TOPIC:

Possibly dumb question time here, and I’m a little embarrassed, but I have to ask… with thanks in advance, I’ve had a few issues of late and these forums have been super helpful.

I’ve only just realised that in the current project I’m working on, I am using a range of video files with *the
same name*. My camera outputs video files as C000X, so “C0001” is the name of the first video file for each of the different subjects I have shot. Peter’s first bit is “C0001”. Jamie’s first bit is “C0001”.etc

Incredibly (to my usually organised mind) – I have not renamed any of these files to make them unique to each subject or component shot. I’ve just been importing them and running with them as they are.

These are associated audio files, which I have cut and saved to which line up exactly with the audio component of each C000X video file. Which you’ll see an example of in the attached images.

My process thus far has been to takee ach subject interview – which usually spans C0001 – C0005 – and import those files and their associated audio components into a single timeline and then edit out the material I don’t want to use. I am then left with a series of segments. Each segment is grouped. Eg C000X + associated separately recorded audio files. I give each group a unique name which helps me remember what the context of that grouped segment is, for later reference as I piece this whole feature together.

Each subject has their own project called “[subject name] edits” which is effectively a bank of the bits I want to
draw from later. As attached, you’ll see a couple of screenshots demonstrating this process.

What’s happened is that with a couple of these ”edit” projects which contain grouped selections, within the timeline of these projects, the C000X video component of the timeline suddenly references a completely different video file (of the same C000X name). The waveform of the audio component of the C000X file remains correct, but playback shows the incorrect C000X video and produces the incorrect audio (it plays the audio of the C000X video file which is the incorrect one).

To better explain, just imagine the video component shown in each screen shot being replaced with a different visual. Peter here for example, or “C0001”, is replaced by landscape scenery from another video file… which is also from a source file named C0001.

Note that I used the “show in browser” function within the ‘glitch’ projects to identify the C000X video as it
appeared there, and what came up in the browser was the incorrect C000X video (eg the scenery, not Peter the interview subject) and the correct C000X video did not come up in the browser at all. Very odd.

What a mess! Fortunately I have been backing up religiously and managed to get everything back to how it was by going into an archive of this library, in which the projects as last saved had not swapped out the correct C000X video for the incorrect one. I deleted the problem projects and replaced them with the archived ones and so far they have been fine again.

Now, of course, I’m paranoid about having different video files with the same name being mixed up by FCPX in future, but I’ve learned it is not a simple process of renaming the source file. Which I’ve tried. FCPX still load it correctly but its original C000X name remains. When I rename the asset within my clip browser, it remains under its original C000X name in my timeline. There are probably about 300 grouped C000X selections in my “edit” projects, so the idea of individually renaming everything feels a little daunting and is probably not the way to address this, anyway.

*Is* there a way to address this? ie to rename all of my source C000X video files with unique names, and tell FCPX to update the clips as they appear within browser and timelines?

Yes, yes, yes, I know that obviously best practice will be to not have duplicate file names, ever, but I’ve only realised this now, after the weird substitution glitch as described came up. I now have about 12 projects which are edits of individual interviews and it's not feasible to start all over again.

Any possible solutions to how to update each project (and the library) with unique file names for each C000X file would be appreciated. Or maybe it's not possible to do this at all....

FCPX 10.6.5
Monterey 12.6.1
2019 Imac Pro

PS I have no idea why each attachment is coming up twice... I tried deleting and reattaching but this is what happened. Sorry for any confusion, but there's only supposed to be one of each

One thing you might try is to copy each persons media from the card to a folder named person 1, person 2, person 3 etc. on the computer. Then import into FCP with leave files in place checked. That way the symbolic links to the media will not get confused by the duplicate file names because the paths are different.

One thing you might try isto copy each persons media from the card to a folder named person 1, person 2,
person 3 etc. on the computer. Then import into FCP with leave files in place
checked. That way the symbolic links to the media will not get confused by the
duplicate file names because the paths are different.

The files have already been transferred from SD card to my dedicated external SSD for this feature, and are stored in separate folders for each subject. ‘Filesleft in place’ is my standard setup. So each of these files are already stored in separate, subject specific folders. Their pathways are all completely unique. I wouldn’t ever be allowed tokeep them in the same folder, anyway, as the OS requires unique file names for all files within the same location.

It used to be that you could rename a file in the browser (FCP7) and have that name transferred to the original media in Finder. Had really hoped it would've been added by now, but...

