Unable to open project files and XML Translation was aborted due to a critical error

Hi Guys I’m having problems opening a FCE 3.5 project file working off a 2.4ghz Mac Book Pro . I have been working on this for a few weeks but over the last 3 days I started to get the message “Unable to open project file”. I have read on a few different sites about this subject but haven’t seen any with the specifics as my own.
So apologies in advanced if you have already been over this on the Mac Forums i did a search but couldnt find help .

I have all the recent Osx latest updates and have tried going into the Auto Vault and Render files to access the last available versions of these project files. I am able to access those but am only left with a much earlier version of the same project like a version a week earlier without vital changes.

I have my media and rendered files all backed up on to an external Hard drive , I have tried un mounting the ext Hard drive to separate any corrupt media which may be disturbing my files to see if I can still open the project but haven’t been successful .
I have tried backing up on time machine but would have to go to far back to reach a suitable restore point.

The message appears when I open the file in two ways by clicking on the file from accessing my Ext Hard drive and by Launching normally from the dock FCE > File > Open
I know it’s relatively the same method but didn’t want to over look anything.
FCE loads up it looks as if it is going to load fully the Browser and Viewer load but none of the other windows appear then the message appears and I’m forced to press ok .

I have had some great advice on this problem but haven’t yet been able to crack it , I have had help by sending the corrupt project files to other editors using FCE4 , FCP6 who have been able to access it on their machines.

I have also trashed my preferences files those being :

Com.apple.finalcutexpress.plist
And the 3 files in the Final Cut express user data the 3.5 Prefs , Obj Cache and the Prof Cache .

I was sent my same Corrupt file back to me in the form of as an Xml File to see if I could drag that into FCE browser but was stopped by the message
“XML Translation was aborted due to a critical error”

I searched online and found out about this message and after making a copy of the Xml file the next step was to try and fix the errors in the log notes. I’m not sure if this was the right way to go but I figured if I could compare a working exported FCE Xml with a broken one I could find some type of discrepancy.

FCE 3.5 doesn’t seem to be able to export sequences as Xml as easy as my other version of Final Cut 5.04 – Which sadly cannot open the same FCE file I am having problems with .

Is there a way to export the sequence as an Xml File from FEC 3.5.1 so I can compare ? Or a way around this problem I haven’t tried . The thought of starting from a previous version is a major downer.

Much Appreciated , Sorry for the Long Message I just wanted to show what I have tried to do before posting for more Help

Regards

FC

I would open the Console app in the Applications/Utilities folder, before opening your FCE project, then open your project and review the contens of the consol to see if there are any hints there.

A note regarding XML files. As far as I know, via an iMovie 08 experiment, they do not contain movie content. They are simply description files. One of the things in the file is a path to the content. Since someone else created the file on another system, the path will be different. Perhaps FCE asks to find the files.

Have you loaded any third party codecs such as DiVX, or the Perian set? Occasionly this has caused people odd problems.

You certainly have a mystery.