I've Got 99 Problems...

Question

Hey All,
I've got so many issues going on with Final Cut Pro and, one project in particular, that I don't even know where to begin. Running the latest versions of everything, including the Apple Pro Application update from yesterday (10.21.05). All right, I guess I'll begin with the problem I know isn't related to the others:
Final Cut Pro has a tendency to hang on the load screen for a good minute or more when launching it. Using FCP Rescue 5 seems to help, but it doesn't take more than a week for this issue to rear it's ugly head again. My scratch disk is set to a Network drive, which is a 3-drive RAID we use over Gigabit Ethernet. Anyhow, that's the least of my problems.
Last week, one of the drives in our server's RAID died. We lost everything. Thankfully, we use the wonderful Deja-Vu to do a nightly backup of our project files every night; what doesn't get backed up is our Capture Scratch, since it's all timecode based and can presumably be recaptured without issue. Well, lo and behold we're having PLENTY of issues recapturing everything successfully.
- I've got more than a handful of clips who after being captured, Final Cut claims "an unknown error occurred while trying to reconnect clip (clip name) to the newly captured media. Try recapturing this clip to resolve this problem". Recapturing isn't helping.
- I've got clips who captured successfully, but their timing in the sequence is off.
- I've got clips that captured, are in the capture scratch, but Final Cut refuses to display them in the sequence; I can re-link them all I want but they never show up.
- I've got clips that, once captured, Final Cut claims the media start and stop points aren't the same. Telling Final Cut to link them anyway and looking at the clip shows that the clip is indeed shorter than it was when captured the first time.
- When doing a batch capture, Final Cut claims that clip names are already in use, and I should use a different name (even though it's a lie). When presented with the box to insert a different name, the name field is blank (when this works properly, the current name of the clip is in the field so you know what clip you're actually renaming). If I capture these confused clips one at a time so I know what clip it is I'm renaming, I'm able to put in the same name without issue. However, they don't relink to the media in the timeline properly, because Final Cut thinks the clips are named, (blank) regardless of what I name them.
- I've got clips who think their name is G5 (the name of my system's system hard drive).
- I've got clips who capture, and then immediately recapture.
- I've got clips who link up fine at one point in the sequence, but at a later point using a later piece of the clip, it won't link.
Now, this is an hour long sequence, and MOST of the clips (like 90%) recaptured without issue. But it's figuring out what to do with the rest of the clips that's killing me. I realize at some point it would be easier just to re-log, re-capture, and re-edit the problem clips into the sequence, but it would be nice to know how to solve these issues, and figure out how to prevent them from happening again.
All media was shot using the DVX100a, 24p Advanced mode, 16x9. It was captured using DV NTSC with advanced pulldown removal, and checked as Anamorphic. All footage was logged and captured using a Sony DSR 250. The footage spans over seven tapes, and thus far I can't find any kind of pattern. Issues with capturing are not limited to one system - we've tried recapturing on multiple Final Cut workstations, having the same frustrating results.
That's everything I know thus far.

Answer 1

Sorry that I haven't been really clear about our Ethernet and network usage: We are NOT capturing over ethernet. We have a Dual 1Ghz Powermac with a three disc internal RAID that we use as a file server. All of our project files are kept there, and all of our capturing and print to tape is done there. Our other workstations mount that RAID over our Gigabit Ethernet network and utilize the project files and media from it. This is to assure all of our files are stored in one location, that we don't have multiple copies of files laying around, and that everyone has access to everything (at max, we have three workstations going at once). So there's no capturing going on over our network. We've been doing this successfully for three years, and we've had no issues recapturing projects before.
Now, as an update, it appears our only option is to re-edit those segments which are messed up, which is generally only the last clips of a scene. The longer a clip, the more likely it is to have these issues. But now I have more problems. An entire scene of this project was moved into Motion, keyed, and composited. All of those clips that were imbedded into the Motion project are now 20 frames later than they should be. Oddly, the original edits are correct in Final Cut (I left them in the timeline and layed my Motion project over top of them to assure the original edits would still be in tact). I presume this is because clips in the FInal Cut timeline are placed via timecode, while clips in Motion are placed based on the actual physical start point of the media file. Talk about a mess. Whether that 20 frames is consistent, I am not yet sure, but I'll report back.
It's obvious that all of our footage was captured improperly originally, and that we edited with off-clips, so now that we've recaptured our clips no longer match what we originally used. Perhaps the eminent drive failure in the Dual 1Ghz Powermac messed with the 24p Advanced Pulldown Removal, throwing off the start/stop points of the media, or perhaps it was just dragging it's feet on writing the ends of the files, thus making them longer than they should have been. Now that they've been recaptured on a hard drive that isn't dying, they are shorter than the clips we used to edit.
I'd REALLY like to know for sure what component is responsible for this disaster, so that we can smash it to pieces and leave it for dead in a field, vowing to never use it again.