Choppy video on only part of the timeline?

[MeAgain]

OK!- so I imported a bunch of .mov files from my harddrive into FCP a while back. I got a bunch of messages saying they weren't "optimized" for FCP and to use media manager to copy them. I didn't know how to do that or what the warning meant, the videos played fine and I had no problems. I searched around here and a few other forums and read that the warning wasn't a big deal, it meant that FCP might have trouble playing back in realtime smoothly for editing. I didn't seem to have that problem, even when I started editing and adding FX to the footage.

Now that my timeline has gotten a bit longer, I AM having realtime playback problems- I checked the playback on an external production monitor and it still plays smoothly, but on the canvas, it's choppy. Thankfully, I synced up most of my audio before this happened, but I'd really like to fix this.

I went into media manager, tried copying the files, but it seems it only lets you open it up in a new project- does this mean I have to copy each clip and reinsert it into my sequence manually, or can media manager just replace the existing clip with the "optimized" clip? Or did I make another huge mistake?

 

[JoeRawlins]

Sounds dangerous to me. You have good cause to feel concerned.

Here's what I would do:

1. Select your Sequence in the Bin and CTRL-click and select "Duplicate"

2. Open the copy that comes up in the Timeline.

3. Open each of your Quicktime files from the Bin individually in the Viewer ( be careful that they don't have in and out points set in them) and - with the Viewer window still selected - select "File>Export>Quicktime Movie" to make a Final Cut self-contained version of the individual original media file and store it in a folder separately on your machine.

IMPORTANT: make sure to name the clip the exact same thing it is currently, even if it's "Untitled1"

4. inside the NEW Sequence, CTRL-click any individual video clip and choose "Reconnect Media". When you select the Final Cut self-contained, watch to make sure that the checkbox tat says "Reconnect other files in a similar path" is selected. This should reconnect the rest of your media to corresponding self-contained files, also.

And if it still doesn't improve, then you still have the original Sequence to fall back on.

 

[MeAgain]

Let me just update and say that it seems to effect the ENTIRE timeline now...but not as bad in every spot. It seems to be REALLY bad in places with video AND audio, though everything is rendered. Could it be because of the few files on the timeline that AREN'T optimized?