FCP 5 RT sequences now have to be rendered in FCP 6?

Question

Hi:
We upgraded from Final Cut Studio 1 to FCS 2 a week ago to upgrade Final Cut Pro to 6.0.4 to be able to read XDCAM EX clips a client sent us. That all worked fine.
But I'm encountering problems when I open older projects and sequences. Our main focus is motion graphics, which we create in After Effects, and we often render to the Animation codec for best quality. After rendering a composition we'll often go back and tweak something, then render out just those few seconds and edit the revision into the overall animation in FCP. This always worked fine in FCP 5.0 and earlier. I'd make a sequence with the same settings as the rendered Quicktimes (usually 720x480, D1 pixels, field dominance-none, Animation codec) and drop those into the sequence with no problems.
Today, however, I opened up a project and a Sequence I'd created using the Animation codec, and it showed a solid red bar for the whole 7 minute animation (except for two tiny slivers of blue at the fade up and fade out.) The canvas says Unrendered when I try to play it. This same sequence played fine in FCP 5 ten days ago.
I'm not attempting to print this to tape or anything. I just want to edit the pieces together to view the whole animation realtime and output a complete Quicktime for compressing to a DVD or whatever.
As a test I made a new sequence from scratch (720x480, D1 pixels, field dominance-none, Animation codec) and dropped a clip (720x480, D1 pixels, field dominance-none, Animation codec) into it and got the same result; the clip had to be rendered. I then went ahead and rendered the clip. I opened the resulting clip from the Render folder in Quicktime player, and it identified the clip as 720x480, Apple Animation Codec. So FCP compressed the clip to the same size and format it already was.
Older sequences using the Photo JPEG codec behave as normal; the sequence plays real time with no rendering required.
Was there some change in FCP 6 that prevents me from playing these Animation codec Quicktimes realtime? I'm not going to be happy if a bunch of old sequences suddenly become unplayable.
Thanks.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

Answer 1

Well, that is weird, but I don't seem to have that problem. I made a new sequence in FCP 6.0.4 with the above settings, added NTSC bars and exported a self-contained movie. I brought that QT back into FCP and added it back to the timeline from which it was generated, and it doesn't require rendering for playback, displaying a dark grey bar.
As I said, my main problem seems to be opening FCP 5 projects in FCP 6, though there are some minor problems with sequences created from scratch in FCP 6. In FCP 6 I reassembled the simple edit I'd done in FCP 5 and added fades at the beginning and end, which had to be rendered; the rest of the sequence showed the dark grey bar. When I scrub the timeline it scrubs very smoothly except at the beginning and end where those rendered fades are. And then, even though those fades have been rendered, when my playback gets to that fadeout it stops and gives the "One or more frames were dropped during playback" error message. I've tried the renders on two different drives, both of which are plenty fast to handle the 20-30 MB/sec data rate.
Annoying.
Is it safe to upgrade to FCP 6.0.5?
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics