check one of the source clips in the timeline, what are it's item properties? (select the clip and press cmd-9)

if the settings are correct (they should match), then perhaps you have inadvertently scaled the clip within the canvas? select the clip in the timeline and press "enter" to load it into the viewer window. click on the Motion tab in the viewer window and see what the "Scale" percentage is set to.

another option here is to select the clip and use the Modify menu > Scale to Sequence option

[Shane Coburn]

Originally Posted by Andy Mees

it sounds to me like the pixel dimensions of your sequence settings do not match your source clips. the text cannot display outside the canvas area ... if it is bleeding over the edge of the picture into the "black" then it is still within the canvas, but rather, your video does not fit the canvas edge to edge? check under the Sequence menu > Settings... what are your settings? check one of the source clips in the timeline, what are it's item properties? (select the clip and press cmd-9)

This was exactly the case. The first time I opened the project with the new software, it opened with it's DV settings intact so everything was good. But I had set-up this version of FCP to have all new projects default to HDV, so when I copied the old sequences in to a new project, they looked off. I don't know how I didn't notice this when I did it...I must have been in a hurry and saved the new project right after copying everything over without checking how they looked. Anyway, thanks very much for the help. I would have kept going round and round, because I've always used the same settings until now, and because I haven't actually created an HDV project yet, wouldn't have thought that was the problem.