blocky shaped glitches in playback and render

so i'm having this pervasive problem wherin these kind of blocky visual glitches appear on playback and in rendered files from final cut. its happening in multiple projects and libraries. not in the original footage, and when i take a fcpxml into resolve it goes away. but its making fcpx unusable for outputting which is giving me a panic.

i'm on a new imac, maxed out. everything updated. help!

i've attached an example of the glitches i'm seeing, you can see near the singer's eye.

What is the original video codec and how are you importing into FCPX? Are you optimizing upon import or are you transcoding to something before importing, or importing native footage? What are your project settings in FCPX?

jak3fx wrote: ...these kind of blocky visual glitches appear on playback and in rendered files from final cut. its happening in multiple projects and libraries. not in the original footage, and when i take a fcpxml into resolve it goes away. but its making fcpx unusable for outputting which is giving me a panic...

It looks like some kind of effect. Can you turn off all effects on that clip, export and examine it?

If you create a test library, import that one original clip, don't do anything else but render and play it, does the blocky region appear then?

dgwvideo wrote: What is the original video codec and how are you importing into FCPX? Are you optimizing upon import or are you transcoding to something before importing, or importing native footage? What are your project settings in FCPX?

its happening in two different libraries. the one i screencapped is cinemaDNG from a black magic pocket camera transcoded in resolve to prores4444. i have a similar library where the cinemaDNGs were transcoded to 422 from resolve. and the other library i am working on is mostly Alexa prores4444 native footage.

the project is set to render in 4444 for those projects and 422 for the 422 one.

joema wrote:

jak3fx wrote: ...these kind of blocky visual glitches appear on playback and in rendered files from final cut. its happening in multiple projects and libraries. not in the original footage, and when i take a fcpxml into resolve it goes away. but its making fcpx unusable for outputting which is giving me a panic...

It looks like some kind of effect. Can you turn off all effects on that clip, export and examine it?

If you create a test library, import that one original clip, don't do anything else but render and play it, does the blocky region appear then?

I have all effects turned off. I even did a fresh install of FCPX which wiped out some of my effects. Though some are still installed. Is it possible for an installed effect I am not using to cause this problem?

I will try the test library thing. thanks!

jak3fx wrote: ...I have all effects turned off...Though some are still installed. Is it possible for an installed effect I am not using to cause this problem?..
I will try the test library thing. thanks!

It is unlikely (though not impossible, since some are loaded at FCPX launch) an installed but unused effect would cause this. They would not be my first suspect.

So your BlackMagic cinemaDNG material is transcoded by Resolve to ProRes 4444 or 422 then imported into FCPX and the blocky glitches immediately appear if played within FCPX? And they not appear if played externally in Quicktime or VLC? And the same artifacts appear if exported from FCPX to 4444 or 422? If you export to H264 does it still happen? Just curious.

Unfortunately I don't have any first hand experience with Black Magic or Alexa workflow with FCPX. Each conversion pathway can present unique issues, which is why it's good to test everything well in advance. You normally would expect it would all just work, but unfortunately digital video is full of surprises. There are 3rd party cinemaDNG to ProRes converters but I don't have any experience with them: www.cinemartin.com/cinec/cinemadng-to-prores-converter/

Since your material is being processed initially by Resolve it would be interesting to see if a different editor would show similar issues if imported. I think Premiere CC can import ProRes 422.

If simple testing doesn't immediately point to some solution, your best bet is talking to somebody who uses that same workflow with FCPX. If nobody responds here you could try Creative Cow, DVXUser.com, nofilmschool.com/boards , or make local inquiries if your area has a film production group.

yes all correct.

the thing is, i've used this workflow a million times.

things that have changed: 1) upgrade from macbookpro to new imac 2)upgraded memory in imac 3) used new plugins in FCPX

i have a feeling its one of those but can't figure out which.

Of the changes you list, most likely the new plugins would be the best suspect. If they are plugins through FXFactory, you can run that app and disable them temporarily through the FX Factory preferences. Once there, you can also clean up Motion templates (also an option in the preferences) to see if that helps. If you did not purchase them through FXFactory, then if you have Digital Rebellion's Pro Maintenance tools, you can use that to disable any plugins on your system. Depending on how may you have, this could be an easy thing to do, or a bit more daunting.