To really fix it, you'll need to rename the individual files in the FCP browser and separately in the Finder, while checking constantly that you're linking to the actual original. And those names won't propagate to the timelines, but timeline instances should retain their links to the newly renamed browser instances.

I just had a quick look through the documentation for CommandPost, but didn't see any reference to renaming. Maybe could be tweaked?

Prior to ingest, I'll batch rename everything (I wrote a few custom applescripts for this), usually prepending the job number, client initials, camera angle, and keeping the 'C0001' etc. In cases where the media files don't have a timecode track but do have sidecar XML metadata, I use EditReady to re-wrap those, and batch rename durning that process.

Slaughter wrote:

...I am using a range of video files with *the
same name*. My camera outputs video files as C000X, so “C0001” is the name of the first video file for each of the different subjects I have shot... the C000X video component of the timeline suddenly references a completely different video file (of the same C000X name)...

This is a difficult situation. If it's any consolation, it's not all your fault. The urgent need to have globally unique filenames before importing to FCP is not well documented. It is not mentioned in the FCP User's Guide, and receives fleeting (if any) mention in FCP tutorials. In reality, it's one of the top 10 things you should do.

FCP User's Guide: help.apple.com/pdf/final-cut-pro/en_US/f...t-pro-user-guide.pdf

By contrast the FCP 7 User's Guide says "Proper filenaming is one of the most critical aspects of media and project management." I guess you could say that's a synopsis of the difference between then and now. prohelp.apple.com/finalcutpro_help-r01/E...apter=3%26section=15

Sony also bears some blame, because until around the A7SIII, there was no configurable option on their mirrorless camera for user-defined video filenames or an auto-incrementing numeric field.

The past few years I have made 63 posts on various FCP forums about the importance of having unique media filenames, and 28 such posts on this forum alone. It's hard to believe, but on some forums people have argued strenuously against that. Where are those people now? You don't see any of them here trying to help you.

Yet -- even IF you have many duplicate filenames, it normally only causes an FCP problem in a few specific cases, e.g, you are loading XML, or you have media on an ExFAT partition, or you have dragged/dropped clips or projects from one FCP library to another, or you copied the media to a disk with a different name, or you renamed a disk or you tried to relink on that disk. Did you do any of those things?

This is important because it's likely the best way forward is accept the current situation where you have recovered from the problem, do not repeat whatever action caused it, and on new projects in the future use globally unique filenames.

There is no easy way to rename files in FCP that automatically cascades from disk filename to clip filename in the Browser to clip filename in each timeline. The filename in the Browser and filename in each project are in separate SQLite databases. It is theoretically possible to add a FCP feature that does that, but it's not listed on the "Top 100" FCP feature requests, and it wasn't mentioned in the letter from post-production pros to Tim Cook.

Do you recall what action preceded the problem? Was it any of the above, or anything else you can remember?

If FCP crashed due to insufficient disk space, that could be a factor. The SQLite database uses write-ahead logging and should normally be transactionally secure, but if the system runs out of disk space, almost anything is possible.

Thanks so much for those informative and helpful responses.

@joema

it normally only causes an FCP problem in a few
specific cases, e.g, you are loading XML, or you have media on an ExFAT
partition, or you have dragged/dropped clips or projects from one FCP library
to another, or you copied the media to a disk with a different name, or you
renamed a disk or you tried to relink on that disk. Did you do any of those
things?

Yes. I moved the entire library onto a new SSD with a different name and did some file pathway reorganising. There was also one crash instance at the point of loading the library either just before or just after this (but either
way both things described took place after I backed up the library first – phew! Back up, back up, back up, people. Time well spent)

Given this, should I follow this advice:

@dmetz

To really fix it, you'llneed to rename the individual files in the FCP browser and separately in the
Finder, while checking constantly that you're linking to the actual original.
And those names won't propagate to the timelines, but timeline instances should
retain their links to the newly renamed browser instances.

Or is there a risk of causing new problems if I do this?

For all new files coming into the project, I will give all files unique names. I normally do – for this endeavour, for some reason it slipped my mind. Glad I’m picking it up now at this early stage of the edit.

Slaughter wrote:

....I moved the entire library onto a new SSD with a different name and did some file pathway reorganising...

