Final Cut Pro X audio clips appear red and show no waveforms

Question

Level 1

19 points

Final Cut Pro X audio clips appear red and show no waveforms

I have Audio clips in Final Cut that are RED as if they are not linked and I can't see the waveforms. The audio is there and will play. Occasionally, when I start or restart FCPX they will look fine and then turn red. Ive relinked the files 100 times and that doesn't work. The files themselves are stereo WAV 48k files that I made, and some are downloads straight from Musicbed. I tried trashing all the render files, but that didn't work either. It doesnt seem to matter if im working in proxy or optimized.

FCPX 11.2

Mac OS 15.7.1

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.7

Posted on Nov 17, 2025 9:20 AM

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Answer 1

BenB

Level 6

13,166 points

Nov 17, 2025 4:27 PM in response to coligreens

Wow, not seen that in ages. It was a bug way back. That red you see are NOT do to unlinked media. First thing to do is delete the Preference files. If that doesn't work, take those files into Compressor and re-encode them as AIFF files. Re-import into FCP and see what happens.

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Answer 2

terryb

Level 4

3,358 points

Nov 18, 2025 10:22 AM in response to coligreens

Do you have iCloud storage enabled and are the audio files stored in one of the managed folders?

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Answer 3

coligreens Author

Level 1

19 points

Nov 17, 2025 5:47 PM in response to BenB

Its been a while since I had to trash preferences. WIll I lose all my shortcuts and custom workspaces if I trash the Prefs?

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Answer 4

Nov 17, 2025 11:19 PM in response to coligreens

coligreens wrote:

Its been a while since I had to trash preferences. WIll I lose all my shortcuts and custom workspaces if I trash the Prefs?

You won't lose your shortcuts.

Workspaces can be restored: when you do the command-option launch of FCP, a compressed file is created on your desktop that contains the stuff that was deleted. Its name starts with VideoApp-Diagnostics, includes the application and a timestamp. Inside you will see your Workspaces.

You can place them back in ~/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro/Workspaces

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