Because the camera audio won’t be used in the final mix we’ve had to sync our own dailies in Final Cut Pro 6. How exactly does a person take two different media files, audio and video, and combine them in sync as a usable clip? After much searching and asking around this is what we came up with.

Final Cut Pro has a feature called Merge Clips which combines multiple clips into one based on In, Out, or Timecode. Because our timecode is not synced to camera we used In/Out Point. Mark each clip, select them in the Browser, then use the Merge Clips command in the Modify menu.

The result is a new master clip (but not media file) which includes all audio tracks of the other clips in sync with the video. If the clip lengths are different Final Cut Pro will insert black slug as needed.

More details can be found in the Final Cut Pro manual under the term “merge clips.” You won’t find anything under “audio sync” or “dailies.”

Make a Backup

Be sure to make a backup of your installation.

Change the Current Blog Folder

Rename your existing WordPress folder (i.e.: /journal) to the new name. FTP or ssh (i.e.: mv journal blog) can be used for this.

Update the blog path settings within the admin panel.

Updating Paths in the Database

If your blog posts contain images or links using the old folder they must be changed. There is a simple SQL command which performs a search and replace. I suggest using phpMyAdmin instead of MySQL’s command line.

Take a look at your wp_options table in phpMyAdmin. You may find that plug-ins are using your old path in their settings which may be not accessible through the admin interface.

Don’t Break Trackbacks

If anyone is linking to your blog they’ll be using the old folder name. To ensure those links don’t break with your folder we can use a symbolic link and a 301 redirect.

Login to your Linux hosting account using ssh and navigate to the root folder of your web site such as public_html. Enter the following command:

ln -s /path/to/new /path/to/old

Replace /path/to/new and /path/to/old with the absolute folder names. For example:

ln -s /home/your-domain/www/blog /home/your-domain/www/journal

You may be tempted to add a redirect using cPanel but don’t - the symlink above is doing this for you.

Unfortunately, permalinks still won’t work. For example, a permalink of http://your-blog/journal/2008/06/my-post will generate a 404 Not Found instead of redirecting to http://your-blog/blog/2008/06/my-post. Don’t bother with the Redirection plug-in because it doesn’t build a library of prior permalinks.

Instead, use Alexandra’s technique to modify your .htaccess file and all of your old permalinks will 301 properly.

New novel is set 2,100 feet deep in the “lost city of Cuba” Little is known about the actual discovery of “MEGA”—a city submerged in more than 2,000 feet of water off the Western tip of Cuba. While secrecy still clouds the real site, Archer takes his readers on a fictional tour of the underwater ruins and reveals some amazing connections to both the island of Cuba and the mysteries of the Bahamas.

I haven’t read the book and passing it along if you’re into this sort of thing.

With speed changes and video effects reapplied I prepared for the final render. It wasn’t long before Final Cut Pro generated this error message:

The effect ‘Scrub’ cannot be rendered in a sequence of this size with the current graphics card.

The Scrub filter had been successfully used throughout the entire edit: from proxy files to scrubbing the timeline in ProRes. I tested different video effects and received the same error message.

A forum post at CreativeCOW describes a similar problem. This was just one of many issues plauging my project so I took the easy way out by replacing the Scrub filter with one from Joe’s Filters.

While I was writing this I found a solution at LAFCPUG. Modify the render depth from 10-bit to 8-bit in the sequence settings.

This solution is also referenced in an Apple Support document. Unfortunately it doesn’t address why late-model Apple video cards generate the error. Lack of 10-bit color support or a bug?

Dismissing the error I installed VMware Tools 2.0 but the error persisted. On this tip I reinstalled VMware Tools using the Custom option. The VMCI driver was already selected (a head scratcher since this would suggest it was previously installed) but I continued the installation. Upon restart the missing driver was found.