Re: Compression Codec Not Found

All of a sudden lately as I am editing my 5d Mark II footage using the ProRes LT codec, when I try to export a self contained movie FCP (newst version) tells me "codec not found. You may be using a compression type without the corresponding hardware card."

I used to be able to do this fine. When I read online I should trash my prefs I did that, and of course lost all my favorites too. Any way I can stop getting this error and also try and get my favorites back?

Any help is appreciated

Yes I transcoded all the footage back then with Compressor and these days I use Mpeg Streamclip

If I have old projects on a backup raid or external drive would I be able to get my favorites back? How do I transfer them over?

Did you trash your FCP as described in the article I attached?

"Yes I transcoded all the footage back then with Compressor, and these days I use Mpeg Streamclip".

I need to know if you transcoded to ProRes before you brought the video into FCP and I don't understand why you would be using MPEG Streamclip?

Yoiu need to tell us what you did, step by step.

--ken

Hi Ken,

Yes I trashed the preferences just like you said in the article. I believe that is the same way Apple explained it on their site and I followed that. Seems like the same.

I convert the files into prores 422 (LT) prior to bringing into FCP. But what I found was that I could only compress about 20 or so in a batch without Compressor quitting on me. Even this way I had to wait almost a few minutes before Compressor would even allow me to change the destination, etc. It was very frustrating when you have hundreds of clips that need encoding.

Is that normal for compressor to do that? Seems like a huge bug to me. It's not like my Mac Pro new 8 core with 16GBs of Ram should have that issue.....

I found that Mpeg Streamclip was faster, allowed me to grab hundreds of clips and batch process them with no lag time whatsoever. That is excellent! Why is it so much better than Compressor? Any reason I should not use Mpeg Streamclip?

At any rate, Final Cut Pro is not letting me export my final movies to self contained ProRes master files that I can drop into DVD studio pro or convert to other formats for example. I also like to use these self contained movies to drop into toast for BluRay burning since I have not found a way to burn a BluRay in Final Cut that has multiple videos. Looks to me you can only get a video that is all on one timeline onto a BluRay.

As an awful workaround I am exporting these ProRes files as HDV 30P files and taking a quality hit but at least I can get the files delivered.

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the tips to speed up compressor. Will this also alleviate the lag time I see when I simply drag the clips into compressor to put them in the queue to be compressed? It's like Compressor temporarily "crashes" for a bit and then I can drag the ProRes setting on the clips, then another lag, then finally I can choose destination and then the compressing actually starts. And this only works for 20 clips at a time as I mentioned.

I am using Final Cut 7.0.2 on a new 2 x 2.6 GHz Quad Core Xeon MacPro 16GBs of Ram, 3TB RAID "0". Snow Leopard.

For this particular project I did encode with compressor but now am doing all future projects with Mpeg Streamclip.

Robert,

I did go into the sequence settings as you suggested and changed the "Video Processing" to "Always Render in RGB" and I finally was able to export the video as a self contained ProRes movie. Is that what was the whole problem the entire time? Does that effect the quality or create any other issues?

The footage originates from the Canon 5D Mark II Camera in H.264 Codec and I use either Compressor or Mpeg to change it to ProRes (LT) for editing. I am not sure of the settings like RGB or YUV. This was the first time I ever even looked at the "Video Processing" settings.

My computer does rock the house at most tasks and I do always grab the clips and bring them to compressor the way you showed Ken. Oh well I guess Mpeg Streamclip is fine for me since it is working without hiccup. And using Roberts method of choosing a different Video Preocssing Setting did at least allow me to produce a self contained ProRes movie.

Wish I would have know that before Apple told me to trash all my preferences and I lost all my favorites!