Believe it or not, trashing prefs solved it. This was in the documentation from the FCP link on the end of my original post
Delete the User Preferences
You can resolve many issues by restoring Final Cut Pro back to its original settings. This will not impact your project files, but you should verify your Scratch Disk location setting after doing this. To reset your Final Cut Pro user preference settings to their original state, do the following:
In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences—the tilde (~) represents your Home folder.
Remove the “com.apple.finalcutpro.plist” file from the Preferences folder.
Remove the “Final Cut Pro User Data” folder from the Preferences folder.
Nate
Nate Hubbard
310-345-1301
natehubz@mac.com
ACT fcp6