FCPX on my M1 mini

[jayducharme]

I've been thrilled with the performance of my mini when using Final Cut Pro X. That was until the library I was working with got so large that it had to be moved off of the mini's internal SSD and onto my OWC external TB3 drive (with mechanical hard drives). It's becoming really painful to work with. Every little change I make to a video takes forever to render, with the external drive crunching away for several minutes with each little modification. And during the render, FCPX is unusable with continual dropped frames until it simply stops playing.

So any suggestions on how to fix this? Should I simply break up events into separate libraries that I can swap onto my internal drive when I need to? Should I simply turn off rendering and wait until all my changes are complete?

 

[Gwendolini]

I also have the M1 mini and have had no such experiences.
I use a USB-C powered external SSD to store the footage and the library, but I have a very small library due to not importing the media using the COPY TO LIBRARY method and the Cache is also outside the library on the same SSD.
I mostly edit HD and UHD footage using ProRes and H.264 and H.265 codecs, and I have some slow downs every now and then, but that is due to effects and not the footage.

The TB3 drive of yours, is it using an HDD or SSD? I also have an external OWC TB3 enclosure, but for 4 SSDs (in RAID0), which I use every now and then.

My projects are normally not that long, maybe 4 to 8 minutes music videos, with some text effects (mTracker 3D and such) and some colouring effects. The media is split across three to five cameras and maybe is around 2 hours per library of footage.

 

[jayducharme]

The TB3 drive of yours, is it using an HDD or SSD? I also have an external OWC TB3 enclosure, but for 4 SSDs (in RAID0), which I use every now and then.

It's an HDD, 7200 rpm. Every little change I make, FCPX seems to have to rewrite the entire video to the drive. On my mini's internal SSD it wasn't a problem. But the external is taking forever.

My projects are normally not that long, maybe 4 to 8 minutes music videos

And that could be my problem: although the projects aren't long, they combine upwards of 15 layers of videos.

 

[Gwendolini]

It's an HDD, 7200 rpm. Every little change I make, FCPX seems to have to rewrite the entire video to the drive. On my mini's internal SSD it wasn't a problem. But the external is taking forever.

That is strange, a 7200RPM HDD is fast enough for many edit jobs, but maybe it is too slow for your work.
Have you benchmarked the drive via Blackmagic Disk Speed Test or AJA Test (both free) to see that you get 150MB/s and more?

And that could be my problem: although the projects aren't long, they combine upwards of 15 layers of videos.

Maybe you could provide a screenshot of your timeline? Or even a short video of your FCP window while it plays back?

I may have maybe four to six layers, if I am really into that sort of thing, I often use compounds though.

 

[jayducharme]

Thanks for the tip. I ran the BM test. As you can see, the internal drive is blazing, while the external drive (while not bad for most media) is over ten times slower. That explains why a standard HD workflow in FCPX with just one or two layers of video and few effects works great on the external drive, but anything more than that bogs down. The internal drive doesn't hiccup with even fifteen layers and multiple effects. But then, it swallows over half a terabyte of storage.

 

[Gwendolini]

Thanks for the tip. I ran the BM test. As you can see, the internal drive is blazing, while the external drive (while not bad for most media) is over ten times slower. That explains why a standard HD workflow in FCPX with just one or two layers of video and few effects works great on the external drive, but anything more than that bogs down. The internal drive doesn't hiccup with even fifteen layers and multiple effects. But then, it swallows over half a terabyte of storage.

Are those fifteen layers made up of video only?

You could also set the Viewer to BETTER PERFORMANCE using the VIEW button on the top right of the Viewer.

 

[jayducharme]

Are those fifteen layers made up of video only?

You could also set the Viewer to BETTER PERFORMANCE using the VIEW button on the top right of the Viewer.

There's one audio layer; the rest are video. I do have Better Performance checked. I might give Proxy Media a try.

 

[Gwendolini]

There's one audio layer; the rest are video. I do have Better Performance checked. I might give Proxy Media a try.

In other words, up to 14 layers are video, that need to be played back at the same time? That is a lot of throughput, depending on codec it is also very CPU intensive.

I once edited a music video, where I made the different takes into a multicam object, thus I had 32 angles or so and I could only deal with 16 streams at once using proxies (and that could be played back even by my 2016 MacBook).

Maybe an SSD can help, maybe an SSD and optimised media stored on it (20 to 40 MB/s if HD or UHD - thus 300 to 600 MB/s throughput).

