Bugs as I push FCPX to the Max!

Juts finishing up a documentary about 90min long in FCPX. 6 events, thousands of clips, lots of compound (sync clips) and multicam stuff. Getting pretty hairy in here. Editing using Proxies to keep things smooth since the whole thing was shot on DSLRs

Noticed a few bugs consistently keep cropping up.

1. I'll change the text of a title, quit the program and when I relaunch the title reverts back to the text it was before I changed it.

2. Sometimes it will take a second or two to start playing when I press the spacebar key.

3. If I place video clips with audio BELOW the primary storyline, they some times jump up to the primary (thus overlaying it). Also, a big gripe I'm coming to terms with on a large project like this is that the order of clips sometimes changes. I think this is due to my mouse centric nature of editing, where I drag a lot of clips in and depending on where i drop it or how long I sit waiting to place it just right, the order of my "tracks" or layers or whatever you want to call it, can sometimes be screwy.


Overall, I'd say to Apple the focus shouldn't be on features, it should be optimizing and fixing these performance issues with a large project. I'm on one of the best mac's they make, something a rep from apple told me was their recommended system, and the performance is rough.

Now, there are some things I bet I can do to make it better. Less compound clips. Learning to "Open in Timeline" to make edits to audio rather than secondary storyline it and chop it up (that's how much I love the magnetic timeline!) Of course, I can be smarter with editing on a single timeline with just one or two tracks of connected clips - but I'm still learning this new editing paradigm.

Wanted to toss this out there and see if there are any people also working with long format and intense project stuff that might want to share their experiences and best practices!

I was working on a local TV series for a while. Thirty minute episodes and I found the more I threw at it of course began buggy as well. I basically had the same problems as you stated. I shy away from compound clips for sure.. Unless after i've chopped up a song then I go ahead and compound it. That is to keep it together just in case I have the problem of when I add a few clips in and they kinda go where they want. At least the audio will be linked to one clip instead of having a few pieces of audio linked to a few different clips and they all get scattered.

I was working with proxy as well. DSLR's and Handicams. I also had the wait for it to play problem. Also wait for it to stop as well. Sometimes I found after running an all day editing marathon..that if I simply quit and re-started the Mac it would help things.

Otherwise i would disable any unneeded titles, effects, generators, or clips with heavy effects such as Magic Bullet. Problem is remembering them when you want to export!

The biggest improvement I made recently was upgrading to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard. WOW what a difference!! I can actually see the difference in render speeds and stability. Actually since I upgraded last week it hasn't crashed yet. (Knock on simulated wood). Whereas before i could expect beach ball a few time a day.

The only other thing is that I've been making small sub-projects and then copy and pasting them to together to make a whole. Seems FCP X just don't like anything big.

The thing that we are having problems with is placing compound clips and then, in a rush, putting a compound clip inside another compound clip. FCP X doesn't like this at all! This has been the root of most problems we come across.

Also, while working on an hour long project with Chinese language subtitles, I'm coming across issues were FCPX changes the Chinese characters! I have to go through each line to check if anything has changed. This is an issue that could cause a lot of misunderstandings.

All in all, FCPX is still a very fast way to get things out of the door :lol:

James
Taiwan

I can concur with most of the issues mentioned here, except for the title problem which I haven't seen anymore since the last update.

Many of the performance issues are cache related. The play/stop delay is also related to RAM cache, and/or to the speed of your media drive in complex multi-layer timelines. I regularly split up long-form sequences in other NLEs as well when the sequences/projects become too difficult to manage. So this is not really (or better: not only) a typical FCP10 software problem.

I agree compound clips can be very tricky. That's one typical performance problem the FCP10 team must address. And it's not only about performance: making changes to a compound clip in its own timeline is painstaking because you don't have any realtime visual reference of how your changes in the the cc timeline affect the Project timeline. That's the old FCP Nests workflow, and that was quite useless. At the very least the playhead position should be preserved when you switch between the cc in the main timeline and the cc opened in its own timeline, just like when you switch between Main Comps and Sub Comps inside After Effects.

Cutting up compound clips, or putting compound clips inside compound clips, is an absolute database horror and should be avoided at all times. On the other hand I'm not sure if chopping up a secondary storyline affects performance, nor if it's a bad habit. All in all that's what storylines are meant for.

fcpguru wrote: Juts finishing up a documentary about 90min long in FCPX. 6 events, thousands of clips, lots of compound (sync clips) and multicam stuff. Getting pretty hairy in here. Editing using Proxies to keep things smooth since the whole thing was shot on DSLRs

Noticed a few bugs consistently keep cropping up.

1. I'll change the text of a title, quit the program and when I relaunch the title reverts back to the text it was before I changed it.

