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The first thing to always try is to Quit FCP, Restart the Mac, Open your FCP project and try again.

Next:
THE FOLLOWING COMES FROM THE KEN STONE WEBSITE:
“Over 5,000 years ago Confucius wrote: ‘If you are toiling away, you have changed nothing and FCP heads South on you, [starts behaving in strange ways] then it is time to trash your FCP Preferences.’ ”

Click the following link for instructions.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html

A great way to do this is to use “FCP Rescue” a free Apple Script that will Trash the Preferences for you (and restore nearly all of your user settings afterward).
There are versions for FCPro & FCExpress.

Download these free Apple Scripts at

https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/

This is one FCP tip that has helped in hundreds of “odd” problems.

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[Tim Snider] “Source captured with Sony DSR-500 with YJ18x9 lens (DVCAM)
Footage captured with DSR-1500A via Firewire into Final Cut Pro, edited in NTSC/DV
Mastered to Betacam SP via component cables to deck from DSR-1500
Uploaded via satellite uplink for stations to weave into programming schedules

The resulting broadcast image looked horrible to me. Grainy, noisy, just really lousy. So here’s the opinion part. Which part or parts of that signal chain was the biggest detriment to the end product?”

You tell me.

At what POINT in the chain did you see the quality drop?

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[Bret Williams] “And if you have the CD, just copy the files onto your media drive and use ’em directly. Drop them in a sequence and do an “item level” render on them.”

Hey Bret!

Every time someone suggested this method, it always bugged me… and I just figured it out.

It requires using much more disk space and much more time:

You end up using “double” or more disk space because you are copying the full 44.1 kHz CD track onto the disk and then making a full, re-sampled 48 kHz version of the same file with FCP.
It takes the time to make the copy from the CD to the disk, then the time it takes FCP to up-sample it.

Using iTunes only makes a single 48 kHz up-rez file of the CD original (takes it right off the CD, not from the HD) and stores only the 48 kHz on the disk, ready for use in FCP, now or in the future (if you don’t trash the cut after the edit.)

Its not a big deal, but it seems redundant, time-consuming and wasteful of drive space to copy the CD track and use FCP to up-rez, but hey, I’m just an another guy in the edit bay 😉

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You are “SUPPOSED” to install additional INTERNAL drive(s) so that you don’t use your system drive for Capture and Render.

Yes, (as I said) many FCP editors DO use external FW drives, but they can be problematic (as many also find) due to FW bottleneck (speed) issues.

Another “approved” storage method is to use externaldrives, formatted as a RAID(s) connected via SCSI .

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You are using an external FW drive for capture and render scratch?
That’s not really recommended by Apple (although many do use them).

How FULL is the drive?

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Do you RENDER the dissolves, at the full quality setting?

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If you truly want an intelligent and helpful answer to this, you need to supply a lot more information.

CAMERAS
How many
What kind

PRODUCTION
Live-to-audience
Live-to-tape
Straight-thru
Retakes possible

LOCATION
Noisy, open-for-business
Quiet, after-hours

TALENT
Actors
Volunteers
Whoever you find eating

AUDIO OPERATOR
Experienced
Amateur
No Operator

BUDGET
Can buy gear
Must use available gear
Have no gear

Because your question is so basic, I suggest finding an experienced audio operator to set this up.

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[Shredder] “Have any of you ever synced final cut pro to logic? Do you think
I could send SMPT or some kind of clock from one G5 to another in a live situation to lock an audio timeline in Logic to a video
timeline in Final Cut for a live show? I read you can send midi thru the ethernet port in logic 7.1. Have anybody done this?”

Nope.
FCP will not “chase” (follow) an incoming Timecode or other signal (VTR simulation mode).

There MIGHT be other Mac video playback programs (QuickTime-based) that will, but I don’t know of any.

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The answer is “42”.

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FCP will only work with “Type 2” (Truetype) fonts.

But you should have plenty of them since that’s what Mac includes with its System software.

All of your fonts (the ones you want to use with FCP, anyway) should be placed in the Fonts folder located at the end of this hierarchy:

User Name (yours) > Library > Fonts

FWIW, Title 3D (and Title Crawl) can use both “Type 2” and “Type 1” (Adobe) fonts.