Mar 11 2008
Final Cut Pro projects won’t open when files are inaccessible
My user account debacle had another side effect. Opening a project in Final Cut Pro produced error “this project is unreadable or may be too new for this version of Final Cut.”
A mild panic set in since I was running the latest version of Final Cut. Add to that none of my projects from the AutoSave Vault would open due to this error.
After some digging around I discovered what I’ll call a bug in FCP 6.02: absolute path references to files in a project. While absolute paths aren’t unusual it’s the fact they seemingly break your project when those files aren’t accessible. In my case I no longer had access to my old user account home folder but FCP was trying to access those files and couldn’t.
Instead of asking to reconnect the files (as is customary) it simply threw the nasty error. My quick fix was to chmod 770 my old home folder until I had everything moved over and renamed properly.
Apple’s FCP support group has more to add.
Related posts:
- How to fix a freezing user account in Mac OS X 10.5
- Final Cut Pro: keep your files organized
- Trouble-free Offline Files with Windows XP
- Final Cut Pro: converting MP3 files to AIFF for render-free editing
- Final Cut Pro and General Error 48
typically the error “this project is unreadable or may be too new for this version of Final Cut.” occurs when a project is created on a machine with a newer version of Final Cut Pro than the one it is trying to be opened on. it is reccommended that the user go to software update to see if there is the latest version of Final Cut Pro available or other pro apps updates.