Missing Audio Waveforms in Multicam Clips — Anyone Else?

[gPavloudis]

Hi everyone,

Is anyone else experiencing very slow — or even no — audio waveform generation in Multicam clips in Final Cut Pro, even when working with proxy media generated by FCP?

I’m working with footage from 8 video/audio sources, along with the director’s program feed (PGM). After creating the Multicam clip and enabling only the audio channel I need from each source, I place it in a timeline of about one hour.

The issue is that whenever I zoom in/out, make a cut, or disable specific microphones (for example to remove unwanted mic hits), the audio waveforms disappear and Final Cut Pro takes an extremely long time to redraw them — sometimes they almost never reappear.

I’ve experienced the same behavior in previous versions as well, so it doesn’t seem related to a recent update but rather a more general issue with the multicam workflow or how FCP reads/stores waveform data.

This makes me wonder whether Final Cut Pro is truly suitable for this type of project. I’m referring to large multi-camera TV-style productions (similar to MasterChef or The X Factor) with a heavy amount of footage. I mention this only to clarify the scale of the workflow and whether I’m approaching this correctly using FCP.

For reference, I’m running Final Cut Pro 12.0 on a Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 96GB RAM with macOS 15.7.3.

In a multicam workflow, this makes editing extremely difficult. Has anyone experienced the same issue or found a possible solution?

Test.Episode.HD.25i.-.Large-1.mov

[latenitefilms]

I've never run into this issue, but let me ask around.

[latenitefilms]

Can you try moving the caches to your local drive?

[gPavloudis]

It's bigger than 1TB with the renders. I'll try deleting the renders and moving it internally to the Mac Studio.

[latenitefilms]

FWIW - the only time I EVER render in Final Cut Pro is when I apply Neat Noise Reduction.

[gPavloudis]

I transferred the Cache to the Mac Studio and it works better with keyframes, but when I went to make a cut, I lost the waveforms after the cut.

The truth is that I see an improvement and a faster response in reading the waveforms.

I don't know what to do... I would like to find a Editor who has worked on big TV shows with lots of cameras and lots of microphones. Could he tell me a little about the way he organizes and works. About your workflow.

Thanks for the help Chris.!

[latenitefilms]

I've done just that: https://fcp.cafe/case-studies/neighbours/

I've never had an issue, and I'm on a 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSD.