Can't relink clips in Final Cut Pro

Question

Level 1

16 points

Can't relink clips in Final Cut Pro

Hi,

my client wants me to update an old project from 2016 and I'm having trouble with relinking the original clips.

The project was shot on two cameras and one of them was 4K. In that time I was asked for an HD delivery and my Mac wasn't so powerful to edit 4K smoothly, so I had reencoded the 4K clips to HD. When I archived the project, I deleted the HD files and kept the 4K. Now the files are shown as missing, although the 4K files are available and have the same name. Final Cut keeps telling that it doesn't have the same properties (number of audio channels or media lenght, etc.) as the clip that was originally used. So, I tried relinking the original 4K files are they are not accepted, co I tried reencoding to ProRes 4K, ProRes HD and other formats and even that didn't work. So I'm stuck. Is there any was to force-relink the files?

Thanks!

Posted on Nov 8, 2023 02:10 AM

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Answer 1

W. Raider

Level 3

797 points

Nov 8, 2023 08:06 AM in response to Hirapuri

As far as FCP is concerned it is technically a different file so it won't relink it.

I've dealt with something like this before when making changes to a very old ("classic" FCP) project and bringing it into FCPX. I never could get one file to relink, after trying everything I could think of even editing an XML file, and in the end just had to re-edit one scene manually.

It wasn't quite the same as your project though, this was an old Quicktime Reference File and apparently new FCP doesn't understand them while old FCP did. So I had to export a prores file in old FCP, then use that in new FCP but, since it wasn't the same file that was originally used, I had to manually re-edit that scene.

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Answer 2

terryb

Level 4

3,112 points

Nov 8, 2023 10:20 AM in response to Hirapuri

Do you have a way to determine what the audio properties were in your originally re-encoded 4K->HD clips? FCP can be very finicky about audio when relinking. If you can re-encode to match the number of audio channels from your original re-encode, FCP might relink.

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Answer 3

Hirapuri Author

Level 1

16 points

Nov 8, 2023 01:31 PM in response to terryb

I already tried reencoding with stereo, mono and dual channel audio in ProRes and XDCAM (as I don't know which format it was). When I click on the missing clip in FCP, it shows mono audio, but even encoding to mono didn't help unfortunatelly ... :(

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Answer 4

terryb

Level 4

3,112 points

Nov 8, 2023 04:01 PM in response to BenB

I agree Ben but it sounds like these 4K files were used to create mono HD versions and that's what was used to edit. If the duration, frame rate and audio channels are the same, I'd think FCP would allow a relink.

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Answer 5

BenB

Level 6

13,040 points

Nov 9, 2023 04:27 AM in response to terryb

Since the days of legacy FCP to today, this has been an issue. FCP won't recognize them just by that. Duration has to be exactly the same, creation dates, etc. Relinking in FCP has always been problematic. My suspicion was FCPX was always working on the original 4K files, not the HD files.

Let's go back, HOW exactly did the OP replace 4K files with HD files originally, before archiving the project?

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Answer 6

Hirapuri Author

Level 1

16 points

Nov 13, 2023 09:55 AM in response to Hirapuri

I ended up re-editing the video, as it took less time than finding the solution to relink the files.

It's a pitty that the relinking doesn't work as good as it used in the old FCP versions, where it wasn't picky at all.

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Answer 7

Nov 13, 2023 09:59 AM in response to Hirapuri

Yes, sometimes it is unclear why files don't relink; but I have been able to relink files despite different frame sizes - even replace a 480p image with a 4K and vice versa - just so long as the duration and audio characteristics remain the same. However, sometimes people get "the original has audio, and the new one doesn't", or something similar, even though it is not true... a mystery.

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