 

[jayducharme]

Up to this point, the maximum number of HD video layers I've worked with in FCPX was three. So yeah, 14 is a bit much. But when the library is on my system drive, I have no trouble. Rendering is really fast. The external drive is where things choke. So I guess the answer is either to keep the library on the system drive or use proxy media for external drives.

 

[NLLV]

I've been thrilled with the performance of my mini when using Final Cut Pro X. That was until the library I was working with got so large that it had to be moved off of the mini's internal SSD and onto my OWC external TB3 drive (with mechanical hard drives). It's becoming really painful to work with. Every little change I make to a video takes forever to render, with the external drive crunching away for several minutes with each little modification. And during the render, FCPX is unusable with continual dropped frames until it simply stops playing.

So any suggestions on how to fix this? Should I simply break up events into separate libraries that I can swap onto my internal drive when I need to? Should I simply turn off rendering and wait until all my changes are complete?

No one has mentioned it, but if your projects are large taking up the entire SSD, you can actually delete the files associated with the projects.

As you edit, FCP will by default render in the background.

Go to the project, and then select file, then delete generated project files and check all the boxes.
You will not delete the video files, just the background files that the application created.

I have had my library as large as 800gb and got it down to 175gb by deleting these files.

You can purchase a library manager too, but this is not necessary.

I resorted to purchasing another SSD for my next set of work. If you work in video you will need (in my opinion) to resign yourself to the fact that you need fast (and pricey) SSD's and should not use mechanical drives, and you will be purchasing more and more as you edit more and more.

 

[jayducharme]

If you work in video you will need (in my opinion) to resign yourself to the fact that you need fast (and pricey) SSD's and should not use mechanical drives, and you will be purchasing more and more as you edit more and more.

I agree, for 4k video. For normal HD, the mechanical drives work fine (unless I have a dozen layers of video). I was hoping SSDs would be cheaper by now, but for larger drives (over 2 tb) they're still prohibitively expensive for me.

 

[NLLV]

I agree, for 4k video. For normal HD, the mechanical drives work fine (unless I have a dozen layers of video). I was hoping SSDs would be cheaper by now, but for larger drives (over 2 tb) they're still prohibitively expensive for me.

There is another option for you, and that would be to create proxy files that you will work with, and then link them to the working files.

Proxy files are just smaller files that are created and used when you are skimming and editing.

The Proxies point to the originals, and when you go to create the output, the originals are used and you get the 4k result you want.

In doing this, you could work off of a slower drive, but this creates an extra step in the workflow at the start of the project.

If i were doing this I would put the files on your mechanical HDD, and then when importing check that final cut is leaving the files in place and not moving them to your library. That is another thing that makes libraries very large.

Create your proxy files using the guide here

Create optimized and proxy files in Final Cut Pro for Mac

In Final Cut Pro for Mac, create optimized and proxy versions of your media files to increase editing performance and conserve storage space.

support.apple.com

See if that works, and you SHOULD be able to work off mechanical drives that way.

 

[jayducharme]

There is another option for you, and that would be to create proxy files that you will work with, and then link them to the working files.

Proxy files are just smaller files that are created and used when you are skimming and editing.

The Proxies point to the originals, and when you go to create the output, the originals are used and you get the 4k result you want.

In doing this, you could work off of a slower drive, but this creates an extra step in the workflow at the start of the project.

If i were doing this I would put the files on your mechanical HDD, and then when importing check that final cut is leaving the files in place and not moving them to your library. That is another thing that makes libraries very large.

Create your proxy files using the guide here

Create optimized and proxy files in Final Cut Pro for Mac

In Final Cut Pro for Mac, create optimized and proxy versions of your media files to increase editing performance and conserve storage space.

support.apple.com

See if that works, and you SHOULD be able to work off mechanical drives that way.

Thanks!

 

[Ledgem]

I agree, for 4k video. For normal HD, the mechanical drives work fine (unless I have a dozen layers of video). I was hoping SSDs would be cheaper by now, but for larger drives (over 2 tb) they're still prohibitively expensive for me.

Just a note on this that it's not always straightforward how an SSD might help you. Most of us are gunning for the latest NVME-type SSDs, the fastest of the fast that generally also require pricey Thunderbolt enclosures to make use of. I have one of those for my active photo editing library, and then a slower cluster-based storage for my archive.

Recently I had some disk trouble and ended up going for a Samsung QVO 8 TB drive. This is not a NVME, but SATA III, and I connected it over USB accordingly. It's slightly controversial drive as its performance pales in comparison with NVME SSDs (about a fourth of the maximum speed of a NVME drive) and overall longevity is theoretically much lower. But the QVO was about half the cost of a NVME 8 TB drive, and since I already have a NVME drive as my "scratch" drive, I don't need it to be the fastest possible.

