Multicam video/audio stalls when playing

I multicammed three videos and an audio.  When I attempt to play in back I get about 5 seconds of synced footage and audio then the video freezes but the audio continues.  If I stop and start playback, it works again for a a few seconds and then the same problem.  I am operating on a desktop mac with a WD external drive.  The read and write speed is about 70 MB/s.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Most likely, your system and drive throughput isn't able to handle multicam playback, as is. Things depend on your computer's RAM, processor, other processes that are running, frame size/rate of your media, the media's codec(s), etc. Third-party encoded H.264/H.265 files can be hard for FCP to decode quickly.

You might want to select "better performance" in the Viewer menu. Also, you might consider transcoding to ProRes for better performance (manually or via the preference setting). ProRes is easier for FCP to decode/process though it requires  much more storage than H.264/H.265 files. You could also create proxy files for editing (and switch back to higher quality or original files for color and VFX work and before export).

A single external hard drive is not going to work well for multicam. You should consider getting a Thunderbolt 3 or fater SSD or a RAID of some sort.

Thanks DaveM I had tried "better performance" to no avail. I will try your other suggestions. I kind of suspected that it might be my old WD Passport external drive. The speed tests at 70 MB/s. Probably too slow. I have been reading up on SSD's. Will report back.

If you have a newer Mac with USB-C or Thunderbolt 3/4 ports (or USB3), something like this is very affordable and should work well (as a start):

www.amazon.com/dp/B08HN37XC1/?th=1

You want to make sure you are using a sufficiently fast connection. Connecting via USB2 will severely limit the I/O performance of an SSD drive or RAID.


Cheers.

thanks for the further advice. Will try these suggestions.