This article was first published in the July, 2009, issue of
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Willard Jansen writes with both a problem and solution:

I am currently watching your Soundtrack Pro 2 video's on Lynda.com. Great stuff. I have never done audio before because everything I do goes to a specialized protools editing shop for voice overs and mixing. But I nevertheless wanted to dive into soundtrack because a have it and thought it might become handy sometime.

I am using your exercise assets as well as my own projects to practice. BUt something seems to be wrong. On all projects, even single clips with only two tracks of audio, playback stutters and stops as soon as 1 or 2 seconds after playback starts. Here in my home studio am on an G5 quad core with two Western Digital 1 TB MyBook firewire 800 drives that hold the projects and media. I tried the second drive in the computer, same result.

I searched blogs and discussions and found that more people have suffered from this. There's even a lot of bad sentiment about soundtrack. But since on your video everything seems to be going so well and editing in FCP is going very well in my setup here, I figure that there must be some secret setting that I am overlooking although a copied the setup of preferences from your video's.

Larry replies: Willard, I edit for hours each day in Soundtrack and have never seen this problem. It must be something to do with your system. Be sure to trash your STP preference file:

[ Home directory ] > Library > Preferences > com.apple.soundtrackpro.plist

Willard writes back:

Here's what I did after the procedure you described.

• Clean install OSX + FC studio + updated everything: problem remained
• Set audio output to internal: problem remained
• De-installed Blackmagic Intensity drivers & software: problem remained
• Took out the Blackmagic Intensity card (2nd PCI slot from top: problem solved
• Put back intensity card in topmost PCI slot: still no problem
• installed intensity software: still no problem
• problem solved

Larry adds: Thanks for letting me know. For some reason, all slots in MacPros are not the same. Be sure to check with the supplier of any cards you have to be sure they are installed in the right slots.

Larry Jordan is a post-production consultant and an Apple-Certified Trainer in Digital Media with over 25 years experience as producer, director and editor with network, local and corporate credits. Based in Los Angeles, he's a member of both the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America.

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