Proxy transcode hanging

Hey guys,
I'm wondering if anyone has had odd problems when trying to transcode proxies after ingesting. That is, not during the import process, but some time later.

It seems to work fine if I select a couple dozen clips at a time and transcode, but when I select many more than that (say, 100 clips), it will work for a bit and then hang the system randomly in the middle of one of the clips. Then, it becomes a process of force-quitting and then reselecting the clips not done yet and transcoding those. Basically, you have to babysit the process. Trashing preferences and rebooting doesn't fix the problem. For this project, it's a mixture of c300 and 5D footage, but I'm not sure it's related to the codec. I've had this issue with Red proxy transcodes also.

I would bypass this process and use compressor to create proxies, but the problem is that FCPX needs to "know" that it created a proxy for a particular clip (it marks it that way in an event's database), and the only way to do that is to tell it to transcode. Is there a way to make it use proxies without telling it to transcode?

Hey haysoos,

As long as you make sure that the proxies have exactly the same name as the original media and that you create them at exactly 50% or 25% of the resolution of the original media (to ensure correct pixel aspect ratio) you will be fine. Create the proxies in Compressor an drop them in the Transcoded Media > Proxy media folder of the Library and FCP X will recognize them.

Andreas has even created a very useful utility for this:
www.spherico.com/filmtools/X-Files/X-Proxy/X-Proxy.dmg

You can read more about it here:

www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...-proxy-files-in-fcpx

- Ronny

Thanks, Ronny! I think I did see something about this a while back, but does it actually tweak the event to recognize the proxy files? Meaning, you don't even have to go into FCPX and tell it to transcode, you can just put them in there? I ask because I could have sworn we tried to do this manually once, but FCPX didn't "know" that the proxies were made even though we put them in the right place with the right filename.

That must have been prior to 10.0.9.

Now you just drop the externally created proxies in the correct folder and FCP X magically links them to the original media And seeing how X is evolving I think the proxy workflow will improve even more in the near future.

- Ronny

I wonder if Andreas can chime in here, since I can't seem to get X-Proxy to work. Upon loading it, there's an error message: "can't get real path for source ... /ProRes 422 proxy.setting" which seems to be a missing. When I show package contents, there does seem to be something there name "ProRes 422 proxy," but I'm not sure it's the setting file. I'm attaching the error message.