If neither of the above options make sense to you, there are some things you can try in FCPX.
1. Select the problem library, and from the top menu, choose to "Delete generated library files". Deleting ALL render files sometimes corrects corruption that can occur in your projects. You'll just need to re-render anything if you want to see full quality smooth playback, but even this isn't necessary. I wouldn't recommend to render your timeline after deleting the generated files until you sort out the glitches you see in those clips.
2. If the above doesn't help, restart FCPX while holding down the OPTION and COMMAND keys. This will delete FCPX preferences which you can easily reset once back in FCPX (There are only a few options in FCPX preferences).

Let us know if any this helps, otherwise Joemas's advice to seek assistance from someone using a similar workflow is probably going to be your best bet.

so i ran the rember memory test over night and on the 4th loop came up with an "address test failed" error.

at the end of today i'm going to remove the 32 gigs of ram that I bought from OWC and see if that fixes the problem (assuming i can get my libraries to load with only 8 gigs installed haha).

What RAM test did you run, specifically?

i used rember...evidently its just a GUI for the built in command line program memtest

I've had a similar artifacts display on a computer with RAM related issues, but they were everywhere on the screen, and the computer would crash once it reached a certain percentage of the RAM used.

Did you make sure the RAM was properly seated and there was no dust on the contacts?

yeah i've noticed them popping up on my safari windows now, particularly after heavy use in FCP or Resolve.

i havent checked the connection, but plan on removing them tonight to see if the problem goes away without them in.

i have 40 gigs of memory, so i may simply not be using up enough of it to crash the computer?

If it isn't the RAM's connection, you probably have either bad/incompatible RAM, a bad logic board, or a bad graphics card.

considering that you just changed the RAM, that's probably what it is, but it could also be a logic board issue that shows up when more that a certain amount or RAM is in use.


edit; 8GB of RAM is plenty for basic HD video editing, so your libraries should open just fine.

jak3fx wrote: ...i have 40 gigs of memory, so i may simply not be using up enough of it to crash the computer?

Actually I'm amazed it has not crashed. All it takes is one bit to be flipped in any executed instruction, which will usually cause an instruction or reference fault, terminating the app or causing an OS panic. However large portions of memory are data not instructions, and some of those can be altered and only cause odd behavior like you see.

Both memory and on-disk data structures have all kinds of pointers, bitmaps, binary trees, etc. If any of those are altered then later referenced it could cause a crash, or silent data corruption which is even worse.

You were fortunate that the memory diagnostics found this; such problems can be so transient that diagnostics never find them.

iMacs do not have ECC memory so there is no runtime detection of this. Mac Pros do have ECC memory: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory

well i just popped out the OWC memory. booted up FCP, deleted all render files.

thought it was good at first, and then the artifacts started showing again.

so now i'm depressed as hell and at a loss.

could it be graphics card? anyone know how to test that?

tho when i put the OWC memory back in, the artifacts are definitely worse.

so bizarre

jak3fx wrote: ...
so now i'm depressed as hell and at a loss...could it be graphics card? anyone know how to test that?

Yes this is possible however the memory test you ran tested only system RAM and found a problem. It's not a good situation and I empathize with you. I assume you don't have AppleCare on this machine?

Have you tried Apple Diagnostics? macs.about.com/od/Troubleshooting/fl/Usi...ur-Macs-Hardware.htm

Will Apple Diagnostics finds a problem when the OWC RAM is inserted? You'll have to try. I don't know if Apple Diagnostics tests GPU VRAM, but maybe?

If the problem happens with OWC RAM removed this implies there's a persistent problem separate from that, such as GPU VRAM, bus problem or something else.

In my case all my machines are under AppleCare. If this happened to me I'd plug my Thunderbolt RAID into my MacBook Pro, continue as best possible and have Apple repair or replace the iMac.

I know this is very frustrating but I've encountered similar problems over the years with all brands and manufacturers. It is extremely stressful when this happens close to a delivery deadline.

no of course i have apple care. its brand new machine. i'm mailing the memory back to OWC today, then taking the computer in to the apple store. fingers crossed.