• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  FCP Playback Lag

  Posted by Chris Norton on July 12, 2013 at 9:47 pm

  Hi. I’ve searched through quite a lot of posts but can’t find a solution to this.

  I’ve been editing a project for university and after a few days away from it I’ve opened it up today to find that the playback is suddenly lagging. Really bad lagging. I can watch the clips fine, but cannot watch the playback on any project due to the lag.

  I’ve cleared a lot of space off my computer, reset it, closed and reopened the project but I cannot get it to run smoothly. I’m not sure if it’s the heat as it is really hot today, but everything else on my computer seems to be running fine.

  Again, this is an issue that has suddenly cropped up, no idea why it has happened.

  Really appreciate any help you’ve got guys as this project is due in very soon.

  Thanks

  Neil Patience replied 13 years ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Neil Patience

  July 13, 2013 at 9:45 pm

  Hi Chris

  Can you tell us which codec you are using, the type of footage and the storage set-up. This might give some clues to your problem.

  best wishes
  Neil
  http://www.patience.tv

  8 Core MacPro, Kona 3, Tangent Wave, Mackie Universal Symphony 6.5 FCP7
  i7 2.7 Gig MBP (non retina) 16Gigs Ram Blackmagic Monitor Mini Symphony 6.5 FCP7
• 

  Chris Norton

  July 15, 2013 at 7:40 pm

  The footage is HDTV 1080i – H.264 and .mov files. I’ve captured them to my external hard drive that I use for editing.

  As far as I’m aware I’ve not changed any settings so I’m unsure why it would suddenly go from working fine to being very laggy.

  Thanks
• 

  Chris Norton

  July 15, 2013 at 9:05 pm

  I have finally resolved this! It was a really simple thing in the end, the canvas video player had just zoomed in ever so slightly (by 1 oercent) which was causing the lag.
• 

  Neil Patience

  July 15, 2013 at 10:37 pm

  I am glad the lag has stopped however you are still possibly in for trouble. FCP does not work well with H264 files. Sometimes they work but you are just as likely to get flashes on edits, playback problems, in fact just about anything can go wrong with H264.
  You would be much better off transcoding your footage all to ProRes and editing with that. HDV is also not FCP’s favourite format but same applies ProRes is the way to go for much improved performance. There are loads of threads here where people try to edit H264 directly and run into issues.

  best wishes
  Neil
  http://www.patience.tv

  8 Core MacPro, Kona 3, Tangent Wave, Mackie Universal Symphony 6.5 FCP7
  i7 2.7 Gig MBP (non retina) 16Gigs Ram Blackmagic Monitor Mini Symphony 6.5 FCP7

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