Music and Sound Browser is Suddenly Blank

I've been using FCPX for a long time with no real issues. Suddenly, today, when I opened the Music and Sound Browser it comes up blank. With no sound effects or music to choose from (and yesterday I had thousands of choices).

I have installed (or upgraded) nothing in the last week and I have rebooted without any effect.

Any thoughts on what could cause this or more importantly, how to display those sound and music files again?

Thanks,

Chris

I just noticed that my photos browser has gone blank too. This is strange.

I added a picture in case anyone wants to see what it looks like.

I've tried deleting preferences, rebooting, and nothing is bringing back the data in my sound or photos browser. The windows are just empty.

Any suggestions?

Not sure why the FCP and iMovie sounds wouldn't show up, but iTunes should be recognized unless you have it on an external drive that is not working or connected. Photos will only show up if you have assigned it as the system photo library. Did you change anything in OS X such as moving your photo or iTunes library? You could maybe try running disk utility on the system drive, and even repairing permissions through using terminal if you are comfortable with that.

Terminal command below: use with caution. To use, open terminal, triple click the terminal command line below, copy and paste into terminal window. Enter your password and let permissions repair. When returned to your user name, COMMAND Q to quit terminal.

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --repair --standard-pkgs --volume /

First, thanks so much for the reply.

Second, I've run disk utility and everything seems okay. In fact, everything on my machine is running perfectly (as far as I can tell), except these two windows in FCPX are coming up blank. And they were working perfectly days ago.

I honestly haven't installed anything and I'm up to date on all my versions. So, it's really weird. I've spent hours searching google and found nothing. I've deleted preferences 3 times. Rebooted more times than I can count. I've even launched photos, iTunes, and garageband (because that was supposedly a fix for a similar problem years ago). But nothing works.

I'm stumped and i really need to get it working, as I'm in the middle of summer camp and i teach with this computer and I'm teaching kids how to use FCPX.

Reinstalling FCPX might fix the problem but I would first suggest creating a new user account. Create a new administrator user and reboot your system. Log into the new user and launch FCPX and see if the music libraries now show up. If they do, there is an issue with your existing user account. Since that can be a bit of a hassle to fix you might then try reinstalling FCPX first on your existing user account. Not sure what else to suggest at this point, but the new user will tell us something.

CMessineo wrote: .... i teach with this computer and I'm teaching kids how to use FCPX.

do the kids have access to your computer?
my son, then 6y old, managed to rename my HDD to "" (nix, nothing, nada) ... oh ohhhh


just to check:
~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Final Cut Pro Sound Effects/ ...

still exists? Under that name?

Thanks for the suggestions: but, no one has access to my machine to rename anything and, yes, the audio files are still there.

Hey Chris,

Sorry to hear you are having these issues.

Let's try to solve this step by step:

1. Launch FCP X and choose Window > Revert to Original Layout. If this does not fix it:

2. Reset the FCP X preferences. I see you have already done this a few times, so skip to:

3. Create a new admin user account and launch FCP X using this account.

- If your media browser shows up as expected using the new account, you may have a corrupt user account. As opposed to what we may think, this is not really difficult to repair. Just follow these guidelines: www.fcpxbook.com/tips/resetting-the-user.html

- If your media browser still turns up empty with the new user account, log back in with your old user account and go to the next step:

4. Completely remove FCP X from your system and install it again: support.apple.com/nl-be/HT202412
If this does not help:

5. Reinstall your OS on top over the existing one: osxdaily.com/2016/02/09/howto-reinstall-os-x-mac-recovery/

Keep us updated on your progress.

- Ronny

Thank you so much for the help.

1. Tried it - no luck.

2. Tried again - no luck again.

3. Tried this and the new account comes up with blank sound and photo browsers.

4. The reinstall makes me nervous for two reasons. One, I have many plugins installed that I think I would have to uninstall first and then reinstall. Two, I have a big project I am in the middle of (that uses many of these plugins). The project is fine right now, so I worry about the install breaking it.

5. I guess I could try this, but damn, I wish there was a less drastic solution.

Okay, thank you.

What version of OSX and FCP X are you running?

- Ronny

Ronny,

So, I tried step 5 and reinstalled FCPX - no luck.

Then I tried step 6 and reinstalled the OS and that did it!

Thank you so much!!!

Chris

CMessineo wrote: ... no one has access to my machine to rename anything and, yes, the audio files are still there.

so, things are narrowed - FCPX just doesn't 'find' the libraries.
guess, you have to take the long route Ronny suggests ...

==edit==
oops, didn't saw you solved your prob! ... useless comment of mine ...............

Hey Chris,

Good te hear you have been able to solve the problem.

This is a very uncommon issue. In 70% of the cases this problem gets solved by simply deleting the FCP X preferences, by repairing permissions or by repairing the user account. You had a worst-case scenario. Fortunately, reinstalling the current OS has become less of a hassle than it used to be and it's pretty safe to do with OSX.

Happy editing!

- Ronny

It did feel a bit scary reinstalling the OS, but it was pretty painless - it just took a couple of hours.

Thanks again, it feels great to have everything working again.