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New macbook (not pro), FCP 7 painfully slow

C

cory.sarzotti

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 24, 2010
1
0
I have a new macbook (not pro)4gb of 1.067ghz RAM, 2.26 intel core 2 Duo. 22 gb available on internal HD.

I am editing an SD project (FCP 7) and this thing is going painfully slow. Litterly I'm advancing frame by frame using the arrow key and i am getting a 10-20 second spinny wheel to do even that! I can't scrub sometimes because I have to hold down the mouse button while I wait for the spinny wheel, then wait again at each movement.

This thing is brand new, like April 2010, it should not be having this much trouble with an SD project. I tried trashing preferences, is there anything else i can try? I am editing off of internal HD; its either that or USB because there is no FW on this computer.
 
It definitely shouldn't be this slow.

Have you ensured that the footage is in a native format for FCP? Have you had to render any of the footage?

What is the BitRate of the footage? If it's too high then your computer might be struggling!

Definitely dump your media onto an external drive as running both the program and footage off the same drive is bad and can splice your data!

Other than that I'm not really sure what to suggest short of a full reinstall!
 
spinnerlys said:
USB speeds (around 30 to 35 MB/s) will be fine with SD material.
Click to expand...

That's a very misleading statement. Try it with 10 bit uncompressed SD and see if you think it's fine.

The point is that FCP, like many other NLEs, really needs a sustained data stream that only Firewire, SATA, eSATA or SCSI can provide. Since USB transfers data in packets (short bursts), an NLE can often interpret the gap between packets as dropped frames.

That said, USB might work OK for very low data rate video formats like DV or even HDV. Just don't expect to playback multiple streams very well if at all.

Also note that the MacBook is not recommended for running FCP or the other ProApps.

-DH
 
-DH said:
That's a very misleading statement. Try it with 10 bit uncompressed SD and see if you think it's fine.
Click to expand...

Yep, should have specified that. I meant DV encoded material (PAL), as the OP most likely won't edit Uncompressed 10-bit video footage on a MacBook and storing the media on the internal HDD.

OP, if you use DV encoded video (or if you live in one of those NTSC countries and use the Apple Intermediate Codec instead, maybe), USB will be fine, as DV has a data rate of 3.125MB/s for video and that will more than work with USB HDDs.

I edited a 20 minute short via storing footage on an USB HDD once, not ideal, but it worked under those circumstances.
The 20 minute short had 185 cuts or so, thus the read head had to jump quite often (every 6 seconds or so).
 
I was able to edit (albiet slowly) HD footage off of a P2 card, on my 2.16ghz Macbook Pro... from late 2006/early 2007. There's no reason why any SD footage should screw up an original macbook like that, but especially one less than a year old.

Take it into the Apple store, have some footage on the internal hard drive, bring the same footage on an external drive, and see if you can't get some help.

Also, make sure that the footage itself is ok, and not poor (high bit-rate, bad encode, etc)
 
stuff and ideas

1. how many layers are you using?
2. clean up your internal. 22gb is skimpy.
3. verify permissions in disk utilities
4. restart
5. how high is you fan running?
6. what is happening in activity monitor?
 
simply start a new project with one video track and some basic editing, or use another login to try it
 
How big is your internal drive? 22GB is not necessarily a lot of free space ... I'd look at getting the media off your internal drive - maybe as a temp/emergency edit I'd risk it, but not if you have an external drive you can use.

How is your computer running generally? When was the last time you re-started/ ran the periodic maintenance scripts?

http://applejack.sourceforge.net/#top

You could always try http://www.digitalrebellion.com/fcs_maintenance.htm as a last resort.

Cheers.
 
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