[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

To anybody following this thread, I figured something out…sort of.

After editing in Premiere for half a week without any issues, I came back into FCP to try some things out. I noticed that even though single clips stuttered like hell, a two-clip multiclip played flawlessly. This obviously made no sense at first. Then, I wondered if Final Cut was automatically lowering the playback quality for the mulitclip, so I set the timeline to play at “medium” quality and, lo and behold, the single clips played fine, too.

So, even though I had my playback quality setting at “dynamic,” I guess FCP didn’t recognize that it had to play single clips at a lower quality. As soon as I forced it too, it seems to have worked.

I still think it should be able to play these clips at full quality without issue but this is good enough for now since I can’t really visually tell the difference anyway.

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

It’s a WD Caviar Black 7200 6Gb/s drive. Should not be in issue at all and like I said, I can play higher bit rate stuff from that drive no problem. It’s only about a third full.

I do have a FW drive I can try, I’ll do that when I have a chance.

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

My scratch drive is internal. I have 4 internal drives:

1 System Drive
2 Windows Drive
3 Scratch Drive
4 Media/Time Machine (Partitioned)

I also have a Drobo hooked up that I use only for backup for everything that Time Machine doesn’t back up. (TM backs up my system drive and the Drobo backs up all of my editing media)

I’ve switched TM off while this whole thing is going on, just to be safe.

I experimented a little further trying to narrow down the issue and I’m starting to think that FCP maybe just doesn’t like Prores LT at 1920×1080 59.94. I encoded some Prores 422 (not LT) at the same res and frame rate and it seemed to have less of a problem, even though the data rate far higher. That’s one of the biggest mindf***s here is. It doesn’t seem to be a data rate issue. Higher data rate video plays totally fine in some cases.

Lastly, I ended up editing in Premiere (which worked fine with the original video) and I think I’m just going to finish there and export XMLs for FCP. Then I’ll try to figure out more.

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

No, there’s nothing in the background that would interfere with FCP.

Here’s an update.

I bought a new HD today to test that. It’s a WD Black 3TB 7200 drive. Should be no problem, but I had the same issue.

I’ve tried transcoding the original Prores LT 1920 file a couple different ways. I did some in Prores LT 1440×1080 and also in Prores LT 1280×720. To my surprise, the 1440 plays a lot better than the 1280 files even though the 1440 have almost twice the data rate. I’m getting really nervous and confused here because this shouldn’t be happening.

More info: I tried importing the original 1920 files into FCP X and they seem to play better there. Unfortunately I can’t cut in X because the client only has 7 and he needs a project he can open once he’s got it.

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

Here’s an update.

I bought a new HD today to test that. It’s a WD Black 3TB 7200 drive. Should be no problem, but I had the same issue.

I’ve tried transcoding the original Prores LT 1920 file a couple different ways. I did some in Prores LT 1440×1080 and also in Prores LT 1280×720. To my surprise, the 1440 plays a lot better than the 1280 files even though the 1440 have almost twice the data rate. I’m getting really nervous and confused here because this shouldn’t be happening.

Even when it’s only music (AIFF 16bit 48k) without video in my 1920 and 1280 timelines I get the same stuttering.

More info: I tried importing the original 1920 files into FCP X and they seem to play better there. Unfortunately I can’t cut in X because the client only has 7 and he needs a project he can open once he’s got it.

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

Another thing I just remembered. When the problem happens, I can still go into Finder and play the clips fine using quicklook.

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

That’s a great idea, I’ll give that a shot! Thanks!

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

Ok, found a fix. I thought recapturing footage might not work because the problem seems to be with the master clips, not the media files. So I tried exporting an XML of the entire project, then reimporting that XML into a brand new project and everything is great. Identical project, same media, new master clips, and everything is functioning properly.

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

Actually that will be interesting. Right now it looks as if the issue is with the master clips, not the media files. Like I said, re-dragging in the media files makes them behave correctly. I wonder if using the same master clips with new media files will work as well….

[Aaron Fisher-cohen]

I bet it would, seeing as merely dragging the old media into the browser to create a new master clip works as well. When I get a chance I’ll try recapturing from the old master clips to see if that works.