Jerky playback
 

I've had this happen before but can't for the life of me figure out how I "fixed" it. When playing a clip from my timeline it appears jerky in the viewer. If I click on it in the bin and play it on the canvas it plays smooth. It just started doing this and don't know why and can't find how to get it play smoothly as it does in the canvas. Memory is not a problem nor is disk space. Could it be in the plist?

Thanks in advance! And by the way, my claim to fame...first name on the list of most users ever online. Please don't anyone tell me that thier name appears first too.

Ken

Hi Ken and welcome to DVinfo.

I'm wondering if you're reversing the terms "canvas" and "viewer"? In FCP-speak, the canvas is the window that shows the image from the timeline. The viewer is a window which opens when you double-click a clip.

Regardless, there are a couple things which I've seen that can cause this. One of them is leaving the log and capture window open. Close that window when you aren't actually capturing something. The other is an old bug (feature?) that seems to be in every version of FCP. Do NOT set the canvas scale to 100%. For some reason that slows things down and can also prevent video from being sent over firewire. Instead, choose the "fit to window" option from the drop-down menu, then resize the window as desired.

Aside from that, I've found that FCP can sometimes act strange after long periods of use. Quitting and opening again usually fixes it, but restarting your Mac might also be needed. I think this happens mainly when memory gets fragmented while working with multiple applications at the same time.

Thanks Boyd, "Fit to window" did it!

You'd think that Apple would fix that bug! It's been there since I started using FCP (ver 3) more than 4 years ago! Glad that fixed it.