Video MP4 file stops and starts

Question

I'm new here, and a pretty new video editor, but I'm having a few problems. One of my clients sent me some plain mp4 clips of some action video. Both he and I when we watch them remark one thing. The video freezes at a few points, but then starts off where it stopped. I'm running Windows 10 and downloaded the videos from a wetransfer link. I'm supposed to make a video out of them, but in one of the best clips, it freezes for a second and then starts back, which is quite annoying.

Just wondering if any of you have had this before, or know of any tools to fix it. I use Final Cut Pro on a computer at my dad's office, so I haven't been able to look at them on an editing program yet; just on my windows laptop on films&TV.
Thanks all so much

Answer 1

Drag the clips into your editing software and go frame by frame. If the freeze doesn't occur, the playback of the video might have lagged behind, causing the freezes. If the freeze still persists when going through it frame by frame, it is likely that something about the clip is broken (perhaps the i, p or b-frames are mangled, assuming the mp4 uses h264 compression.)

If so, try to edit out the section in which it freezes and export the clip as a prores4444, which doesn't overtly compress the clip further, so you can work with the pores-file from that point on.