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Audio Tribulations in FCP3
Hello All,
I’m having a dilly of a time with my audio, and I was hoping someone might be able to render assistance.While editing my projects, I only get audio if I start right at the beginning. It might pop in after a couple of seconds, but not normally. When I scrub, I hear the scratchings of the audio, but it won’t come back when I start in the middle of my project.
Can anyone help???
Thanks!
John Calvin Hall
Twin Falls, Idaho -
5 Replies
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Hi John,
Have you always had this audio problem or is it a more recent thing?
If you could also give up some info about your system it would help greatly in diagnosing your problem. It could be any number of things: from a media drive that’s getting full, not enough RAM or processor speed, corrupted hard drive directories or project files, large project files, etc.
– Don
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Yes,
Everything worked fine when I used FCP3 last. I hadn’t used it for a while, and had upgraded to OSX 10.3 – Panther in the mean time.
I have a G4 and a Matrox RTMac. My camera is a Canon GL2. Nothing super-fancy, but I’m not a professional.
It’s almost like the the audio isn’t tied down to the video:
1. I can hear the audio “burbble” when I scrub,
2. I can hear the audio fine when I start right at the beginning,
3. I can even hear the audio at times when I start past the beginnings (at times), but it is not sync’d with the video.Is it possible that my time code is messed up? Could this be the cause of my grief? Is there any way to fix this?
Thanks!
JCH -
Hi John,
It may sound (no pun intended) strange, but you might try trashing your FCP preference files first. You won’t hurt a thing by doing this and it may very well resolve your problem. Corrupt pref. files cause FCP to act in strange and mysterious ways, including audio glitches that start for no apparent reason. Here’s a link that explains why you need to do this and how to do it properly:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html
Since trashing FCP preferences is an ongoing problem with most users there’s a free program you can get to do this for you. Do a Google search for “Final Cut Pro Rescue”. I suspect your timecode is fine unless your GL2 is having problems generating it.
If you’ve done the above and are still having audio issues then you can do an audio mixdown within FCP. This will create an invisible file which will consolidate your audio into two tracks if you have many audio tracks in your timeline. This will be less processor intensive and may also solve the problem. If you make any changes to any of your audio tracks after using the audio mixdown command then the invisible file will be discarded and you’ll have to use the command again. I don’t use FCP3 but in 4.5 the audio mixdown command is in the sequence menu.
The other thing I can suggest is to run DiskWarrior to make sure all your hard drive directories are in good shape. The last thing I’m going to recommend is to do a reinstall of FCP3. When you upgrade an operating system sometimes the untouched programs will not recognize certain upgrades (like your new version of Quicktime) and may very well cause the audio problems you’re experiencing.
My choice of fixes for you go from easiest and fastest to the more time consuming if the first ones fail. Hope this helps.
– Don
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I’ve reinstalled it and I have deleted some of the preferene files. Let’s try and deleting all of them.
Thanks!
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When you have a chance to reply, let me know if your fixes worked or not.
– Don
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