Screen Tearing in FCP 6

Hi
Have a FCP 6 running on my Macbook Pro, I keep getting screen Tearing in the Canvas window when i play any form of footage from DVC pro to DV, the quicker the cuts, the worse the screen tearing.. what causes this and how do i fix it? Have read MANY conflicting posts for this problem, some say its a screen resolution problem, some say it s a memory problem, some say its a data speed problem.. have yet to come accross any straight answer.

When i export the sequence out and play in Quicktime, its perfect, no tearing at all.
There is no options on the macbook settings to change it's screen resolution to test that theory, just says N/A in teh resolution field
Have tried running the canvas window at less than 100% as someone posted but alas, still tearing.. its driving me nuts , its so annoying, especially if you have someone watching the cut, really puts them off with the horizontal tearing.

I have 2GB of Memory and I am running the media off and ext firewire 800 drive.
Graphics card Nividia Gefore 8600

can anyone help me?

cheers
h

Macbook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.4.10), 2.4 Ghz 5400rpm 160GB NIVIDIA Geforce 8600 Graphics Card 266MB

Posted on Sep 9, 2007 2:03 AM

32 replies

Sep 14, 2007 1:37 AM in response to Cmmndr312

That definitely looks like a v-sync issue. Thanks for the still.
Anyone file a bug report yet?

Sep 14, 2007 11:19 AM in response to editor_stibbs

Yeah, I posted a bug report with apple yesterday.

Sep 14, 2007 6:27 PM in response to Cmmndr312

Is it going to be possible to fix this by updates or software, because if it is an unresolvable problem that is with the MBP itself, then I might have to return mine which just arrived today.

Sep 14, 2007 6:49 PM in response to cdmiller87

I'm hoping all that is causing this is a piece of code in FCP or it is a problem with the drivers for the 8600m. This is the first round of laptops with this particular graphics card in it and they could have just screwed up the driver. Who knows. As far as graphics drivers go, the latest version of Bootcamp caused me to have to force install nVidias drivers over the apple supplied ones in vista. Seems they screwed up the latest drivers in Bootcamp. I hope this is because this system is still new and the bugs haven't been worked out and that's all it is. I have noticed that in OS X I also get screen tearing in the Divx player. But if I open the same video in VLC it is fine which leads me to believe that this is probably a FCP problem and not a driver or MacBook Pro problem. I hope it is just a small FCP code that is causing v-sync issues with this particular card.

Sep 14, 2007 9:06 PM in response to Cmmndr312

Yes, I've got the tearing also, and I think that I'm just going to see what Apple does.
Some have already returned their MBP's, but I think I'll wait for them to come out with an update or whatever to fix this.

What about others? If you have this same problem, what sort of stance will you take with it?

-thenxes

Sep 15, 2007 4:15 AM in response to cdmiller87

I would think that this could be fixed with either a FCP update or, more likely, in an OS update which has a new NVidia driver for these machines.

Sep 18, 2007 11:31 AM in response to Mark.Burton

When do you guys expect to get an update? I still do not have a MBP because I want the issue to be solved before I buy one. If it turns out to be a hardware issue or if Apple just doesn't care enough about it to fix it, you are left alone with a book with screen tearing.... 😟

Message was edited by: Cordvision

Sep 18, 2007 11:45 AM in response to Cordvision

I have heard rumors of Apple releasing 10.4.11 soon. But who knows... I am not entirely convinced that a system update will fix the problem. We probably need to wait for a FCP update which is anyones guess when that will be. Hopefully at the very latest Apple will fix the problem for the Leopard release. But lately my faith in Apple's ability to fix problems has been somewhat lacking. For example, my Office 2004 apps still do not work and I have tried everything, including Apple's "official" fix.

Bob Cozzi

Level 1

120 points

Sep 18, 2007 1:15 PM in response to editor_stibbs

Gosh, first the "yellow screen syndrome" on the MBP and now the graphic card/driver is whacked. Its almost as if Apple was a big bad corporation that only cares about the bottom line. <tic> Oh wait, they are. 🙂

Face it, moving to Intel (for whatever reasons) means that we'll never get to use the super fast 8GHz PowerPC 6 "G6" in Apple systems. Instead we get those buggy 2.x Ghz Intel chips. Oh well... it was fun for a few years.

It also means we'll continue to have PC/Windows style problems with Apple PCs and notebooks for years and years to come.

Sep 20, 2007 1:18 PM in response to Bob Cozzi

Is anybody here who already got 10.4.11? I think the developers got it. Does it solve the issue with the screen tearing?

MJ00

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2007 5:27 AM in response to Cordvision

I posted last night on this same problem before I saw this thread.

I have the Nvidia GE Force 8600M GT (256 mb) video card and have this same tearing issue in not only fcp but also in After Effects, so its not an isolated problem to just fcp. Also, the people at applecare still claim to have never heard of the issue although from the posts here, I find that hard to believe.

Is there anyone who has a mac with this video card that doesn't experience a tearing issue?

Sep 28, 2007 11:22 AM in response to MJ00

does the new firmware update solve the problem?

Oct 27, 2007 8:28 PM in response to Cordvision

I'm wondering if Leopard will resolve the issue at all.

It would be awful nice to have this tearing deal out of the way...

Oct 29, 2007 12:03 PM in response to cdmiller87

The screen tearing issue has been resolved in Leopard as far as I can tell. With 1080p24 footage from an XH-A1, video plays back nice and smooth in both the viewer and canvas windows. Footage looks beautifully smooth now... the way it should have months ago...

Jan 14, 2008 10:54 AM in response to editor_stibbs

Hi everybody,
I've got the same problem with an intel processor 15' mbpro I bouhgt in september in france. The problem appears in fcut pro6, canvas and viewer, but also with any kind of mpeg1 or 2 reading in quicktime, mpegstreamclip, in dvd studio pro 4... the same problem also appears in photoshop, when magnifying the image i'm working on and working on it at 500%, if i move the mouse from the right to the left, the same lines appears, going up the screen and tearing the image. I've got the same problem watching videos on youtube, all have the tearing thing...So as someone said, the problem isn't only a final cut pro problem.

I'm wondering if this is a hardware problem or a software problem.
Anyone? I feel really upset about this...

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Screen Tearing in FCP 6