Viewer Screen goes black while editing , but timeline shows video & audio clips. Cause?

While editing suddenly the viewer screen goes black or blank. Can see the video and audio clips in TL. Can hear audio . Can see inspector info per clip. What could be cause and cure?

Expand your timeline out to be sure your playhead is not sitting on an orphan gap clip or some fraction of a clip created by a short transition. If it is, zoom in to delete it.

If that's not the case, try deleting your preference files and restarting fcpx.

Another thing to try is to delete unused render files in the project and the events tied to that project.

Thank you for your 3 solutions. #1-No bad 'Orphan clip' to be found. Please forgive my ignorance: #2 the Preference Files are locate where?; #3 The Render Files I find in my HD in a folder called Final Cut Events: high quality media-2 files, peaks data-25 files, thumbnail media-30 files. Which do I delete as you suggest?

Finally, this problem occurs in a particular project though not all. If the play bar is pressed starting anywhere in the TL of that project the viewer screen will unexpectedly, immediately turn blank. What might be causing that issue in that project?

Thanks again for your input.

Get the preference manager program free from Digital Rebellion and use that to remove and trash preference files from FCPX, Compressor and Motion.

To delete render files, select the project in the project library so it is highlighted. From the FILE menu above, select DELETE project render files. Choose Unused render files. If that doesn't help, try again choosing ALL render files.

Then you'll need to do this separately for the event files. Click to highlight the event or events that are a part of your project. From the FILE menu choose to delete UNUSED or ALL event render files as needed.

Restart FCPX and see what happens.

I for one have had many issues with playback when using any color profile for my monitor other than the built-in standard one (I am on an imac, so that would be the imac basic profile). If you have calibrated personally your monitor, try quitting fcpx, going to system preferences, monitor, and setting the color profile to the default one. Then open up fcpx again and it should be good. Although this might work, it still seems strange that your problem only appears with one particular project. Maybe you have another problem, but I would definitely try this. Let us know if you find a solution!

Ok as you advised, I did the Digital Rebellion repair. I also deleted unused render files. I rebooted FVPX. Still have problem.

In the TL, though the files are all shown in the event Library, and I reimported every one of them per category from my Capture Scratch Folder in the HD, many showing in the Event Libraries are still not being 'read' in the TL. When playing some of the Project sections I get the red box 'missing file' for many of these. What could possible be causing this? Those TL segments should be referencing the files in the Libraries. But it cant seem to find them.

Thank You,

One quick clarification about remaining serious problem:

Even with the TL not connecting to the clips clearly shown in the Event Libraries and instead shows a 'missing file', clips which I reimported from my Capture Scratch folder on the HD, if I insert/drag those event library clips now into the TL it will read them. But this will take many hours to replace the 'missing files' plus have to recreate all the special effects that were put into the TL files. Those effects and all the special colors added are lost when you replace that clip with a new original one from the Library.

Why would suddenly this Project not recognize or link up to the library file with a dozen clips. It seems to find most of them.