FCP slow rendering

[activate]

Hey guys, my FCP is taking a long time to render media. So much so that it is effecting normal usage of the computer. FCP is also crashing sometimes. My working library is on a usb 3 drive and the library is 200gb.

I would appreciate any suggestions of troubleshooting this. Thanks very much.

FCP: Crash log: http://cl.ly/170E2v1R3W2z/FCP Crash.rtf
While FCP is running,

CPU: 30-40%
Memory pressure is next to nil.

Setup:
System: iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)
256SSD
3.2 GHz Intel Core i5
24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
VIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1024 MB

 

[e1me5]

I can't really understand what is wrong from the crash log but you can try fixing it by reseting the parameters of FCPX. Hold down the Command and Option keys while opening FCPX. A window will appear asking "Do you want to delete preferences?" Click Delete Preferences. This command removes the preference files and resets Final Cut Pro X to default settings. Most of the time it works for me when FCPX starts acting weird. Or you can try reinstall it from the App Store.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Could be that your external USB drive is corrupted. You can quickly verify this by checking its SMART data. To do this on an external drive, you'll have to install OS X SATSMARTDriver to read data from external HDDs. You can download it here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver/master/SATSMARTDriver-0.8.dmg

Once that's installed, restart your computer. You can verify SMART Data on internal & external SSD/HDD by downloading & running SMART Utility: http://cloudfront.volitans-software.com/smartutility314.zip

If neither the SSD or HDD shows up as corrupted, you can try verify the volume on your iMac through Disk Utility. Do this for both the internal & external drive to make sure there's not a problem with either. Just to also confirm - is your external drive formatted as exFAT or OS X Extended (Journaled)?

Also check the uptime on your iMac (open Terminal, then type in uptime). Try shut down/restart your iMac with the option 'reopen windows when logging back in' disabled. You'd be surprised how many issues are caused on OS X by not shutting down every few days.

If there's still an issue and no problems have been detected, then you can try:

- Reset SMC
- Reset PRAM
- Check for updates on OS X & FCP

Speak soon.

 

[activate]

Hold down the Command and Option keys while opening FCPX. A window will appear asking "Do you want to delete preferences?

So this would effectively delete the plist file. Ok that sounds like it will be worth a go. I'm nearing the completion of a project so I will do this immediately afterwords.

If neither the SSD or HDD shows up as corrupted, you can try verify the volume on your iMac through Disk Utility

The system SSD is cool. I will download the utility to check the external drive smart status.

Try shut down/restart your iMac with the option 'reopen windows when logging back in' disabled.

Yep, have done this a number of times. It is my current work around. It improves the running of the system for a short period.

- Reset SMC
- Reset PRAM
- Check for updates on OS X & FCP

All the software are updated. I'll do the other resets to see if it helps.

Neither of you mentioned that the 200gb size of the working library on an external drive would be an issue provided there isn't a problem with the drive itself. Thats reassuring. Thanks guys! appreciate it.

 

[ColdCase]

I didn't think USB supported getting smart data....

I found 500 GB libraries on a USB drive dog slow, but that usually shows up in scrubbing. I guess it could affect rendering, are there lots of drive seek activity?

Is it just certain video clips that are slow? I found FCPX does not handle video corruption gracefully, often slowing to a crawl or crashing. Perhaps try cleaning up the source video and re-import.

 

[activate]

Is it just certain video clips that are slow? I found FCPX does not handle video corruption gracefully, often slowing to a crawl or crashing. Perhaps try cleaning up the source video and re-import.

Yeah its hard to be certain but I'm using a Fxfactory slideshow plugin with about 10 photos. It seems to behave the worst. Also, searches in the effects browser are quite slow even though they'd be on the system drive.

I know of the slow scrubbing you're referring to, guess I'm use to it. Yeah cleanup is another option. I guess because I am near the end of the project, I'll put up with it and keep it in mind for the future.

 

[ColdCase]

FCPX uses a bunch of files in the background and recent versions of the MacOS seem to have have bugs in the finder, especially when dealing with USB drives. Folks report better and more solid performance when they close and open FCP often and restart the machine at least once a day. That seems to clean up the finder. If I relaunch finder once in awhile I get near the same effect, but doesn't last as long.

Its is not only FCP, but other apps that read/write much data and put stress on the finder seem to operate similarly. FCPX just seems to be the most demanding, at least of the apps I use routinely.

I forget how many cores you have on that iMac, but FCPX typically uses 3-400% of my 4 core (8 virtual) rMBP when its busy. That 30-40% of the CPU.

Pre-converting to Pro-Res helps eliminate slow downs due to video anomalies/chalenges.