DJI shots goes Black in Timeline/Viewer.

Hi all,

I am running FCP X 10.6.6 on a Ventura 13.4 Macbook Pro M2 Max.

For some totally unknown reasons, suddenly, ALL my drone shots (DJI Mavic 3, 5K 50p H264 shots) are now BLACK in the viewer, and ONLY those files, on multiples projects and libraries.

I looked online, including in this forum, to try to find a workaround but nothing works for now.
I tried to remove the DJI files from the library but now I can't re-import them, I do not get any error message during import BUT the files are nowhere to be found in the library.
Anyway, files are still linked (I can find them from FCP X to the finder), but all is black.
When I try to export, I can an error message (Can't export).
When I drag and drop a DJI file from the finder directly on the timeline, same thing, all black.

MANY thanks for your help!!
Emmanuel.

I think the issue has been reported there, but I did not find any workaround as of now.
github.com/CommandPost/FCPCafe/issues/119

Yes, I filed that. At that time I only had examples at 23.98 and 29.97 fps but I suspected it might happen at other frame rates.

I think it is isolated to 5k (5120 x 2700). It does not happen at DCI 4k (4096 x 2160) or UHD 4k (3840 x 2160). Although seen in FCP it is not an FCP bug, rather a bug in Ventura 13.4. The same problem happens on DaVinci Resolve.

The Ventura 13.4 "black frame" problem was originally and most commonly reported with Sony 10-bit 4:2:2 XAVC-S at 100 and 120 fps. I updated the bug I filed and tried to ensure Apple is aware of it. 

I have heard the Sony XAVC-S problem has been fixed in Ventura 13.5 beta 2, but I don't know about the DJI 5k problem.

In the meantime you can avoid this by shooting new material at DCI 4k or UHD 4k. For existing 5k material you will have to transcode that using Handbrake before importing to FCP. It is specific to Apple Silicon so Intel Macs on Ventura 13.4 do not experience it.

If it is already imported and edited into a project and you don't have access to an Intel Mac, that is a problem. There are ways to revert to Ventura 13.3.1(a) but I don't know the procedure. 

Many thanks Joema. Yes, I will try to revert to an older OS X version and see that happens.

And yes, all the edit are undergoing.

Regarding the bug, I noticed it is only when there is title over the shot (for intance, subtitles, or real titles).

I am re-testing all permutations of UHD 4k, DCI 4k and 5.1k from the DJI Mavic 3. That is about 50 files since it includes MP4 and MP4, H264 and HEVC (H265). I think there might be some 5.1k settings which work with the current Ventura 13.4 situation, but of course that doesn't help what is already shot.

There may be some other issues if an import contains some of those files and you try to create proxies or optimized media as part of the import. Some worker threads in FCP can get stuck in a non-responsive state, although the UI does not hang. 

Another thing is that our job is mainly to shoot and tell stories in images, and naturally it is not Ventura 13.4 or whatever software who is going to decide what settings we will use on our drone or cameras...

I just finished testing all combinations of resolution, frame rate, container and codec on D-Log (78 total). I did spot testing of non-D-Log profiles and I don't think any of those are affected. Reason: the Mavic 3 automatically uses 10-bit encoding when color profile is switched to D-Log. For all other profiles it is 8-bit and the bug on DJI is 10-bit only. Below is a table of the ones that failed. Anything not on this table should work (including some 5k formats).

joema.smugmug.com/DJI-Black-Clip-Problem...n-MqkcqR/i-V4tqJRM/A

Hi all, do someone has any news on this from Apple?

This is a bug in MacOS Ventura 13.4 unique to Apple Silicon. It is not a FCP bug. It affects Resolve also. 

Ventura 13.4.1 was a critical security-only release and did not contain any other features or bug fixes.

Beta testers of MacOS Ventura 13.5 beta 3 on Apple Silicon report that it apparently fixes the problem. I don't know what the release schedule is for Ventura 13.5.

Hi all,
I've updated my system to the latest Ventura beta 13.5 (22G5072a) and still have the exact same issue...This is becoming extremely problematic for us, what would you suggest doing?
Many thanks!
Emmanuel.

I thought I heard it was fixed on Ventura 13.5 beta 3 and I see beta 4 has been released now (don't know if that's public or only for developers). However maybe that was the Sony XAVC-S 10-bit 4:2:2 100/120 fps fix. I don't have Ventura 13.5 beta on any machine so I can't test it.

If you have access to MacOS on any Intel machine you can just transcode the DJI 5.1K 10-bit H264 material to 5.1K 10-bit HEVC, then on the Apple Silicon Machine, relink. I tested that and it works.

If you don't have access to an Intel MacOS machine you could probably transcode it from H264 to HEVC using Handbrake, but I haven't tested that.

As always, relinking is much more reliable if you've used globally unique filenames. If you have a lot of duplicate filenames in different folders, you'd have to put each transcoded file in the same folder as the original, then flip the filenames. That is a hassle and illustrates (yet again) why it's very important to always have unique filenames.

This procedure should work but I wouldn't try it unless you have a file-level backup of your library, just in case.

Just updated to SONOMA, on a Macbook Pro 23, M2 MAX, FCP 10.6.9, and still same problem. Unbelievable.

I've just run into a very similar issue. Editing braw files using BRAW Toolbox, everything has been humming along fine for weeks. I grabbed an existing clip out of the bin and drug it to my timeline only to have it replace the video with a color.

After a reboot, same. Just the one clip. So I trashed renders and preferences and... now ALL of my files are solid colors.

I opened an old project which was pure quicktime files (Color Finale Transcoder files created from BRAW masters). The entire timeline and everything in the bins is just black. I'm tearing out my hair.

This literally happened in the middle of a work day. No updates. No changes to the system.

Please let me know if I should put all of this in a different topic, because I recognize I'm not talking about Apple Silicon or 5.1K H264 footage, I was just hoping someone might be able to point me in a direction here based on symptom similarity. 

Details:

Currently on Ventura 13.6. FCPX 10.6.10 (although the problem started on 10.6.7 -- I was hoping the update would fix things, but no joy). 

As mentioned, the project in progress is 6K/25p (6144x2560) BRAW running in FCP via BRAW Toolbox. It's on a  This yields a strange symptom that looks as though the viewing is showing one giant pixel. It's colored, changes brightness as you scrub around the clip and reacts to changes in color, brightness, LUT, etc, but never shows the actual video. I think this is because BRAW Toolbox uses a colored solid? Footage plays fine in RAW player and DaVinci.

I opened an older film where all of the footage is Prores 422 Proxy. It shows only black in the viewer. Audio plays correctly. Everything reacts as you'd expect but no visible video, and exports yield a long black video.

If I start a new library, imported H265, H265, and Prores 422 Proxy (from the above project) all play back correctly, but BRAW toolbox files continue to just be single color frames.