FCP 5.1.4 no longer playing clips it used to play w/o rendering first

Question

G5 2.7 Dual GHz PPC, 4.5 GB SDRAM, OSX 10.4.11
I haven’t used FCP 5.1.4 for quite a while. I digitized some home movie footage from miniDV directly into FCP 5.1.4. It plays back fine in the preview window. It plays fine if I open it up and play it from Quicktime v 7.6.4 (518.35). But when I put the FCP digitized clip in the timeline I get the red line indicating that it has to be rendered before I can see it play back in the canvas window. I tried to digitize new footage thru firewire directly into FCP with the same result – plays fine in the preview window and in QT. But it won’t play in the timeline / canvas window until I render it first. And the render file is twice the size of the original footage I digitized directly into FCP.
Also, playback is getting stuck on footage that used to play fine. The audio keeps playing alright, but the video gets stuck, then catches up and plays a bit, then gets stuck again, sometimes never coming back. If I export the file as a QT movie, the QT movie plays with the video getting stuck – I don’t know if it’s in the same places. But it makes exporting a waste of time as an option to “work around” the problem.
Did something change in FCP in the last year that I am not aware of? Like, maybe, FCP now upconverts / up-renders DV footage as HD footage as a default, or something like that? I used to just digitize 4:3 standard def footage into FCP, then drag it down into the time line, hit the space bar, and FCP would just play the files. Trim, delete sections, normal edits, and FCP would always play w/o rendering.
I don’t want to upconvert any of my standard def 4:3 home movies. I just want to digitize the footage thru / via DV, make some straight cuts, adjust low volume, put in some chapter markers, and send the edited home movies to Compressor so I can make DVD’s out of my home movies. I’m not even putting in transitions and FCP says I have to render the entire file from beginning to end!
I did add an iPhone to the scenario since I last used FCP. I noticed that the syncing that seems to go on constantly as a result of / related to the iPhone seems to reek havoc with FCP. So I shut auto-sync off. Now I have double everything in my iPhone again. But I’ll do whatever I have to in order to be able to use FCP to make DVD’s of all my old home movies.
I stopped using this USB 2.0 drive. The last time I tried to digitize something it was on an internal hard drive – separate from my boot drive, and not a partition of my boot drive, a separate internal hard drive, which should be even faster than the firewire 400 hard drives I used to use.
Please tell me if there is something I have to unselect to make FCP 5.1.4 just stay in Standard Def 4:3 so I can just edit my home movies without having to use 166% more hard drive space and wait for rendering on most everything I do.
If my session is corrupt and I have to start all over in a new session, please let me know whether there is a way to export the chapter markers that I’ve already painstakingly inserted on the home movies I’ve already struggled through, so I don’t have to re-figure, re-locate, re-name, and recreate them again. Even a printout of the chapter marker location times and the names of the chapters in simple text format would be better than having to recreate each and every one of them from scratch all over again.
Thank you.
Options – that were already – selected in User Prefs:
Sync audio capture to video source if present
Warn when importing non-optimized media
Auto-render
Render: Open Sequences
Render RT Segments
Message was edited by: Tone Sanchez

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, they are not different, except for:
Aud Rate: 48001.8Hz on the older clip
Aud Rate: 48001.9Hz on the new clip
I cannot explain why the sample rates are not 48000 exactly. I didn't try to digitize them at the rates they digitized. The first, older clip came off of a miniDV tape via firewire from a JVC SR-VS30 miniDV / S-VHS deck. The second, new clip was digitized from the original BetaMax recording, in real time, through the same JVC SR-VS30 miniDV / S-VHS deck configuration, FCP set to DVDVCPRO50, the standard setting for DV that was the preset, that I have always used, using the miniDV deck as a "non-controllable device" source, recording into FCP in real time "Capture Now". Below are the Item Properties and the Sequence Settings:
Item Properties for “GM reads letter pt 1” older clip – this file has been rendered:
Creator: QuickTime Player
Size: 3.9 GB
Tracks 1V, 2A
Vid Rate: 29.97
Frame Size: 720 x 480
Compressor: DV/DVCPRO – NTSC
Data Rate: 3.6 MB/sec
Pixel Aspect: NTSC – CCIR 601
Field Dominance: Lower (Even)
Alpha: None/Ignore
Composite: Normal
Audio: Stereo
Aud Rate: 48001.8Hz
Aud Format: 16-bit Integer
Item Properties for “GM Pete Beg to end real time” new clip – this file has NOT been rendered:
Creator: QuickTime Player
Size: 16.6 GB
Tracks 1V, 2A
Vid Rate: 29.97
Frame Size: 720 x 480
Compressor: DV/DVCPRO – NTSC
Data Rate: 3.6 MB/sec
Pixel Aspect: NTSC – CCIR 601
Field Dominance: Lower (Even)
Alpha: None/Ignore
Composite: Normal
Audio: Stereo
Aud Rate: 48001.9Hz
Aud Format: 16-bit Integer
Sequence Settings – General for GM reads letter pt 1 clip:
720 x 480 NTSC DV (3:2)
NTSC – CCIR 601 / DV (720 x 480)
Lower (Even)
Editing Timebase: 29.97
Compressor DVCPRO50 – NTSC
Quality: 100%
Audio Settings: 48 kHz
Depth: 16-bit
Config: Default
Sequence Settings – Video Processing for GM reads letter pt 1 clip:
Render in 8-bit YUV
Process Maximum White as: White
Motion Filtering Quality: Normal
Sequence Settings – Timeline Options for GM reads letter pt 1 clip:
Starting TC: 01:00:00:00 Non-Drop Frame
Track Display Selected:
Show Keyframe Overlays
Show Audio Waveforms
Show Through Edits
Show Duplicate Frames
Video:
Motion Bar
Filters Bar
Keyframe Editor
Speed Indicators
Audio:
Filters Bar
Keyframe Editor
Speed Indicators
Render & Playback:
Filters
Frame Blending For Speed
Motion Blur
Render:
Frame Rate: 100%
Resolution: 100%
Audio Outputs: 2
Downmix: 0
Grouping: Stereo