Apple has posted a rather interesting support document about how best to install FCPX along with Final Cut Studio.
It's here, and well worth a read if you plan on installing FCPX while having FCS also installed.
They recommend you re-partition your boot disk but if you don't, make sure to launch Motion 4 first. Sound messy? I thought so too. It's very un-Appley in my opinion.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Disk Utility and Invalid Content in Journal
Yesterday while switching around external hard drives to media manage some old projects that are going to be handed off forever (yay!) to a client I accidentally unplugged the wrong firewire cable and disconnected a drive that was mounted but not currently in use.
I don't think it was spinning at the time but I can't be sure. However, plugging it back in I found that it wouldn't mount. I tried a few times, tried using USB but it refused to mount. All the spin up, head alignment noises were there but it didn't mount.
Running Disk Utility showed an "Invalid content in journal" error. Now this wasn't a FCP drive, just a storage drive of mine. It's good practice to not journal your render drives (if you use an external one) for reasons such as this, speed, etc…
But this storage drive was journaled and apparently something went poof when its firewire was unceremoniously unplugged.
Running repair in Disk Utility showed:
The volume BLAHBLAH was repaired successfully.
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Repair tool completed
But Disk Utility lied. Running Verify or Repair showed the same "Invalid Content in Journal" error every time. And it still refused to mount.
I decided to give Disk Warrior a go even though my version is out of date and after it's 10+ step process of rebuilding and replacing the directory the drive mounted.
Out of curiosity I rechecked it with Disk Utility and found no errors but I did notice that apparently Disk Warrior had turned off Journaling on the external drive.
Just to see what would happen I re-enabled Journaling through Disk Utility and re-ran Verify and again, no errors.
So if a drive won't mount, and you see the "Invalid Content in Journal" error in Disk Utility give Disk Warrior a try. Looking back I wonder if I could have just disabled Journaling on the un-mounted drive and then mounted it.
I don't think it was spinning at the time but I can't be sure. However, plugging it back in I found that it wouldn't mount. I tried a few times, tried using USB but it refused to mount. All the spin up, head alignment noises were there but it didn't mount.
Running Disk Utility showed an "Invalid content in journal" error. Now this wasn't a FCP drive, just a storage drive of mine. It's good practice to not journal your render drives (if you use an external one) for reasons such as this, speed, etc…
But this storage drive was journaled and apparently something went poof when its firewire was unceremoniously unplugged.
Running repair in Disk Utility showed:
The volume BLAHBLAH was repaired successfully.
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Repair tool completed
I decided to give Disk Warrior a go even though my version is out of date and after it's 10+ step process of rebuilding and replacing the directory the drive mounted.
Out of curiosity I rechecked it with Disk Utility and found no errors but I did notice that apparently Disk Warrior had turned off Journaling on the external drive.
Just to see what would happen I re-enabled Journaling through Disk Utility and re-ran Verify and again, no errors.
So if a drive won't mount, and you see the "Invalid Content in Journal" error in Disk Utility give Disk Warrior a try. Looking back I wonder if I could have just disabled Journaling on the un-mounted drive and then mounted it.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
FCPX - Removed Comments & Reviews
Apparently, Apple is removing negative comments and reviews from the discussion page and the App Store review site. I've seen two reviews removed from the App Store and I've noticed some posts and comments are no longer on the discussion site.
FCPX Options for Ingesting Media from Photo-Based Devices
Apple has put up a page covering the basics on ingesting and importing media from "photo-based devices" into FCPX which really means SD cards and DSLRs.
Adding Arrows Super Fast in Final Cut Pro
I'm working on a video that has lots of little intricate things that are pointed out in the text. Arrows on screen definitely help in this specific case.
A super fast way to add graphical arrows in Final Cut Pro is to use the Windings 3 font. Yup, a font.
You can launch Font Book -which is in your applications folder- to see exactly what arrows are available but for basic ones use the FGHJKL keys.
