FCP X Trouble-shoot: Can’t Open Project

FCP X Trouble-shoot: Can’t Open Project

Problems with Final Cut Pro X project databases are starting to turn up in my email. So, I wanted to share the following report from Don Stafford.

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I had a very bad problem last night, and wanted to pass on to you and your followers/readers about how I recovered. I’m sure if it happened to me, it has happened (or will happen) to others.

Last night during the middle of an edit of a 30-min short film my MacPro locked up. Mouse would move, but could not click on anything. After waiting about 5 minutes hoping things would begin working (or at east clicking) again, I had no other option but to press the power button on the MacPro.

When FCP X restarted, it hung while attempting to load the project. After waiting for 10 minutes, I checked on “Force Quit” and it showed FCP X as not responding. So I forced quit it, did another restart of the MacPro, and tried again. Same result.

I pulled the backup of the fcpproject file, and tried it. Same result. (Unfortunately, later I realized that upon the 1st attempt to run FCP X after the lockup, it apparently trashed my backup file as well. (This is the one in the BACKUP folder under FCP Projects).

Using Event Manager, I selected another Event/Project just as a sanity check that FCP X was working, and it was isolated to the project I was working on, which proved me right. So I reselected the bad Event/Project to continue my research for a solution.

Googling, I found several people that said they had left FCP X running for “hours” – some successfully, some not. So I gave that a try (overnight).

This morning, FCP X loaded – but no project at all. I loaded in the saved copy of the fcpproject file – still no project. Now I was really sweating it as I have a Aug 2nd deadline on this.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner rather than Time Machine, and pulled a fcpproject file from there – still nothing. Now I am really nervous… I’ve got 2 weeks of work I can’t even see.

So, I had an idea. FCP X didn’t see any projects for this event, and was wanting me to create one. I went to Finder, and renamed the project to “xprojectx”. I restarted FCP X and created a new project with the same name as the old one. I dragged one clip to the timeline. I exited FCP X and the immediately restarted FCP X. The new event with the project of the single clip was there.

I exited FCP X again. Backto Finder. Renamed the new project just created to “newprojectnew”. Then renamed the old project back to its original name. I pulled the last fcpproject file from my Carbon Copy Cloner backup drive and placed it in the project. Restarted FCP X. WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It worked. I did lose about 2 1/2 hrs editing… but that sure beats 2 weeks.

As a precaution for future catastrophes such as this, I created a one-line shell script that will copy the current backup/fcpproject file (which is date/time stamped in the file name) to my Desktop. I am going to exit FCP X and run that periodically for a while. I know that is overkill, but better to be safe.

Hopefully, Apple will see the need for multiple saves in the Backup folder, rather than only a single one. Why would they delete the existing file anyway? It has a unique file name due the the date/time….

Sorry to be so long in this email, but it was a long process….

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Larry replies: Thanks, Don, for sending this in.

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