Noise on picture during playback

I have a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro running OSX Tiger and FCP 6.0.4.

Since about 6.0.2, I have noticed on the MacBook Pro first, and then months later on the Mac Pro, kind of a flickering noise during playback. I thought it might be monitor or a bad cable, but it's showing up on the Canvas window as well. If I just stop playback, wait a few seconds, it might go away.

I posted something about it several months ago, but no one else seemed to be having this issue. I finally was able to shoot my monitor with my camera to show exactly what I'm seeing...here it is:


These horizontal lines just kind of flicker off and on, and not always the same length or position. It flickers once every second or two.

I can't believe that no one else has experienced this because it's happening on BOTH FCP systems.

Anyone know what this is?

Thanks!

Casey Petersen
www.unitedvideoinc.com

Do you get a lot more flicker when you turn the brightness right down on the screen? This is probably your screen(s) - get on to Applecare.

Brightness has no effect.

This isn't a monitor or cable issue (I've tried different ones for one thing) because the noise shows up in FCP's Canvas window as well on my NEC monitor I use on my Mac Pro, the 23" Cinema Display is just for video preview only.

Thanks,
Casey

I was having this problem on our MacBook Pro. The laptop was freezing up a lot, so I decided to reformat the hard drive and do a clean install. So far, the freezing has stopped, and furthermore the noise stopped as well. Maybe this problem is specific to me and not a bug. I probably should reformat the drive on the Mac Pro as well and do a clean install, and that should take care of this, I think.

BTW, since reinstalling the system on the laptop, I'd like to archive the drive, so I can just restore it if I ever need to do this again. Does anyone know of a good Mac program that does this?

Thanks!
Casey

I do something similar, Casey. I've got about a 400 GB disk that I use for Mac OS X on my Mac Pro. I've got it partitioned in half (using Disk Utility). I installed Leopard on one half, installed Final Cut Studio and After Effects and whatnot, got them all updated and set up just how I like them. Then I used a little program called Super Duper to clone my whole system over to the other partition.

The next time something major happens, like installing a Mac OS X update or whatever, I'll be able to go back to my previous system if I need to. And if it turns out the update goes badly, I can always just boot off the other, older partition, blast the updated partition and re-clone so I've got another good backup.

I guess if you wanted you could buy a 160 GB (or whatever size you need) FireWire drive and clone your system onto it before every major update. That way you could keep known-good backups of all your previous stable Mac OS X-Final Cut-QuickTime combos, just in case. Since most folks only update their systems a couple times a year, tops, it wouldn't even be that expensive.

Well, the noise on the laptop is back. It's not as frequent as before, but it's back nonetheless. I can't believe I'm the only one who this happens to. Should I be using Leopard?

Casey

Does it cover your whole screen or just the canvas and viewer? If it's the whole screen (as it looks like in your screenshot) I'd still say it's a warranty job.

I have a 23" Cinema display that I use for my preview monitor...it's just the timeline's output only. I also have 21" PC monitor that I use for everything else...Finder stuff, FCP timelines, bins and other windows.

The noise that shows up is only on the Canvas window and the external 23" display. It only appears on top of video I am playing back. If I stop playback and wait a little while, it will go away for a while. But the noise is just on top of the video in the canvas and on the preview monitor, only during playback.

Thanks!
Casey

Casey,
Have you figured out what the problem is? I have the same problem with my FCP. It freezes up my entire computer as well. Weird thing is, I had this problem about a month ago. I moved to a new place and the problem was gone when I got here. Yesterday I had to rearrange my office so I unplugged everything and changed my office. Plugged back in and now the problem is back. Any new info would help me greatly.
Best
Dave

This has got to be a video card issue. Any chance you got 2 video cards installed?

[support.apple.com]

Michael Horton
-------------------

I do Have two installed. I was only using one though. I just took out the Video card that I was not using and it did not fix the problem. Any other suggestions?

I only have the MacBook Pro's built in card.

The problem has been fixed on the laptop, but not the Mac Pro. The laptop was doing this and crashing frequently, so we took it into an Apple store and they replaced some logic board...I don't think it was the motherboard...but since then, it's worked perfect.


Casey