Nikon ZR RED RAW-NE not working in Final Cut Pro

I have an M1 Ultra Mac Studio and have edited large documentaries using R3D from the V-Raptor 8k and Komodo 6k, so that obviously works. But I don't have any in-house material from the new Nikon R3D NE codec.

When you first reported this in November 2025, I searched the web, found what small Nikon R3D NE samples I could, and spent several hours testing those on my M1 Ultra Mac Studio. I could never reproduce a problem.

Maybe you're right -- the problem might only happen if using larger R3D NE files or several of them. If you could upload some of those to me at this URL, I'll try again: https://we.tl/r-lEtzKdxYmT

Please also indicate if your import failures happened using the FCP import dialog or drag/drop from Finder. If you have only used one of those import methods, please try the other one. E.g, if the import failures were using the FCP import dialog, try drag/drop from Finder, or vice versa.

If possible, soon after one of the R3D NE anomalies in FCP, run the "sudo sysdiagnose" command from terminal. That will take several minutes (shown by a progress bar) and it puts the bundle of diagnostic info in /private/var/tmp/. That is a hidden folder so to see it in Finder, you'll need to enable "show hidden files" via SHIFT+CMD+. (SHIFT+CMD+period). Send that to me also.

This is a two-pronged approach. If several larger R3D NE files enable me to reproduce this I can file a bug based on that. If not, I can analyze the sysdiagose data and get some leads from that.

To start, launch FCP holding Opt+Cmd to reset the preferences.

Verify at least 15% of your system drive is still free space.

Verify you are not working on an external drive that is formatted as Ex-FAT or some version of FAT.

Turn off background rendering, delete all render files.

Of course it's your choice, but I would suggest that a FCP update might happen much sooner if you provide joema with larger sample files for him to investigate the issue and file an official bug report with the developers. I'm sure I speak for everyone here that we're all very thankful for his dedication helping the FCP devs fix some critical bugs.

Hey Ben, my M1 Ultra Mac Studio has an 8TB internal SSD, and I currently have 3.2 TB free space. So it is possible.

We know from EtreCheck data that a surprisingly high % of problems are caused by insufficient space, so it's worth verifying that. However, I doubt that's the case here, since he tested it on both a Mac Studio and an iMac.

SSD on a Mac should be using APFS, but extended is OK (not optimal), so we're good there.

No one has terabytes of space on their system drive, so that question is not answered.