That is almost certainly what caused it. If the folder structure on the new drive stayed the same, it wouldn't have happened, or if the filenames were unique it wouldn't have happened. Normally FCP is quite resilient to moving files and folders within a single disk volume, in fact better than any other NLE.

You can normally rename every media file (even using duplicate names), move each file to a different folder on *that* volume, rename every folder, go inside the library and delete the symlinks pointing those files, and FCP will still find them using inode lookup.

However in a single operation if you: (1) Relocate media files and folders (2) Change the volume name or do that on a different drive, while (3) The media contains duplicate filenames, then bad things can happen. In that case *you* may know a certain C0001.mp4 file is in a certain timeline, but the pathname to the file has been altered, so FCP has no way of telling that C0001.mp4 file from the others. It can't use inode lookup because the drive was changed and that only works within a single volume.

Slaughter wrote:

Given this, should I follow this advice:

@dmetz

To really fix it, you'llneed to rename the individual files in the FCP browser and separately in the
Finder, while checking constantly that you're linking to the actual original.
And those names won't propagate to the timelines, but timeline instances should
retain their links to the newly renamed browser instances.

Or is there a risk of causing new problems if I do this?

I think dmetz is correct. That will probably work.

Another possibility: if you have any record of the former folder structure via Time Machine or anything else, you could put everything back in the original structure (just temporarily) and it might relink. Once it relinks you would not need to rename files (for this project). Also if it relinks successfully, that restores the inode lookup feature so thereafter you could re-org the folder structure and it would keep working.

If you have a library backup from before you did the reorg, you can use the 3rd-party tool Final Cut Library Manager to export a .csv of the pathname and filename of each file in that library. That might enable you to put everything back to the previous structure but on the new drive. You will have to evaluate whether that or what dmetz mentioned are best in your case.

www.arcticwhiteness.com/finalcutlibrarymanager/

Thaaaaaaaaaanks for this!

To really fix it, you'llneed to rename the individual files in the FCP browser and separately in the
Finder, while checking constantly that you're linking to the actual original.
And those names won't propagate to the timelines, but timeline instances should
retain their links to the newly renamed browser instances.

This is causing strife...
I completed this process for one of the events in my (working) backup library. In that library, nothing goes wrong after I've done this renaming.
I've deleted render / proxy media from both libraries for a nice, clean slate.
I move the media-renamed event from the backup library to my new library, and FCPX is ... well....freaking out.

Every clip in the timeline comes up with "missing LUT" (what the?). A sea of red errors in the timeline.

I use the "find in browser" function and the browser identifies the missing clip correctly - renamed as above - but I can't use the 'reveal in finder' function as FCPX thinks it's missing. So I use the "relink media" function, and when the missing media list comes up, *a list of clips with the unedited names comes up* despite the fact they literally don't exist anymore under those file names. So I can't relink. That list contains eg "C0001", "C0002" but those files now exist on my drive as "SYD 2023 C0001" etc. Confoundingly, that's also how they appear in the browser.

The "relink files" list is apparently stuck back in time to when those files had not yet been renamed, whilst the FCPX browser has retained the new names. Appears that whilst one component of FCPX correctly retains file renaming, another component does not.... which seems to be a recipe for problems in my situation...

This "Missing LUT" thing is weird as well.

Any ideas?

To illustrate, see atached.
1. From the event in the backup library - all good
2. From the event as it appears after copying to the new library - freaking out
3. The relink files list showing filenames which don't exist anymore and therefore can't be found, even though the file names *do* appear in the browser *and* on the hard drive.
4. the files as they appear in the hard drive.

I am considering backing up the back-up library and using it as a dedicated library just for this one event - but I need it on a different drive, it's useless for me in its backup location. I will just have to try doing this > moving this event-specific library to where I want it > hope that it works properly as a library on a new drive but technically not a copy of a library. As *copying* the event to a new library seems to be a real problem. Once I get a chance to do that I'll report back.

Ok, so that was a success.
I copied by backup library (the one which has saved me a couple of times through this process of dealing with C000X files being swapped for incorrect files subsequent to the library going to a new drive).
I went into the backup library and deleted everything but the event in question, so it's a dedicated mini-library just for this event (ie the event as above where file renaming went very wrong as soon as I tried to use that event after copying it into the new library which is on a new drive). I then copied this new mini-library to the drive I want to use it on (which handily is also the drive which contains its source files) and it's all working fine, with the renamed files in browser / harddrive causing no probs.