2. Sometimes it will take a second or two to start playing when I press the spacebar key.

3. If I place video clips with audio BELOW the primary storyline, they some times jump up to the primary (thus overlaying it). Also, a big gripe I'm coming to terms with on a large project like this is that the order of clips sometimes changes. I think this is due to my mouse centric nature of editing, where I drag a lot of clips in and depending on where i drop it or how long I sit waiting to place it just right, the order of my "tracks" or layers or whatever you want to call it, can sometimes be screwy.

1. can not reproduce this
2. can happen on long timelines, agree. This could be more responsive.
3. what machine do you have? You should have 16GBof RAm and a relatively new GPU. I never had clips jumping into the primary or changing order. When you move big chunks of your project and push a lot down the line, it will look screwy in every NLE. I suggest CUT-PASTE when you move dozens. At least in FCPX you can be sure all syncs stay down the line.

If you are low on RAM I suggest at first to turn off waveforms in the event library.

fcpguru wrote: Noticed a few bugs consistently keep cropping up.

1. I'll change the text of a title, quit the program and when I relaunch the title reverts back to the text it was before I changed it.

I used to see that occasionally, but it seems to have gone away. Not sure if it was an update that fixed it, or the fact that I realized that I was sometime changing the text in the info tab of the inspector instead of the text tab when I was in a hurry... oops.

fcpguru wrote:
1. I'll change the text of a title, quit the program and when I relaunch the title reverts back to the text it was before I changed it.

OMG this is the horror!!! Finally I hear someone who's having this to. The big goes even further. When you eventually changed your texts and export it through compressor it's doesn't add the changes you made... I thinks it has something to do with the render files.

Apple please fix this!!!

Are you sure you have the latest version of FP10? We had this issue up till 10.0.4. Since the last update we never saw the problem again, nor have I read any posts mentioning this issue anymore.

yup, latest version of everything (FCPX and running ML 10.8.2)

My system has 16GB ram, a 2GB ATI card, and the media is on a Thunderbolt Pegasus RAID, so I feel like I def have the tools. I mean there are always things in every system that will slow or muck things up, but I think I have it fairly clean. I think what it comes down to is having a lot of compound clips and needing Apple to work on optimizing this part of the program.

It's not a deal breaker, but on these larger projects, it's annoying as hell.

I agree with the compound clip problems, this should be sorted out. But I haven't had any trouble with titles anymore since the last update.

And yes you have the right tools, I guess this is the 27" iMac with the BTO graphics card. I have a couple of them and they perform extremely well with FCP10 on ML, especially with the Promise RAIDs.

Yup that's my system! Overall it's pretty great.

I'll add one more bug to the list:
I've been trying to "Edit in Timeline" and edit inside the compound clips more often to prevent me from slicing and dicing the synced clips and causing even more instances of the compound clip to drag my project.

Except, inside a compound clip I find that when I hit the spacebar to play, if I am on any tool but the arrow, the playhead jumps to the end. Can anybody reproduce this? It happens all the time.


Wondering if I should do a wipe/reinstall. Or maybe get rid of any custom motion projects...

Jus tried this with every possible tool and no problem. Tested on a 12 core MacPro with 64 GB RAM and the ATI 5870. Edit: oh yes, and running latest ML and 10.0.5

Test this again on your system, but this time with a much smaller Project.

If the issue is still there in a small project: first trash your prefs and if this does not help do a re-install.

If the issue does not happen with a small project: slim down your current project or cut it up in segments. Even 16GB RAM can sometimes be insufficient with very long and complex projects.

@wardos:

This was a 10.0.4 bug, I have never seen it happen since the last update.

You can get title (and other) issues when working with complex projects on a slow system. But that's the case with any software.

Allright I'm going to try to trash prefs or maybe reinstall fcpx.
System is a mac pro with radeon 5770 and 16g RAM so i don't think it's the slow system .

No it's definitely not your system

Trashing prefs is always a good place to start.

oops

Have you validated your fonts with Fontbook? I had to remove some fonts that FB didn't like. Between that and updating to 10.0.5 I haven't had that problem since I 10.0.4 update. I had a problem with one member of a font family crashing FCP when I scrolled through the font list. None of the other members of the family caused a problem. With the black sheep gone all was well. Bottom line - check your fonts when you have any titler problems.

Bottom line - check your fonts when you have any titler problems.

Yes, absolutely. Hadn't thought of that because our font libraries are constantly checked for duplicate and corrupt fonts, so we never have had problems with this. Excellent suggestion.

@fcpguru

I know this will sound crazy, however I've managed to reduce some of these issues you've mentioned by using multicam clips as "compound clips". Like I said, I know it sounds crazy but I was advised to do so by another chap from another forum, and have managed to eliminate a few of these issues.

That does sound crazy!

I'm nearing final cut on this feature doc, so I thought I may duplicate the sequence and try un-compounding all the clips and see if it improves performance. Then if I need to make any edits I can always compound it, edit it, and break it apart again.