no waveform in timeline

[Tom Matthies]

Try increasing your audio track size. I don’t believe that the audio waveforms will show up when the tracks are at their smallest settings.Try the next larger setting and see if that does it.
Tom

[Dean Mermell]

I second that emotion. On my new 1/08 MacPro, 10.5.1, with FCP 6.0.2, 8GB of RAM, BlackMagic Decklink HD card (uh-huh, you say?) I get slow to no audio waveform drawing, regardless of track size or project size. No rhyme or reason that I can see, and it’s MOST annoying, to be sure. Would appreciate any suggestions, thanks.

[Andrew Dickinson]

I work for a company on an Intel iMac running OS X 10.4.11 right now with FCP 6.0.4.

It’s very hard for me to work without waveforms when I’m editing, but it happens so frequently that all of a sudden my waveforms disappear and are replaced by those annoying x’s. I wish I had a definitive why, but here are a couple suggestions of things to try:

We work on multiple hard drives, so I’m constantly changing my scratch disks (and constantly forgetting to). I would check to see if your scratch disk does indeed point to where FCP has placed the waveform files.

Once you do that, if that doesn’t work I would recommend quitting FCP and cleaning up the old waveform files — especially if they’ve gone all over the place. (hey, it happens) When you open FCP, the hope is that it will realize the old ones are gone and make new ones.

Aside from that, sometimes it seems just quitting and reopening FCP itself will sometimes do the trick.

As far as slow waveform drawing, it doesn’t really matter the speed of your system, if you’re working off an external drive, it takes a while to run through the firewire (or USB if that’s your thing) to initially write the files — especially if you’ve got an hour or two worth of footage displayed in the timeline. Once they’re there though, they should be pretty quick to be displayed. One thing I tried, is what you can do is if you put all your capture scratch / render files on the external, you can keep the waveform and thumbnails on your internal HD, maybe in documents or whatever you like. That way they never have to be sent out via firewire.

Anyway, hope that helps some.

[Rob Mize]

Rick… I had the same problem after upgrading to a new mac and FCP 6.0.5.
I realized the problem only affected projects that I had carried over from my old mac.
The waveform cache files were on an external drive and FCP couldn’t find them.
I deleted these files, re-opened FCP and viola… there were my precious audio waveforms.
I hope this works for you.
Rob

[Lane Gold]

To show the waveform in the timeline, simply press COMMAND + OPTION + w

[Mitch Anderson]

I got the same scenario. Changed the machine to a MacPro from a G5 and there are no waveform files in the project. You said you deleted them, how did you do that if you didnt have them anymore?

Also new projects dont show waveforms. Did anyone have to deal with that?

Tnks

[Dino Marengo]

Oh, you genius! How could I haven’t thought that???
Thanks a lot, I was up to mixing a 20 min edit and got stuck and started crying loud 😉

Thanks again to share your knowledge.

CM

Editor with
Final Cut Pro
Avid
______________
Digital cameraman with
Sony Z1, Z7, EX1 and EX3

[Alessio Santoni]

Thanks a lot!
🙂

Best cuts.

[Swaroop Reghu]

^ That worked for me! Thanks a ton