Whatever happens from here, I'm just going to keep on maintaining backups obsessively which should keep me safe at baseline...

The only niggle with this one right now is that I have the delightful yellow triangle of death on my event folder icon despite there being zero missing files, zero tell tale red clips, zero missing effects, zero files needing relinking, and browser set to view all. I've deleted and re-deleted render files, prefs, proxy media. There seems to be no way to (functionally) ask FCPX "why are you showing me a yellow exclamation point" ie where is the "show all problem files" or "show all things causing exclamation points" function? Kind of frustrating that FCPX will only say "uh-oh" but you then have to use sorcery to try and understand if the "uh-oh" is reality based or just a glitch, so you're left never being 100% sure. I tried creating a new event and copying the event in question over to it. So far, so good. As soon as I copied over the assets for that event, boom, death triangle. I've updated the applicable thread on this - and on review of that thread it appears that for some folks this is just a thing that FCPX decides to do sometimes along with randomizing clip size and scroll position in the browser despite a saved workspace + deleted prefs etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But I guess that's all inevitable with the range of configurations of computer / OS / workflow chain that are out there...

Slaughter wrote:

...the delightful yellow triangle of death on my event folder icon despite there being zero missing files, zero tell tale red clips, zero missing effects, zero files needing relinking, and browser set to view all....

I will try to write a utility that finds the cause of the yellow triangle. There formerly was such a utility called X-FX Handler but it's no longer compatible with current versions of MacOS.

joema wrote:

I will try to write a utility that finds the cause of the yellow triangle. There formerly was such a utility called X-FX Handler but it's no longer compatible with current versions of MacOS.

It seems that spherico.com is no longer active. That would imply that Andreas Kiel is no longer working on his wonderful tools, or maybe something worse (which would be very unfortunate)...

@jeoma - another fun glitch, rather than start a new thread, figured I'd post it here. Have searched for this one but no luck. Project thumbnails are all black in the browser, except for the one I'm working on. I've tried trashing the thumbnails folder + prefs + restarting and all the usual jazz. Have deleted render files and cache. Has been a problem for a while now. I have upgraded Monterey to 12.6.6 (latest), made no difference. Any ideas?

Between this and the endless browser garbage (triangles of doom, all my clip view settings being reset every time I open FCPX) that are happening, I'm really trying not to get my hopes up that anything will change in the next FCPX update....

Slaughter wrote:

...Project thumbnails are all black in the browser, except for the one I'm working on. I've tried trashing the thumbnails folder + prefs + restarting and all the usual jazz. Have deleted render files and cache. Has been a problem for a while now...

I've seen this occasionally, but I've never before investigated it. I can easily reproduce it with a single clip in a new project, but the project thumbnail fills in whenever I click on almost anything in the library sidebar. So I'm not sure if the mechanism is the same as what you're experiencing. I'm using FCP 10.6.6 on Ventura 13.4 on an M1 Ultra Mac Studio, and various MP4 files.

An initial examination indicates the simple case I can reproduce is not related to the thumbnail cache in the library in /EventName/Render Files/Thumbnail Media. I can add a clip to a new project, and the project thumbnail will remain black. If I click on a few things or switch several times between filmstrip view and detail view, it will fill in. Comparing the before/after binary state of the library shows it did no library operations when that happened. So it is apparently an in-memory state change.

When the project thumbnail fills in, this are the sequence of FCP calls. the 'switchDisplayViews' method is when switch back from list view to filmstrip view. It checks to restore the previous filmstrip view selection, then calls the 'reloadData' method. That call may be what fills in the project thumbnail.

-[FFOrganizerFilmstripModule switchDisplayViews:]
-[FFOrganizerFilmstripViewController matchSelectionToPreviousModeSelection:]
-[FFOrganizerFilmstripView activeSelectionDidChange]
-[FFOrganizerFilmstripView reloadData]

It's possible upon initially adding the clip to the project, there is a code path which fails to populate the thumbnail.

The questions in your more complex case are: is the same thing happening, and why is it so persistent?

Try toggling several times between filmstrip view and detail view and see if that affects it. In my simple case that would make the project thumbnails in filmstrip view fill in. The shortcut key is OPT+CMD+2.

Try toggling several times between filmstrip view and detail view and see if that affects it. In my simple case that would make the project thumbnails in filmstrip view fill in. The shortcut key is OPT+CMD+2.

Makes no difference...