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My first thought is that this sounds like a White/Super White issue.

Touch the right-hand Canvas window (to activate the timeline you are working with.)
Hit “Apple-0 (zero)”
Click the “Video Processing” tab.

Make sure your Process Maximum White as: is set to “White”
and select “Render in 8-bit YUV”.
Then re-render your effects.

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“Built-in” in this case means the Macintosh Computer’s audio play system.
It has nothing to do with FCP’s “built-in” audio settings.

The Mac internal “top-end” only offers 44.1 kHz, but if you buy a 3rd party audio device (like a Griffin “iMic” USB audio adapter) you will then be offered the 48 kHz option.

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Try this:

Apply the Video Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Adjust the setting to 0.25 and keep adding “more” ( up to 0.75 or even 2.0) as you observe the results.

As images (moving or stills) are reduced to much smaller sizes, they can begin to “pixelate” as the image gets smaller.
To compensate, I add the Gaussian Blur Filter to coincide with the point that the image begins to get “pixely”.
The resulting “blurred” image looks smoother and quite “normal” at these smaller sizes.

If you are “Zooming In” to these sizes, “ramp-up” the amount of blur with keyframes in the Gaussian Blur Filter settings, in the Viewer.

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Complex images with CK are always problematic.
You need the absolute BEST image you can get to start-with.
Some recommend third-party plug-ins from Ultimatte and others.
Some say to never even try CK with DV compressed footage.

Here’s a great link to help you better clean up your CK within FCP.

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

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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 on how to do this…

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

Another method 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 FCP & FCE.

Download these free Apple Scripts at

https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/

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Try a “Select-All” (highlighting all) of the clips on the timeline before you attempt to render.

And/or set an IN-point at the head of the timeline and an OUT-point at the end of the timeline and try your render then.

If nothing helps (and even if it DOES) you might need to Trash your FCP Preferences.

Click the following link for instructions on how to do this…

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

Another method 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 FCP & FCE.

Download these free Apple Scripts at

https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/

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First step is to quit and re-start the Mac and FCP.

Next to try would be to Trash the FCP Preferences.

Click the following link for instructions on how to do this…

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

Another method 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 FCP & FCE.

Download these free Apple Scripts at

https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/

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If the shot is a lock-down, just export a frame of it.
Put that in Photoshop, paint-out the offending area.
Create an Alpha channel around the corrected area.
Save and Re-import the corrected still to FCP.
Key it over the original footage.

If the original footage moves a bit, you can move the cleaned-up frame a bit to match.

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[Bettsy] “BTW, if you do use the Autosave version, make sure you duplicate it, rename it to the original project name and replace the former version with it in the correct directory (folder).”

A fast, easier way to do this is to just open the Autosave files, drag only the latest SEQUENCE from THAT version right into your oprn ORIGINAL project file (I rename this “new” sequence slightly so I can identify it) and then just close the “auto-save” file back up.

You can continue on using the newly-imported timeline. As it will become a part of your “original” project the next time you save it (which should be IMMEDIATELY.)

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Look up your project name in the “AutoSave Vault” and open the last saved version.