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Missing audio waveforms in FCP 7.0
One of our edit systems has developed a problem displaying audio waveforms of random clips both on the timeline and in the viewer window. On the timeline with waveforms turned on, you won’t see the waveform, just the level line and some Xs. If you double click the clip into the viewer window the display shows the pan line and level line but no waveform and the screen may be white or it may be black, it may turn from white to black if you try to update the cursor position. If you try to reload the clip or another problem clip the viewer screen the color might change or it might stack the new level line on top of the previous line. The more you do this the more it stacks until you load a non-problem clip.
Back to the timeline, sometimes while not displaying the waveform, the audio clip(s) will show little Xs but upon double clicking into the viewer the waveform may or may not be present. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what clips are affected, surrounding clips to the problem one(s) will work fine, granted there may be a mix of AIFF, WAV and Soundtrack Pro files on various tracks but the problem does not discriminate file types. The footage is located on a fiber connected Facilis Terrablock, moving the file locally and reconnecting doesn’t change things. The problem doesn’t seem to follow the project when it is opened up on other systems. We have had other systems occasionally experience the same phenomena in different projects but it is usually traced to a linking problem. We have brought the “problem” clips into a new project on a new timeline and the problem may or may not be there or it starts good but then quits working. Other edit systems are using the same clips in different projects – no problem. All other applications seem to work fine and the system seemed to be functioning well on the project until one day….
Codec on the clips are either ProRes or a few AVC Intra.
To solve the problem we have run the Digital Rebellion Housekeeper and Quick Fix tools, manually trashed preferences and cache files, totally removed and reinstalled FCP 7.0, run disk utility, reseated the video card, all I can think of now is to reinstall the OS which is 10.6.8.
System Info: MacPro 5.1, 8 core 2.4GHz, 6 GB RAM
Thanks for any input.
Lin Brummett
Warm Springs Productions
http://www.warmsprings.tv -
5 Replies
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Are these clips generally shorter clips with long names? I’ve noticed as I edit that when the little “x” shows up, it is typically on a clip that is short and has a long name, but if I zoom in on the timeline, the waveform shows up, once it has more room. Not sure why this is. Also, I’ve never seen the first problem you had, with the black and white in the Viewer window, not sure what that could be.
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Name length varies but they are generally 6-10 characters
Lin Brummett
Warm Springs Productions
http://www.warmsprings.tv -
Expand your tracks in the timeline making them “taller”. Then expand them horizontally. You might also try trashing your waveform cache.
p.Trashing preferences also might help.E=MC2+/-2db
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Man, this sucks. I ran into the same problem after upgrading to Lion, where some clips worked, some didn’t. No rhyme or reason, just as you say. The fix for me was to simply drag the captured files that didn’t work into another folder, essentially breaking the link. Then recapturing. Upon recapture, and double-clicking, the waveforms magically redrew themselves. But I see you’ve tried that, so… I don’t know what else to say.
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I was having this problem this morning, so came here to ye gurus. Read this thread, then just tried restarting (didn’t even trash prefs or waveform cache) and voila, they’re all back…and this is on a very recent reinstall of my whole system where everything had been running swimmingly up until this morning. I also noticed at the same time i was having the “no waveform” problem, when i click play on the timeline, the video and audio would play on my monitor, but the cursor wouldn’t move on the timeline.
Oh, to wish for a real FCP Ocho rather than the jump to X (which i have not yet done anyway…still on 7.0.3). Sorry i wasn’t any help here, but hopefully your waveforms are showing back up?
thanks for helping out a bonehead!
__________________________FCS3
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