Final Cut Pro timeline only showing audio

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Level 3

557 points

Final Cut Pro timeline only showing audio

I was working on a project in FCP 11.1.1, on which I had video-audio clips, and audio only clips. EVerything went fine until I hit something and in a second, all video were greyed-out. I tried for over 2 hours to recoved this. Inspector would only show AUDIO clips. Nothing played back but audio.

I closed the library and project. I created a new library and new project, and imported (fortunately I had one) an output of the previous project in media. Dragged it to the project timeline. It plays correctly in teh preview pane, but still, the timeline itself just show audio clips!

Why would such an option exists, and how have I triggered it - to the point where it now looks my timeline will only show audio clips ! ? (If I want to edit audio, I have Cubase and Pro Tools to do so, I would not use a video editor).

How am I getting a normal workspace at this point ? (I guess the good news is probably i have not lost my video clips in the first project and library...)

Mac mini, macOS 14.8

Posted on Dec 2, 2025 6:54 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

73,026 points

Dec 2, 2025 11:22 PM in response to lanstrad1

A screenshot, as Larrie asked, would probably be helpful.

It seemed from your description that the first timeline already have video clips in it, and suddenly the thumbnails appear dimmed and when playing back there was only audio.

This is consistent with Larrie's suggest that the video roles may have been turned off.

To test this: with that project open in the timeline, press Command-Shift-2 to open the Timeline Index; click on Roles. Make sure that all relevant roles are checked.

Now, this should be all, except that this change works on a project by project basis - then the new project you created should have shown video.

A second possibility is that you have selected Audio Only (or more likely have accidentally pressed the shortcut Shift-3) - see the icons at the top left of the timeline.

If they look like this:

it means that Audio Only is selected.

Instead it should look like this, meaning "All" (i.e., video and audio) is selected.

Click the little down arrow and make sure to select All:

Note: this only affects the content that you add to the timeline, so if you added something already and it is only using audio, select it in the timeline, press Shift-F and then drag the browser clip over and choose Replace.

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Answer 2

Dec 2, 2025 8:47 PM in response to lanstrad1

Without a screen shot of your timeline it is hard to tell exactly what you are seeing. One possibility is that you managed to turn the video role off. You can check this by opening the Index Panel and clicking on the Roles section. Then you can verify if the Video role is turned on or off. A check in the box means it is turned on.

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