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Banding in FCP 7 with Mountain Lion ...

Anyone know of a fix?

While the programs still work fine, one fundamental change that Apple has made in Mountain Lion is to push more of the responsibility for displaying the image on the computer monitor to the GPU of the graphics card. Previously these responsibilities were shared with the CPU. Therefore, if you have an older graphics card (even if it is fully compatible with FCPX, as ours are), FCP6/7 has a difficult time playing back 1080 video in the Canvas window (at any size), without breaking up when there is some degree of movement in the video image.The screen cannot refresh quickly enough to draw the video image without showing horizontal banding and some minor digital garbage.

Rest assured that the render files are clean and the output file will be fine. Once exported, a self-contained .mov file will playback fine in Quicktime, showing no banding where there previously was banding when viewed in FCP. This is an issue with display only. If you can live with it, fine. But it is rather distracting while editing.

Can someone please address or advise??? I've tried on my brand new, just before they discontiued, 17 inch MacBook Pro as well and same EXACT issue.

Of course I can down grade to Snow Leopard, but are there any other workarounds? Like changing graphics card?

8-Core 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon MacPro, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Aug 30, 2012 9:13 PM

100 replies

Jul 22, 2013 7:07 AM in response to ez0es

As far as I know the same banding is happening in leopard. Think I heard that earlier in this thread. The cropping plugin isn't really a big deal in ppro.. it's just dragging it down. It works pretty much the same but one bummer is it doesn't have feathering option.. I use masks for that. I find there's definately a few things I miss that final cut had.. but also a few things that PPro does better.. so it's kinda a wash for me. As I continue to use it I care less and less about the FCP7 had.. I guess you have to get therapy like me and come to the place you can finally let go. ha 😀 There is hope on the other side!

RatVega™

Level 4

2,005 points

Jul 22, 2013 10:37 AM in response to ez0es

ez0es wrote:

Has anyone down graded to snow leopard? has it worked? I am about to revert back to 10.6 if I can get a concensus that this soluation might work.

As I posted last September (on page 1 of this thread):

"If you can, back down to Snow Leopard... I have an 8X 3.2GHz Mac Pro 3,1 and I'm getting flawless playback on three monitors with a Radeon 5770.

It is unlikely that Apple will respond at all, and a virtual certainty that they will not spend resources to better support 4+ year old system. Trench in at a defensible position and continue the fight..."

The question is: Can you revert back?

Oct 6, 2013 1:15 PM in response to RatVega™

Has anyone tested the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680Mac Edition Graphics Card with FCP7?

The tech specs on the card describe this:

NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync

Nothing is more distracting than framerate stuttering and screen tearing. The first tends to occur when framerates are low, the second when framerates are high. Adaptive V-Sync is a smarter way to render frames. At high framerates, V-sync is enabled to eliminate tearing, at low frame rates, it's disabled to minimize stuttering. It gets rid of distractions so you can get on with gaming.

Curious to see if this resolves the screen tearing in FCP7? Proabbly not but worth a test if anyone has this card ...

Oct 8, 2013 8:30 AM in response to Christopher Sims

I do:

Macpro 5.1 12 core 3.3

PC card PNY GTX680

Nvidia driver from Nvidia website

Mountain Lion 10.8.5

Eveything's working fine

PS: just try for fun: Mavericks + FCP 7: issue with sound playback!!!

Oct 9, 2013 11:09 AM in response to Hung Ton Quoc

Nope ... same problem. Just installed the 680 card. Same video tearing issues in FCP7. There is no solution. I've tried every single option besides going in and re-coding FCP7.

Although the card does make things all around more snappier. Not sure it's worth the $600 if it doesn't resolve the video tearing in the viewer and canvas windows of FCP7.

Nothing will change unless Apple updates FCP7 which will never happen.

Must get use to it or view from external monitor.

Oct 14, 2013 9:58 AM in response to Christopher Sims

For what it's worth:

The iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro Retina do not seem to have this display issue. At least, not on any of the systems that I've configured since this thread first appeared on the discussion forums (six iMacs, two Mac minis. three MacBook Pro Retinas).

Of course, these machines are not right for every workflow and I doubt that anyone who's been posting here is ready to retire their tower just yet; however, if the tearing is making you crazy (and indeed, it should), an iMac or Mac mini might make a good solution while still cutting with FCP7 and the most recent OS. Your installer discs need to be turned into disc images wtih Disc Utility, you have to download the Pro Applicaitons update manually and QuickTime Player 7 needs to be copied from another machine, but it's doable.

-Warren

Oct 23, 2013 6:45 PM in response to Warren Heaton

Anyone one else install Mavericks? Does it resolve the banding issues in FCP7???

Oct 27, 2013 12:50 PM in response to Christopher Sims

Just installed Mavericks on Macbook Pro mid 2009 15" 2.53 GHz, tearing is still visible. Bummer!.

Oct 27, 2013 3:15 PM in response to David Mclaine

FCP 7 work in Maverick?

Jul 21, 2015 7:37 PM in response to Christopher Sims

Thread revival! 2 years later!

I'm still have to use FCP 7 for my main client and I've been dealing w/ trying to fix my banding/tearing issues ever since upgrading to 10.9.5 from 10.6.8.

After my research, reading posts on the subject etc, i've realized that there is no fix and the the only thing to do is revert back to 10.6.8 where I've never seen one band in over 3 years on my mac 5,1 workstation.

I really appreciate the time that C. Sims and everyone else in this thread put in trying different video cards and other solutions, was about to try a new card before i found this thread.

Using 10.6.8 is really starting become a hindrance though, for example, it doesn't really support USB 3 (have a cal digit card that does but its dicey) also, I'm on the earliest Kona Lhi firmware available and lastly Aspera needs safari X.x to use the upload client but that version isn't supported in 10.6.8, stuff like that.

Still got my 10.6.8 drive though, gonna re-install the kona drivers for it tomorrow AM and fire it back up and in to no-banding bliss.

Guess i can boot onto 10.9.5 when i need more modern apps, versions etc.

Shame FCP 7 is dead, was truly one of the all time greats in its day.

Here lies FCP 7... Requiescat In Pace

Banding in FCP 7 with Mountain Lion ...