Now you can manipulate them as you would any graphic. Resize, alter color, rotate, keyframe etc…
A super fast way to add graphical arrows in Final Cut Pro is to use the Windings 3 font. Yup, a font.
You can launch Font Book -which is in your applications folder- to see exactly what arrows are available but for basic ones use the FGHJKL keys.
Now you can manipulate them as you would any graphic. Resize, alter color, rotate, keyframe etc…
FCPX Requirements
Can your Mac Run FCPX?
- Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better
- 2GB of RAM (4GB of RAM recommended)
- OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later
- 256MB of VRAM
- Display with 1280-by-768 pixel resolution or higher
- Mac OS X v10.6.7 or later
- 2.4GB of disk space for Final Cut Pro
- 2GB of disk space for Motion
- 685MB of disk space for Compressor
More specific info about requirements and graphics cards is here.
What do you have?
1. Hold down the OPTION key.
2. While holding it down click on the Apple logo at the top left of the Menubar.
3. It'll read "System Profiler…"
4. After System Profiler launches click on "Graphics/Displays" under Contents > Hardware in the left column. Your graphics card(s) will be listed in the right-hand pane.
- Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better
- 2GB of RAM (4GB of RAM recommended)
- OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later
- 256MB of VRAM
- Display with 1280-by-768 pixel resolution or higher
- Mac OS X v10.6.7 or later
- 2.4GB of disk space for Final Cut Pro
- 2GB of disk space for Motion
- 685MB of disk space for Compressor
More specific info about requirements and graphics cards is here.
What do you have?
1. Hold down the OPTION key.
2. While holding it down click on the Apple logo at the top left of the Menubar.
3. It'll read "System Profiler…"
4. After System Profiler launches click on "Graphics/Displays" under Contents > Hardware in the left column. Your graphics card(s) will be listed in the right-hand pane.
FCPX Questions and Answers
FCPX has dropped into the App store along with Motion and Compressor. Those links are App Store links, btw.
Many initial questions are covered here. It's well worth a read.
Macworld has an article on it here.
However, right off the bat with the dot zero release:
1. You cannot currently import FCP6/7 projects into FCPX (see #4)
2. There is no Multiclip/Multicam.
3. Many plug-ins currently do not work.
4. Currently there is no XML Import or Export.
5. Currently there is no native OMF Export or Export to Logic.
6. Doesn't currently work natively with R3D or XDCAM (they need to be re-wrapped first).
An update has already addressed this somewhat.
7. There are no longer distinct Canvas and Viewer windows.
8. You cannot set In and Out points for tape capture nor (AFAIK) is there a batch tape capture ability.
9. You cannot "Save As" to duplicate a project (at least not that easily).
10. Apparently you can't Print (output) to tape, anymore.
Many initial questions are covered here. It's well worth a read.
Macworld has an article on it here.
However, right off the bat with the dot zero release:
1. You cannot currently import FCP6/7 projects into FCPX (see #4)
2. There is no Multiclip/Multicam.
3. Many plug-ins currently do not work.
4. Currently there is no XML Import or Export.
5. Currently there is no native OMF Export or Export to Logic.
6. Doesn't currently work natively with R3D or XDCAM (they need to be re-wrapped first).
An update has already addressed this somewhat.
7. There are no longer distinct Canvas and Viewer windows.
8. You cannot set In and Out points for tape capture nor (AFAIK) is there a batch tape capture ability.
9. You cannot "Save As" to duplicate a project (at least not that easily).
10. Apparently you can't Print (output) to tape, anymore.
Panasonic's P2 Card and the Format Error!
Hopefully you'll never see this:
It's a FORMAT ERROR! (I think it actually reads "FORMAT ERR!") which can occur very rarely on P2 cards for seemingly no reason. Recently we had one while on location.
