FCP won't render all of the smooth slow-mo parts of my project

There are a few sections in my FCP project that show as unrendered in the timeline, and those dotted lines won't go away, no matter how many times I select "Render all" or "Render selection." I'm looking at the task manager, and sometimes I can force it to start working, and the dotted lines start to disappear from the timeline... but then they reappear, and the task manager goes back to showing "idle." I think the unrendered parts are all slow motion parts.


I thought maybe exporting my project would force it to finish rendering, but instead it gave me this error prompt that my project has background tasks that are not yet complete. And as you can see in the attached, it's indicating that all background tasks are idle.


FYI, this issue started happening after I moved my project to a new library.

Mac Studio, macOS 15.4

Posted on Apr 16, 2025 11:00 PM

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Apr 17, 2025 8:45 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I have 5.3 TB of free space on that drive, which is significantly more than on the drive that had originally held this project. Anyway, you were right, the exported video does seem to be fine. But it's still unrendered when I watch it in FCP -- the frame rate goes way down in those parts. Fortunately I'm done with this project, but if I ever wanted to make changes, that would be a real drag, because I'd have to export a video every time I wanted to see my changes.


This is all rather troubling, particularly given that I just spent four grand on a new Mac Studio because I thought FCP would run more smoothly.

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Apr 19, 2025 6:35 AM in response to Explodey

Try deleting all the render files in the library. It sounds like you may have some corrupted render files buried in the library that are causing this.


In my workflow, I have found that things work smoother overall if I delete all the library render files every time I quit for the day. I then close the library, and close Final Cut. This has the added benefit of asking the fcpbundle file smaller.


When I output the final video for a client, everything is properly rendered in the exported file, even if they are not rendered in the time line.

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FCP won't render all of the smooth slow-mo parts of my project

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