Sequence Stopping & Droppping Frames. Need HELP PLEASE!

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

The first thing to do is shut down FCP and re-start the Mac.

Open FCP and try playing again.

AND…

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

You should “Mixdown” the Audio for playback before you dub out of FCP, or during the edit, if you have audio/video stuttering, drop-outs, sync-slippage, or freezes.

NOTE: Mixdown has even been demonstrated to help with slipping, skipping problems (or “missing” audio clips) for files being EXPORTED as QT (or similar) files out of FCP.

First, SELECT ALL of your audio tracks (highlight them) on the timeline, then:

Sequence Menu > Render Only > Mixdown.

You should see a dialog box telling you its rendering.

It might seem to make little sense that “Mixing down” even simple audio tracks will “fix” complex video “freezes” or random audio dropouts to tape or export, but it CAN.

NOTE: It does not matter of you only have one audio track, if there are random freezes during output, you should try the Mixdown.

[Chris Babbitt]

Make sure the Canvas is set to “Fit to Window.”

[Crys]

Hello, thank you for your reply. I have already tried shutting down the Mac and restarting FCP, but still the same problem.

I also did the Mixdown as you suggested, but still no luck… I have the same sticking problem.

Would you have any other suggestions?

Where is the option to “Fit to Window”?

Thanks again.

[Arnie Schlissel]

Dropped frames are always caused by your hard drives being to slow to keep up with your media. Sometimes that’s fixed by mixing down your audio, sometimes it can be solved by deleting unneeded files from your drives. If your media is on firewire drives that are daisy chained together, that could be at the root of your problem. You also don’t say if you’ve rendered everything in your timeline, including clips that FCP says should play in RT. You might want to force those files to render as well, & see if that helps.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Peter Ralph]

could it be a slow video card combined with 2+ monitors? I have to move the timeline off my HP LCD to get sequences to play smoothly in FCP5

[Crys]

No, the media is not on firewire drives. They’re on a 500GB Medea drive. I do not think the hard drive is too slow to keep up with the media. As I mentioned before, the sequence played perfectly fine before without any skipping nor sticking. That is why I am so confused as to why there is such a problem with this sequence now.

I have mixed down the audio and deleted unneeded files, but that did not help.

And yes, everything is rendered in the sequence.

Any other suggestions?

Thank you again for your help.

[Crys]

Yes, I use 2 monitors. The Graphics/Display Card used is the ATI Radeon 9600 XT.
What do you mean by “moving” your timeline? Where exactly do you move it to?

Thank you.

[Peter Ralph]

try moving the timeline and/or canvas to the other monitor –

could also try restarting with just one monitor

[Frank Nolan]

How full are the hard drives connected to the system. That is “ALL” drives including the system drive itself, not just the medea drive. You should have at least 10%, preferably 20%, space left on all drives on the system. Check the little drop down box at the top in the middle of the canvas to make sure it is “fit to window”. Also make sure audio waveforms are not showing in the timeline as that can slow down playback and caused dropped frames.

[Peterson]

Since its been awhile since you were last on this particular timeline, have you double checked whether your sequence setting is the same as your clips/ media? Sometimes this happens and FCP does its best to play the clips but cannot without skipping…
Worth a quick check