What happened was someone forgot a standard USB cable to load in footage from an HVX200 camera to a Hard Drive - I've had extremely bad luck with going directly from the camera to a hard drive in the past so I avoid it at almost all costs now - and since we were on location with pretty much nothing around us in the way of stores and rummaging around through everyone's bags and equipment cases looking for a USB cable I decided to load in the footage via Firewire.
Now this camera and another we've been using have had Firewire issues in the past. Namely extremely slow and getting slower over time Firewire transfers. Resetting the cameras and restoring the Firmware seems to have no effect. USB xfers are multiple times faster than Firewire at this point so I've been going with USB regularly, often and without issue when there's no card reader available.
So, finding a Firewire cable and setting the camera to be a Firewire device and hooking everything up I began the copy from camera to laptop. While slow -as expected- it was going and I told everyone to take a coffee break while it copied over.
About 400MBs into the copy there was a Finder Read/Write error, I didn't have permission for something or other and it konked out. I suspect it was something to do with the "LASTCLIP.TXT" file which is locked by default.
So I tried to unmount the camera with no response and ended up just power cycling it since it was completely unresponsive and the Finder on the laptop couldn't unmount it even after waiting 5+ mins.
Powering it back on I saw the dreaded "FORMAT ERROR!" in red on the screen.
Now this is a very rare error and unfortunately there's not much you can do about it on location. Some people have had luck with a few power cycles and mounts and unmounts, others have had luck with Disk Utility repairing it but I wasn't one of them. I'm reluctant to have the Mac do anything to the cards but we were desperate and the director said go ahead so I tried a few repairs with the Terminal and Disk Repair but nothing seemed to help.
We ended up calling and overnighting the card to Panasonic who was able to recover the footage in their labs. They copied the footage back to the same card of ours and shipped it back to us. Panasonic was amazing, fast and helpful.
So the bottom line solution for us, upon seeing FORMAT ERROR! was to just ship the card to Panasonic and have them recover the footage.
My new rules for loading footage from a P2 card when you have to use the camera as a reader is to:
1. Lock the card with the write protect switch before mounting it on the Mac.
2. NEVER use Firewire. USB only from now on.
 |
| The error message blinks which is why it looks faded here. |
It's a FORMAT ERROR! (I think it actually reads "FORMAT ERR!") which can occur very rarely on P2 cards for seemingly no reason. Recently we had one while on location.
What happened was someone forgot a standard USB cable to load in footage from an HVX200 camera to a Hard Drive - I've had extremely bad luck with going directly from the camera to a hard drive in the past so I avoid it at almost all costs now - and since we were on location with pretty much nothing around us in the way of stores and rummaging around through everyone's bags and equipment cases looking for a USB cable I decided to load in the footage via Firewire.
Now this camera and another we've been using have had Firewire issues in the past. Namely extremely slow and getting slower over time Firewire transfers. Resetting the cameras and restoring the Firmware seems to have no effect. USB xfers are multiple times faster than Firewire at this point so I've been going with USB regularly, often and without issue when there's no card reader available.
So, finding a Firewire cable and setting the camera to be a Firewire device and hooking everything up I began the copy from camera to laptop. While slow -as expected- it was going and I told everyone to take a coffee break while it copied over.
About 400MBs into the copy there was a Finder Read/Write error, I didn't have permission for something or other and it konked out. I suspect it was something to do with the "LASTCLIP.TXT" file which is locked by default.
So I tried to unmount the camera with no response and ended up just power cycling it since it was completely unresponsive and the Finder on the laptop couldn't unmount it even after waiting 5+ mins.
Powering it back on I saw the dreaded "FORMAT ERROR!" in red on the screen.
Now this is a very rare error and unfortunately there's not much you can do about it on location. Some people have had luck with a few power cycles and mounts and unmounts, others have had luck with Disk Utility repairing it but I wasn't one of them. I'm reluctant to have the Mac do anything to the cards but we were desperate and the director said go ahead so I tried a few repairs with the Terminal and Disk Repair but nothing seemed to help.
