Audio Tracks in Timeline

Your audio tracks have that colored line or the timeline has it at the top above where the audio clips are placed?

These are render bars, keyframe bars or filter bars. You can selecto have them displayed or not.
They are all, in fact, clearly explained in the manuals. You just do not know where to look (which means you haven't done the tutorials but I'm sure you'll get around to them). Check out the descriptions of the timeline layouts and timeline display controls.

Since they turn green, I assume they are render bars. This indicates the audio format you have chosen for your sequence does not match the audio format of the tracks. There can be subtle differences in frame rates and sampling rates that cause FCP to process the audio in realtime, that's why they're green.

Control click on one of the tracks and choose render, see what happens.
Post back but check the manual and online help systems first for a better explanation of what they mean. You will find there are way too many different bars and they come in way too many colors and the colors will change depending on your system prefs, user prefs, sequence settings, how many tracks you start to add and your CPU power. .

bogiesan

I think what you have going on is the duplicated frames indicator. Check the manual Volume I, page 129-130 and Volume IV, page 140. That's what it sounds like to me.

Have you used the same media at multiple times in the timeline?

Then I would try trashing FCP prefs, restarting and seeing if they go away. I get some weird glitches sometimes and that usually fixes it.

You're providing us with information now that would have come in handy earlier, saved us much time telling you stuff you already knew or have tried.

I see a pale blue bar at the top of speed-adjusted audio clips. So it's possible to get colored bars on clips in the timeline. We've been trying all kinds of filters and other stuff to try to get other colors but no dice.

You could post a picture somewhere, that would certainly help since what you're describing is what we've been trying to solve and what you're describing isn't what we see in our heads.

Forget trashing the prefs, I'd say you're looking at a new Macintosh, yep. (joke)

bogiesan

Wasting time is a bit of a problem around here. Patience is another. If you choose to stick around, you'll see how it works. Without adequate information and background, we all spin our wheels.

You: > Sure enough, some of my DV audio that originated from a older Canon XL1 had a bizarre sample rate of 48009.3 Hz. (Video caputred from the same camera also drifts out of synch if captured in blocks larger than 30 minutes. I'm guessing the problems are related.) <

Ripple: > Have you ever wondered what those green bars running along the top of your audio clips indicate? In a nutshell, Final Cut Pro is telling you that the audio sample rate for the clip does not match the sequence audio sample rate. There could be any number of causes for this, but the most frequent cause is editing audio imported from a CD (at 44.1 kHz) into a timeline that is setup for DV editing (at 48 kHz). You may be tempted to think, Òwell, my audio sounds fine, why should I care?Ó The answer to that question has to do with CPU overhead. Whenever Final Cut Pro encounters an audio clip that does not conform to the sequence standard, it must up-convert the audio on-the-fly while playing it back.<

Me: > There can be subtle differences in frame rates and sampling rates that cause FCP to process the audio in realtime, that's why they're green. <

I was right. Sort of. But who cares and who's keeping score?
Sometimes I do.

bogiesan

audio drift.

x

ps. a G5 powerbook? Maybe that's the issue.