just wondering because I have a base retina IMac and I swear it's running slower as the timeline gets longer. I'm up to 100 minutes and it's stalling badly now. I didn't seem to have a problem with shorter films.
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Do larger timelines make FCPX run slower?
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I'd have to agree. I do whole wedding DVDs in one timeline and the longer it gets the more sluggish it can be. I suspect the amount of ram you have influences it.
I wondered if the 800 gb size of my library was the slowdown cause so I moved my latest event to a new empty library. Working on the project in the new library is back to normal now. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but I'm going to try working with smaller libraries from now on.
Perhaps Library size, the largest on I have is 400GB and theres no problem with it. I have another much smaller library (200MB) where I do more editing, importing video and then deleting the video, and the FCP "index" seems to eventually get out of whack and the library seems grows unexpectantly in size instead of reducing.. as if the edited videos are not really trashed.. I clear out all the projects and source video and there is no reduction in size... eventually responsiveness suffers. It seems a lot of the temporary files are retained even when told FCP to delete them.
Is there a way to rebuild a library?
Also anything quirky going on with the drive the library resides on will affect performance.
Is there a way to rebuild a library?
Also anything quirky going on with the drive the library resides on will affect performance.
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FCP X has been used to edit big-budget feature films. In this interview, the First Asst. Editor for the Will Smith movie Focus described how he had three complete copies of the movie loaded in the timeline simultaneously, and it still ran OK: http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/new...ind-editing-a-major-hollywood-feature-on-fcpx This was on an iMac not a Mac Pro.
That said, FCP X can slow down due to some 3rd party plugins. The first step is consolidate all material to a test library, evaluate what plugins are being used, remove those effects and see if it speeds up.
I have edited professionally with Premiere, although I mostly use FCP X now. Premiere has its own set of problems -- I have had it crash on me many times. Premiere is very good at GPU-accelerated effects, however it is much slower than FCP X at exporting to H.264. After all this time Premiere still does not support Intel Quick Sync accelerated transcoding. FCP X metadata management is vastly superior to Premiere. OTOH Premiere has After Effects which is much more capable than Motion.
Adobe charges about $50 per person per month for the full suite, vs FCP X's one-time $299, and a license to use on up to 10 Macs. $50 per month would pay for a new iMac every three years.
I have noticed that FCP X slowing down has more to do with how long the app itself has been running, vs. how long a timeline is. For me (16GB of RAM, Sandy Bridge quad i5, and SSD system drive), after 90 min to two hours of use it slowly starts to creep to a crawl. If I close and re-open the app, it runs full speed again for another hour and a half to two hours. Annoying, but I have learned to close and reopen FCP as part of my routine whenever I get up to take a break or use the restroom while working. If you have an SSD as your system drive, the delay in closing/reopening the app is minimal and seems to really make a difference.
Another thing I've noticed, is that the memory management in Yosemite works a little better with FCP X.
Another thing I've noticed, is that the memory management in Yosemite works a little better with FCP X.
I did restart my iMac and relaunched the original 800gb library and it is running normally again. So, I can't conclude the library size is what's causing the problem. I think I may have only relaunched FCPX, but did not restart the computer. That may be the solution.
I'm working on a 2-hour video of a play, cutting together 4 different performances each with up to 3-camera multicam clips. The library is well over 1 TB on external esata.
2013 i7 Mini, 8 GB ram, 30" ACD
Things are definitely better with the latest update, but I definitely agree you need to quit the app now and then.
I had an odd problem where it would hang and have to be force quit. Rebooting solved that.
It's not super snappy but apart from those problems, FCPX works decently for me even on that huge project.
2013 i7 Mini, 8 GB ram, 30" ACD
Things are definitely better with the latest update, but I definitely agree you need to quit the app now and then.
I had an odd problem where it would hang and have to be force quit. Rebooting solved that.
It's not super snappy but apart from those problems, FCPX works decently for me even on that huge project.
I'm working on a 2-hour video of a play, cutting together 4 different performances each with up to 3-camera multicam clips. The library is well over 1 TB on external esata.
2013 i7 Mini, 8 GB ram, 30" ACD
Things are definitely better with the latest update, but I definitely agree you need to quit the app now and then.
I had an odd problem where it would hang and have to be force quit. Rebooting solved that.
It's not super snappy but apart from those problems, FCPX works decently for me even on that huge project.
I think the latest update may have fixed this. So far, so good.
What really matters is how you set things up. You can edit "proxy media" if you want. This is a low resolution copy of your footage. It will go much faster but it takes time to create the proxy media files. Also you can have FCPX do any of several things in the background and these will make the machine run slow so yo end up waiting.
The kind of storage your media files are on matters a LOT. A fast SSD would be ideal.
This happens to me, a gradual slowdown over time - a quick quit & re-open of FCPX always sorts out the issue. I get to the stage that I can be 2 or three edits ahead of what FCPX is displaying & then have to sit & wait for the FCPX lag to catch up, it's often quicker to just re-start the app.
This 'feature' has been there since 10.0.1 for me so as sevoneone says - it's just become part of the process & I've learned to just get on with it!
On behalf of everyone else who uses FCPX, thanks for your input & suggestion - I congratulate you on being the first person on the whole internet to think of 'suggesting' FCPX users switch to Premiere which has absolutely no bugs, quirks, or issues whatsoever & is the absolute perfect video editing software!
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