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Why is the playback in Final Cut Express 4 delayed by 30 seconds?

I am finding editing with Final Cut Express 4 has gotten slow and frustrating. This is a new problem. I have used this software for two years with no problems until now. I'll start out editing a project normally for about an hour. Then the playback function starts to lag. After I render a clip and try to play back what I've done by hitting the space bar, I have to look at the spinning color wheel for 30 seconds before my video will play. I have no other programs open, I have 10 GB of RAM. I upgraded my OS from Leopard to Snow Leopard a few months ago. All my Apple Software is updated. FCX has also been crashing and locking up. Is there a preferred way to save my project for more efficient editing? I also tried starting a new project with only a five minute audio mp3 clip and a 10 sec slug for video. I get the same playback delay with this project. In this case I only saved the project not "save all".

Posted on Nov 11, 2012 11:22 AM

20 replies

Jodibob

Level 1

0 points

Dec 3, 2012 10:47 AM in response to Alchroma

Al,

No, not a live capture. I have stacked 4 video files and masked each one using a Bezier matte so that only a part of each video is visible. It worked fine 3 months ago when I first edited it. Now as I have begun to make more edits, I find the timeline and the slug viewer perform perfectly, but the canvas viewer just shows the saved version from 3 months ago, regardless of the changes I made and saved since then, and regardless of how many times I save the project or close and reopen FCE.

In the meantime, I have worked around it by creating a new project and copying and pasting the old clips into place in the new sequence, and of course re-rendering everything. But I fear I might have the same problem reoccur, and want to avoid it. But so far, so good.

Weird, huh?

Bob

Alchroma

Level 7

23,809 points

Dec 3, 2012 1:46 PM in response to Jodibob

Not sure why you can't save!!

There is the default Auto Save Vault files that create backups, you could try one of those that pre-date when the trouble started.

There may be a bad render file in there??

Also if you are using Lion or Mountain Lion, this may also create it's own issues as Lion & M Lion are not supported with FCE.

Trashing the Preference files is also a good maintenance task when FCE goes amiss.

Jodibob

Level 1

0 points

Dec 6, 2012 4:40 AM in response to Alchroma

Al,

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm running Snow Leopard, so there shouldn't be issues there. I tried trashing the preferences but it still won't update the saved file. At this point I've rebuilt everything I needed, so I won't try to recover the old version, but will keep that in mind if I encounter this again.

Thanks again for your ideas.

Bob

Jan 7, 2013 2:27 PM in response to Robert Riedlinger

I solved my own problem of delayed playback when reviewing my edits in FCX 4. Turns out that the delays happened when my Time Machine was doing an automatic backup. I noticed in the upper rt task bar the Time Machine clock was spinning at the same time I was having playback delays. I turned off the back up function and the delay problem went away. Now I'll just have Time Machine backing up when I'm not editing in FCX4.

Bob

Alchroma

Level 7

23,809 points

Jan 7, 2013 2:45 PM in response to Robert Riedlinger

Thanks for the feedback. 🙂

Why is the playback in Final Cut Express 4 delayed by 30 seconds?