We ended up calling and overnighting the card to Panasonic who was able to recover the footage in their labs. They copied the footage back to the same card of ours and shipped it back to us. Panasonic was amazing, fast and helpful.
So the bottom line solution for us, upon seeing FORMAT ERROR! was to just ship the card to Panasonic and have them recover the footage.
My new rules for loading footage from a P2 card when you have to use the camera as a reader is to:
1. Lock the card with the write protect switch before mounting it on the Mac.
2. NEVER use Firewire. USB only from now on.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
MacBook Pro 2011 Not Recognizing SanDisk Class 10 SD Cards
A few people are reporting that a Class 10 SanDisk SD Card won't be reliably recognized in a 2011 MacBook Pro.
What does seem to work as a temporary workaround is restarting the Mac with the card already inserted. But even then it's not recognized if you remove the card and then reinsert it or another similar card.
"I use a Sandisk SDHC Extreme Class 10 SD Card and have problems getting it to read through the inbuild SD card reader.
I tried the following:
Reformatting on Disk Utility
Reformatting on my Canon 450D
Restarting Laptop
Resetting PRAM
Resetting SMC
Repairing Disk Permissions
Repairing Disk
All of these did not solve my problem. I have a card reader which when plugged into the MBP, works fine and detects the card.
The Weird Part
I plugged the card into a friend's iMac and it detects it every time. And then right after I do that, I plug it into my MBP, and it detects the card, but the problem is once I eject it, and slot it back in, it fails to detect again! However if I try this method again (Slot to iMac, remove, slot back to MBP), it will fail the second time. "
Someone tried a card in MacBooks at an Apple store and:
"They had me EFFA back the machine, and provided me with a new one. I tested the new one right out of the box and it worked fine, but after Migration, it no longer worked. Restoring using the included disk back to factory specs DID NOT restore the ability to read the card.
In checking random machines at the apple store, only 1 on the entire floor recognized that a card was inserted, when I tried the Sandisk SDHC Extreme Pro 8GB 45MB/S card."
Apparently Apple and SanDisk are aware of the problem but if you use SD Cards for production or have them sent to you for editing it's a good idea to be aware of this issue. I've not seen it as I've been using an external USB card reader. Hopefully it'll be addressed soon with a software update.
What does seem to work as a temporary workaround is restarting the Mac with the card already inserted. But even then it's not recognized if you remove the card and then reinsert it or another similar card.
"I use a Sandisk SDHC Extreme Class 10 SD Card and have problems getting it to read through the inbuild SD card reader.
I tried the following:
Reformatting on Disk Utility
Reformatting on my Canon 450D
Restarting Laptop
Resetting PRAM
Resetting SMC
Repairing Disk Permissions
Repairing Disk
All of these did not solve my problem. I have a card reader which when plugged into the MBP, works fine and detects the card.
The Weird Part
I plugged the card into a friend's iMac and it detects it every time. And then right after I do that, I plug it into my MBP, and it detects the card, but the problem is once I eject it, and slot it back in, it fails to detect again! However if I try this method again (Slot to iMac, remove, slot back to MBP), it will fail the second time. "
Someone tried a card in MacBooks at an Apple store and:
"They had me EFFA back the machine, and provided me with a new one. I tested the new one right out of the box and it worked fine, but after Migration, it no longer worked. Restoring using the included disk back to factory specs DID NOT restore the ability to read the card.
In checking random machines at the apple store, only 1 on the entire floor recognized that a card was inserted, when I tried the Sandisk SDHC Extreme Pro 8GB 45MB/S card."
Apparently Apple and SanDisk are aware of the problem but if you use SD Cards for production or have them sent to you for editing it's a good idea to be aware of this issue. I've not seen it as I've been using an external USB card reader. Hopefully it'll be addressed soon with a software update.
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