Missing/corrupted footage on export from FCP.
 

Having almost (!!) completed a project ('documentary' - without narration...budget didn't stretch this far unfortunately) which has been back and forth (rather frustratingly) for some time, we found ourselves near completion.
Essentially we had a main 'feature' and extra bonus material (much shorter piece) which concentrated on a martial arts tournament. The footage was taken from approximately four locked camera's which we then put together to form a relatively coherent viewing experience.
The nature of the footage led the editing to a series of fade ins/outs and slow motions - literally hundreds of fast edits over 15 odd minutes.
Once we were finally happy with the final piece (Draft 40, quite possilby!) we double checked the timeline and sent it out to compress.
On viewing the DVD the evening I was told that there were errors within the timeline (very odd jump cuts and a long portion of black space). Knowing I'd checked this over twice before committing to compress I was bemused at best.
I checked the DVDSP timeline and lo and behold the footage contained those errors. Returning to the FCP timeline however showed the timeline to be absolutely fine.

Something happened on export from FCP - I've recreated this a couple of times; sent it compressor then as a quicktime and the errors are clearly evident.
The first error has the clip jump back and forth and include parts which were taken out of the timeline. The four second black gap is merely a slow motion section lost in export.

I'm struggling to fathom out where this is going wrong. My only guess is that due to the nature of the timeline (those many, many fast edits with fades and slow motion) is somehow overworking my machine (iMac 2.66Ghz, 2GB ram) although the rest of the timeline is not affected.

Any ideas anyone!!???

Many thanks.

Definitely sounds like either a corrupted project or overflowing cache files.

I'd try the usual routines first; download and run all of the Onyx maintenance and cleaning routines for the OS to make sure you don't have something clogging up Quicktime's engine.

Open your project file and in the browser "select all" and use the "reconnect" command to make sure you're not missing any elements that Media Manager has missed due to cache files being corrupted. If you don't get any files that show up as missing then move onto the next step...

Create a new project (be sure to check sequence settings) and copy-and-paste the old assets into the new timeline, fully render it then send it to Compressor as a reference file first. If that still has errors then try sending a self-contained file to Compressor.

If all that still fails you may need to backup your entire project - original assets and all - and use something deeper like FCP Rescue or even a re-install.

Let us know what happens, but my guess is that old cache files are to blame.

Wowzers...it seems a little more of an issue than I originally felt it was.
Will try create new project first off - I did in fact create a new sequence (copy and pasting the old one) but this didn't work. Also wondering if it is vital to have your FCP program on one drive (internal mac drive for example) and the scratch disk/source files on an external drive (which is the set up I have at home - this is different at work however when everything, bar backup, is on one drive). This is a fairly unique project for me such is the scale of clips and sequences (around 40 sequences/timelines till I got to the master timeline finalised) and hundreds of source files...a headache basically. With the number of quick edits (and slow mo's) I felt it my machine may have just buckled under the sheer weight of the project, but your answers seem more feasible.
It might be a while before I take a look at your checks but I'll will have a look.
In the meantime I've taken out the offending clips and all seemed ok...will know after the weekend.
I have Disk Warrior which I run monthly, but this machine is only a couple of months old. Is Onyx (and for that matter FCP resuce) a free software?

Many thanks Robert.

DiskWarrior will only address directory corruption issues, it doesn't clear cache files nor does it do any routine maintenance work which is why I suggested Onyx as a first step. (Yes, it's a free app).

You should consider working these maintenance routines first AND making sure all your assets are connected properly in your project as a first priorty. If you create a new project and just copy-paste the same assets that have potentially broken links you'll be right back where you started.

Will do Robert - I'll give this a go in the week and let you know how I get on. The assets are actually set over three different drives - again possibly not unique but I could've done with setting them up on one drive (with back up obviously). It was started on my home system before 'migrating' to a work set up...it's been a monkey on my back for some time!

Many thanks.