Audio beeps in Final Cut Pro

When I lay down an audio track from an mp3 file in FCP and hit the space bar to preview it, all I hear are beeps. If I scrub the timeline the audio is there. Doing any sort of preview render doesn't help get rid of the beeps.
Can anyone please advise me what to do or what I am doing wrong?
Thanks for any advice.

MBP 2.4ghz 4gb ram and Mac Pro 2.8 8 core 10 GB ram, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Jan 21, 2009 4:29 AM

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4 replies

Jan 21, 2009 4:38 AM in response to Luis Ortega

Luis,
what FCP is telling you is that you need to render (can you see the red line running across the top of the timeline?).
(To render>main menu>settings)
Use the manual (main menu> help) to read about rendering and everything you need to know. Simply enter a keyword and go.

What I am also telling you is that mp3 is NOT suitable to edit. It is a delivery compressed format.

Open your audio files with QT and export them as AIFF 48khz then import those into FCP.

G.

Jan 21, 2009 6:54 AM in response to Luis Ortega

Another thing the beeps tell is that the number of tracks of real-time audio playback set in FCP's User Preferences is lower than the demand made by the audio tracks in the Timeline.

Audio effects tax the system with demand for the equivalent CPU power of additional tracks of playback capability beyond the number of tracks in the Timeline.

For example, you might have four tracks of audio during a certain portion of the Timeline, but two of the tracks have audio effects added which require an additional 4 tracks of CPU power. That means, to play that portion back in real-time without rendering, you would need to set the number of RT audio tracks in User Preferences to at least 8.

As you would expect, setting that number higher reduces the CPU power available for video playback.

So, if you're hearing beeps but you really don't want to take the time to render, try changing that setting in User Preferences and see if it allows you to hear your audio.

NOTE: It sometimes might be quicker to render than make that setting change. Audio renders quickly.

FWIW. YMMV.

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Audio beeps in Final Cut Pro

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