LAFCPUG: Editing FAQs
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Video plays in Viewer but stutters in Canvas
Q. My picture is freezing all the time. Video plays OK on the Viewer, but when I try to play it in the canvas or on my external monitor, I only get sound and a frozen picture, or very jagged movement.
Most likely answer
From Jude Cotter
A. It's likely that you have zoomed in on your canvas or viewer. To fix this, go to the small button at the top middle of your canvas and viewer that has a percentage number in it. Click on this to change it to 'fit to view' or smaller.
Other things that it could be:
- Check that your View > External Video setting is set to 'All Frames' if you are using an external monitor.
- Sometimes using View > Refresh A/V Devices can also help.
- If you are using an external drive, ensure that it is connected via Firewire, not USB.
- If these things don't help, try quitting and restarting FCP.
F9, F10, F11 keys don't work
When I try to insert or overlay or replace footage with F9 or F10 or F11 all my windows go wonky. What's going on?
Most likley answer :
From Jude Cotter
You have your system set to activate 'Expose' when you use these keys. To change this, go to your System Preferences (The grey 'switch' with an apple on it in the Dock) and select 'Dashboard and Expose'. Then find the functions that are being operated by the F keys and change them to something more suitable for you, or turn them off.
Why is my canvas white?
Q. Why is my canvas white?
Most likely answer;
From Jude Cotter
You may have your channels set to ‘Alpha’. To return to normal, select View > Channels > RGB.
SHIFT W toggles between "Alpha", "Alpha & RGB" and "RGB" modes. You may have hit this key combo by accident.
Why is my canvas red?
Q. Why is my canvas red?
From Jude Cotter
You may have your channels set to ‘Alpha and RGB’. To return to normal, select View > Channels > RGB.
SHIFT W toggles between "Alpha", "Alpha & RGB" and "RGB" modes. You may have hit this key combo by accident.
What's that green checkmark/yellow triangle?
Q. What's with the green checkmark and/or the yellow triangle in the canvas?
Most likely answer :
From Jude Cotttr""
These are Luma and Chroma range check alerts. They tell you if the colour and brightness levels of your video are ‘safe’ for broadcast. You may also notice red or green ‘zebra’ stripes on your picture. These are the areas that are close to unsafe, or are in the unsafe region.
If you don’t work as a professional, your work is not broadcast, or you just plain don’t want to see them, you can turn them off by selecting View > Range Check > Off.
Why do I have to render?
Q. Why is it that when I play my footage in the viewer it plays fine but when I drag it to the timeline it has to be rendered to play back?
Most likely answer:
From Jude Cotter
If your sequence settings do not match your clip settings, you will have to render every clip in the timeline. This can be useful if you want to make several different kinds of clips into a single type, but not so useful if all you want to do is edit a single format.
To make the nasty render bar go away, create a new sequence and match the sequence settings to your clip settings before dragging your clips to the timeline.
So, if your clips are DV PAL (PAL CCIR 601), 25 fps, with audio at 48.0 khz, you need to make sure that your sequence settings are too.
Also read this article:
Understanding Real-Time And Rendering in FCP 4
Despite the version number in the title it is still relevant to FCP 5 and beyond
Scaling stills causes strobing
Q. Why are the lines all strobey when I scale the pictures in FCP?
From Loren Miller
Most likely answer:
You have a lot of fine detail or closely spaced halftone dots in your photo, which are colliding with scanlines which make up the video field.
Symptoms:
You'll see this clearly on an NTSC or PAL interlaced video monitor, especially on zooms. You get line twitter, shimmering dots and vibrating moire effects. These all represent photo details less than 1 scanline wide.
Solution:
The common cure is to add Gaussian Blur, either in Photoshop before the import, or as a filter in FCP, with less than 1 pixel Blur setting. Experiment using a real TV monitor, not your computer screen.
By blurring, you spread the trouble areas big enough to be handled by more than one scanline. Appearance after blur may actually improve!
This also works for crawl titling.
Also read this article on prepping photos for FCP
Sizing and Scanning Photographs in PS for import into FCP
No image in Canvas
Why can't I see an image in the Canvas or Viewer, even though I can hear audio?
Most Likely answer:
From Nick Meyers
You've accidentally changed the view mode of the viewer or canvas. Look under the viewer or Canvas "View Menu". That's a pull down menu at the top of the viewer or Canvas, just right of centre. The icon looks like a little view finder. Under there are all sorts of options for the display of the viewer and canvas, including:
Image
- Image & Wireframe
- Wireframe
There's a good chance you've switched over to "Wireframe".
It's easy to do: the W key toggles between these 3 modes.
From Jude Cotter
Also, if you did have the view mode of the viewer set to 'Image and Wireframe', it's possible that you've accidentally dragged the picture 'offscreen' when trying to drag the clip to the timeline. To fix this, load the clip into the viewer, select the 'Motion' tab at the top of the viewer, and then click all the small red crosses to reset any motion changes.
Where's my audio scrubbing?
Where's my audio scrubbing gone?
Most likely answer:
From Nick Meyers
You accidentaly turned it off yourself.
SHIFT S toggles scrubbing on / off