And you know what? I thought my archive was sluggish just because it's huge, but it absolutely flies on the QVO. We all know this but easily forget it: SSDs are more than just raw burst speed. The real benefit compared to HDDs is in random read/write performance. There are measures for this and they used to be advertised but these days I can't find those numbers easily. I suspect manufacturers realized that people didn't know what they meant, but everyone knows what raw transfer speed is.

The QVO line may not be the highest-end performance, but it's cheap. It's Samsung, so still some of the best in the industry. Their 1 TB drive is currently a few dollars above $100 on Amazon, the 2 TB variant is currently around $180, and 4 TB is showing as $415. You can buy an enclosure for it, but these drives aren't bare silicon like the NVME, so you really don't need it. Just get a SATA III to USB cable (I bought this Sabrent SATA III to USB 3.1 adapter for $12, although there is a version without the USB C-type adapter for $10) and you're set.

I'd guess that you would benefit quite a bit from something like this, if it's within your price range. With that many layers, the HDD is probably having a hard time keeping up with accessing multiple data sources at once. It's no longer about raw speed at that point, but random read speed. SSDs, even "slow" ones like the QVO line, are far superior.

 

[diamond3]

I've had a ton of issues. I sold my 2019 27" loaded iMac and was just using the M1 MacBook Air for now. I'm having constant battles with it. I've edited everything of a 32tb Raid in the past, but suddenly it's not fast enough for editing on the MacBook Air. I moved a project to a 1000mb/s SSD and that did help, but I'm still disappointed. When the M1 works, it's great. But I'm having all sorts of bugs and hiccups. One major one is the laptop will stop playing audio mid edit. It's not a disabled clip, but rather it just won't play the sound out of my computer. I'll end up switching it to another source (monitor), play the timeline for a few seconds, and then switch it back to the laptop speakers and it kicks back on. I am editing 10bit 4k/60 content, but even after the computer renders, it's still not as good as my iMac. Maybe it's the 8gb memory, but I hear so many stories about how that hasn't been much of a limitation for most.

I also wish FCPX would have a way to to not save old render files as well. When I'm working on a 30-40 minute 4k edit, the library balloons to easily 500gb+ of render files just because I'm moving things with an adjustment layer which triggers a re-render.

I've been using FCPX for almost the full 10 years, and this last year is probably the first time where I'd actually consider using Davinci a little more.

 

[profcutter]

Yeah, with so many layers, memory could indeed be the bottleneck. I agree that the Hard Drive speeds are hampering your real-time capacity, but yeah, FCP needs the RAM for such complicated multilayered projects. How much RAM did your old machine have? Also, the behavior of re-writing the whole timeline each change also suggests that the machine just can’t hold enough data in RAM, and the swap isn’t sufficient. In fact, sounds like maybe FCP is using your external drive as a swap volume. Can you change it in preferences to the internal SSD?

 

[diamond3]

My iMac had 40GB of memory and an 8GB GPU. I sold it hoping the higher end iMac would be released year. As soon as they release the M1X or whatever they call it, I'll be purchasing it. I'd think for data swap for memory, it would always default to the internal drive vs external. I'll be starting my next edit this week and will likely begin from the SSD instead of the raid.

Yeah, with so many layers, memory could indeed be the bottleneck. I agree that the Hard Drive speeds are hampering your real-time capacity, but yeah, FCP needs the RAM for such complicated multilayered projects. How much RAM did your old machine have? Also, the behavior of re-writing the whole timeline each change also suggests that the machine just can’t hold enough data in RAM, and the swap isn’t sufficient. In fact, sounds like maybe FCP is using your external drive as a swap volume. Can you change it in preferences to the internal SSD?

 

[Kung gu]

My iMac had 40GB of memory and an 8GB GPU.

And you replaced it with a 8GB RAM machine??

 

[diamond3]

And you replaced it with a 8GB RAM machine??

Yes and no. I sold my iMac to still get a high value out of it to upgrade to its replacement. Unfortunately after the rumor this morning, it looks like that replacement has been pushed back until 2022. I had done this for the last 4 years and it worked out well for me.

it’s just my mobile laptop I’m using at the moment. Editing off an external ssd has been a better experience. But it still at times does not like my making adjustments during playback. Something as simple as adjusting a clip duration typically causes playback to stutter and go all weird. Whether that’s a ram issue or simply an m1 issue I’m not sure.

 

[profcutter]

I’d guess you’re hitting the RAM limit. Did you check activity monitor for RAM pressure when the stutters are happening?