Guidance, please: All FCP archive clips missing audio

[Jeremy Garchow]

Sounds like you may want to reload your OS.

If the media is good on other machines, but not on yours in multiple applications, something is awry.

[Brian Beker]

YEs, it must be specific to the laptop I’m on. I tried reloading the former OS then upgraded to Catalina — nothing changed.

[Brad Hurley]

Okay, after a bit of sleuthing online, here are two things to try:

1. Go to your system prefs, and see if you have Perian installed. If so, click on that, then click on the Uninstall button.

2. If you don’t have Perian, there may still be a leftover plugin from Perian that is preventing the audio from playing. From the “Go” menu in the Finder, go to Library > Audio > Plug-ins > Components and see if there is a file there called a52Codec.component. If so, delete it.

[Brian Beker]

GIVE THAT MAN A CIGAR!!!

Brad —

I do not know how to thank you. Perian was indeed in my System Preferences and removing it restored FCP’s handling of the audio on all those archives. Wow. You, sir, have relieved me of a huge pressure.

I am in your debt.

Brian

[Brad Hurley]

Yay! No need to thank me, thank Google. ???? When you said you had an older Mac, it made me suspect you might still have Perian on there, which is no longer needed but was included in older Mac systems to allow Quicktime to play audio in .mts files.

As an aside, my stills camera is the younger sibling to your NEX7, the NEX6. I love it for stills and have no plans to upgrade, although it takes perfectly awful video and I never use it for that. Great camera, though.

[Brian Beker]

I’m not in love with the NEX-7’s video, either. Stills are great. From what I understand, the newer 8 model has such good low light capabilities that it’s used for extremely deep underwater photography without having to blast too much light and it’s credited with helping discover new deepwater species.

I have to thank you again for fixing my archives, Brad. You can imagine the relief you provided some random dude out there.

[Brad Hurley]

Hi Brian — I think the NEX 7 actually takes better video than the NEX 6, which is the camera I have. I tried shooting some with mine today and it’s not as bad as I remembered; I think I was using a not-so-great lens on it before. I’m using a cinema camera these days so it was actually kind of liberating to shoot video on the NEX 6 with autofocus and image stabilization, neither of which are available on my cinema camera.

I’m really glad the fix worked for your archives!