MP3s in Final Cut Pro HD always skip

[Jay Butler]

Just curious if someone can help a FCP newbie like myself, every MP3 file I add to Final Cut always seems to have a skipping noise, even after I render it, but WAV files don't...do I have to use a mp3-wav converter (I can't find one), or is there a way to have it not skip?

Thanks alot....

[Martin Mayer]

Hi - you would be STRONGLY advised to convert your MP3s to 48kHz aiff files BEFORE bringing them into FCP.

Quicktime Pro will do it for you: open the MP3, and export to aiff (make sure you use 48kHz, and not the default 44.1kHz.)

This will stop FCP from having to render the MP3s on the timeline, with all that skipping/beeping as it works unnecessarily hard.

It's basically "pre-rendering" the audio files for FCP - the aiff files will be ten times bigger than the MP3s, but compared to video files, who's counting? They will then play in the timeline like a dream.

[Nate Schmidt]

If you don't have Quicktime Pro you can also use iTunes for the conversion. Under the importing preferences you can choose which format and sample rate AIFF 48khz...then in your library just right click on the song and choose convert selection to AIFF then import into FCP.