I am going to apologize ahead of time for the fact that some of my ignorance will likely spill over into this post, but I'm not sure where to look next for information about my problem. From searching the forums, it sounds like I am not the only one with a FCPX workflow bottleneck question, but I can't find the answer to my question, so here goes.
I am an amateur video editor, but I have been fortunate enough to cobble together what should be a pretty decent video editing machine over the last 2 years. My needs are not complex. I have about 50 hours of family videos (everything from Hi-8 to AVCHD) to try to archive. I found that FCPX was the most friendly with AVCHD files, so I am importing my files to FCPX, arranging an hour at a time of video, and exporting it to DVD, BlueRay, and Quicktime.
My setup:
MP 5,1 12 core 2.4 GHz, 48 GB RAM, MacVidCards 7970 video card, and most recently, a XP941 SSD.
Here's my problem, and how I tried to solve it. Perhaps someone could suggest a smarter approach. I started with a stock MP 5,1 12 core with 12 GB memory and a 5770. When I used FCPX, I noticed that the 12 GB of memory maxed out. Thinking this must be bottleneck, I bought 48 GB of ram. Having done this, I then realized that OSX often uses all available RAM, and the new measure of RAM usage is 'pressure'. Needless to say, it did not improve my speed much, though I did feel better.
The next clever observation I made was that while processing the videos, my CPUs never rose above 50% of 1/2 of the threads. Out of 24 threads, only 12 of them seemed active, and they were running at 50%. I heard that FCPX uses AMD video cards really well, so I got a 7970 card. This did help a bit, but I noticed that my internal hard drive (7,200 rpm) seemed to be I/O full speed, and I thought it may be a limiting factor. At this point, my real goal was to be able to run my 12-core at full speed :roll eyes:
As such, I got a XP941 SSD, which is screaming fast by the numbers, but oddly did not change my FCPX rendering times.
So here's my question. Does anyone know of an objective way of determining where workflow bottlenecks are occurring? I can't figure out why rendering is taking 60 minutes for a 60 minute 1080 video to convert it into a DVD? Is this normal? How can I make it go faster? I have a lot of videos to go through, and time is precious. I have read some people talk about 'scratch disks', but don't know much about this. Also, I was hoping a screaming fast SSD would limit the need for a scratch disk.
P.S. - for what it's worth, before I got my MP, I tried this on a 2.6 GHz Mac mini with 16 GB ram. Rendering took it about 24-hours with the fan screaming the whole time. Obviously Geekbench scores aren't everything
I am an amateur video editor, but I have been fortunate enough to cobble together what should be a pretty decent video editing machine over the last 2 years. My needs are not complex. I have about 50 hours of family videos (everything from Hi-8 to AVCHD) to try to archive. I found that FCPX was the most friendly with AVCHD files, so I am importing my files to FCPX, arranging an hour at a time of video, and exporting it to DVD, BlueRay, and Quicktime.
My setup:
MP 5,1 12 core 2.4 GHz, 48 GB RAM, MacVidCards 7970 video card, and most recently, a XP941 SSD.
Here's my problem, and how I tried to solve it. Perhaps someone could suggest a smarter approach. I started with a stock MP 5,1 12 core with 12 GB memory and a 5770. When I used FCPX, I noticed that the 12 GB of memory maxed out. Thinking this must be bottleneck, I bought 48 GB of ram. Having done this, I then realized that OSX often uses all available RAM, and the new measure of RAM usage is 'pressure'. Needless to say, it did not improve my speed much, though I did feel better.
The next clever observation I made was that while processing the videos, my CPUs never rose above 50% of 1/2 of the threads. Out of 24 threads, only 12 of them seemed active, and they were running at 50%. I heard that FCPX uses AMD video cards really well, so I got a 7970 card. This did help a bit, but I noticed that my internal hard drive (7,200 rpm) seemed to be I/O full speed, and I thought it may be a limiting factor. At this point, my real goal was to be able to run my 12-core at full speed :roll eyes:
As such, I got a XP941 SSD, which is screaming fast by the numbers, but oddly did not change my FCPX rendering times.
So here's my question. Does anyone know of an objective way of determining where workflow bottlenecks are occurring? I can't figure out why rendering is taking 60 minutes for a 60 minute 1080 video to convert it into a DVD? Is this normal? How can I make it go faster? I have a lot of videos to go through, and time is precious. I have read some people talk about 'scratch disks', but don't know much about this. Also, I was hoping a screaming fast SSD would limit the need for a scratch disk.
P.S. - for what it's worth, before I got my MP, I tried this on a 2.6 GHz Mac mini with 16 GB ram. Rendering took it about 24-hours with the fan screaming the whole time. Obviously Geekbench scores aren't everything