Mac mini and FCPX Poor Performance

[Jay_NJ]

Hey guys,

Last year I purchased a new 2018 Mac Min with the following specs: 3.2 ghz 6 core i7. 16gb ram SSD.

The intent for this Mac was to serve solely as my music production/video editing workstation.

Shockingly, my 2012 iMac handled these tasks 100x more efficiently. I am not kidding. I am right now attempting to edit a single video clip exported from a Sony a6000. The clip is about a minute long and I have chopped it into roughly 10 segments for editing. The mini is red hot to the touch, activity monitor shows FCP using approx 400% cpu. In addition, multiple times, I get the spinning ball and my keyboard and mouse have become disabled and I had to do a hard reboot. This is on a single, very short clip. Pretty ridiculous when a 2012 model performed without these issues.

Question is, is FCPX performance a known issue on 2018 Mac minis? Extrermely disappointed. I literally just finished paying this off and may need to look to get rid of it already.

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[AZhappyjack]

Hey guys,

Last year I purchased a new 2018 Mac Min with the following specs: 3.2 ghz 6 core i7. 16gb ram SSD.

The intent for this Mac was to serve solely as my music production/video editing workstation.

Shockingly, my 2012 iMac handled these tasks 100x more efficiently. I am not kidding. I am right now attempting to edit a single video clip exported from a Sony a6000. The clip is about a minute long and I have chopped it into roughly 10 segments for editing. The mini is red hot to the touch, activity monitor shows FCP using approx 400% cpu. In addition, multiple times, I get the spinning ball and my keyboard and mouse have become disabled and I had to do a hard reboot. This is on a single, very short clip. Pretty ridiculous when a 2012 model performed without these issues.

Question is, is FCPX performance a known issue on 2018 Mac minis? Extrermely disappointed. I literally just finished paying this off and may need to look to get rid of it already.

Thanks for any assistance.

Not in my experience.

I have a 2018 Mini (3GHz 6-core I5) with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD that I use as an FCP workstation. I regularly edit 90-120 minute 1920x1080 videos... yes, the aluminum case gets hot - not "red hot to the touch", but quite toasty. That in and of itself is not problematic, as the aluminum case is, for all intents, a heatsink. Mac Fan Control reports internal/CPU core temps in to 70-90º C range during render... but nary a spinning beachball at all during the process, no lockups or issues with mouse/keyboard being non-responsive.

I'm running the latest macOS (Big Sur 11.3) and the latest FCP (10.5.2). I also use a few plug-ins (mostly from PixelFilmStudios and MotionVFX).

Are you running any plug-ins? Curious if that could be part of the issue... not all plug-ins are created equal...

 

[Jay_NJ]

Not in my experience.

I have a 2018 Mini (3GHz 6-core I5) with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD that I use as an FCP workstation. I regularly edit 90-120 minute 1920x1080 videos... yes, the aluminum case gets hot - not "red hot to the touch", but quite toasty. That in and of itself is not problematic, as the aluminum case is, for all intents, a heatsink. Mac Fan Control reports internal/CPU core temps in to 70-90º C range during render... but nary a spinning beachball at all during the process, no lockups or issues with mouse/keyboard being non-responsive.

I'm running the latest macOS (Big Sur 11.3) and the latest FCP (10.5.2). I also use a few plug-ins (mostly from PixelFilmStudios and MotionVFX).

Are you running any plug-ins? Curious if that could be part of the issue... not all plug-ins are created equal...

Hi - that's the funny thing, not running any plugins at all. This is about as simple a project as one could imagine. Sounds like we have pretty much the same specs except I've got the i7. Yeah, I'm really disappointed. I've had similar issues making music with Ableton live as well, with only a couple of tracks. Would it be worthwhile taking it to an apple store? Would they bee able to check it out and test it?

 

[AZhappyjack]

Hi - that's the funny thing, not running any plugins at all. This is about as simple a project as one could imagine. Sounds like we have pretty much the same specs except I've got the i7. Yeah, I'm really disappointed. I've had similar issues making music with Ableton live as well, with only a couple of tracks. Would it be worthwhile taking it to an apple store? Would they bee able to check it out and test it?

Possibly... hard to say what kind of testing they will/can do.

Anecdotally, back in 2011, I had a 2011 iMac that had a bad video card - constant lockups... took Apple "Genius" bar and their techs 5 different visits before they were able to identify the issue and replace the video card... so YMMV.

 

[Boyd01]

I have the 2018 i7 6-core Mini with 64gb and 2tb SSD. It certainly outperforms my 2012 4-core i7 Mini with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, although I've not used it very heavily for that recently. My only thoughts are that 16gb might not be enough for what you're doing, or that you might also benefit from an eGPU since the dedicated GPU on your old iMac might out-perform the Mini's UHD-630 integrated GPU.

 

[Jay_NJ]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll have to conduct some further tests to get to the bottom of it.

 

[scottrngr]

Maybe trade it in for a M1 mini?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

What is the RESOLUTION of the clips with which you're working?

Are they 4k?

If so, have you used the "create proxy media" option when importing clips to FCPx?

 

[Wotcher]

OP: It's probably unlikely, but just in case.

Did you take apart the mini to install additional memory? If you did, make sure the fan plug is correctly/firmly set.

I upgraded my mini to 64GB and I thought I did everything ok.

As I booted up and started to use my mac, I noticed a rapid rise in temp and it got HOT. When I listened in closely, I didn't hear the fan running (more accurately I couldn't tell).

So I took it apart again and reseated the fan connector. I plugged it back in to power and verified the fan was running.

After that, everything seemed to be normal.

 

[CC88]

I can only edit 1080p video in FPC using a mac mini 2018 i5 with 64gb of RAM. In case of 4K i have to switch to proxy.

Using an eGPU I solved all the problem. FCP is smooth, fast and I can work in the timeline without any problem at all. Very nice experience.

I think an M1 can handle FCP better (never tried it, based on what I saw in YT).