12 Questions from a new FCPX user (formerly FCP7/PPro user)

The rewrap process is very quick, not fairly slow. What's really, really slow is copying off an SD card. Every use it to copy files onto or off? It's like the slowest drive in the world.

10G free? 1.82G free? Are you tap;king about a hard drive? That hard drive is way, way beyond full. Another reason everything is slow. All is media is probably being terribly fragmented. FCP works with the media in it's native codec. It rewraps to QuickTime for performance and it converts the crappy compressed audio to uncompressed AIF.

FCP always copies media off a card. It cannot edit off a card. Are you going to leave the card permanently in your computer? The card is way, way too slow for production purposes.

The memory problem is in the OS and something Apple has repeatedly failed to address. Please use feedback to report it.

Tom Wolsky wrote: The rewrap process is very quick, not fairly slow. What's really, really slow is copying off an SD card. Every use it to copy files onto or off? It's like the slowest drive in the world.

10G free? 1.82G free? Are you tap;king about a hard drive? That hard drive is way, way beyond full. Another reason everything is slow. All is media is probably being terribly fragmented. FCP works with the media in it's native codec. It rewraps to QuickTime for performance and it converts the crappy compressed audio to uncompressed AIF.

FCP always copies media off a card. It cannot edit off a card. Are you going to leave the card permanently in your computer? The card is way, way too slow for production purposes.

The memory problem is in the OS and something Apple has repeatedly failed to address. Please use feedback to report it.

Hi Tom,

Okay so I think I should be more specific and precise with my words. I've already copied the SDHC card onto my external drive. I am not importing directly from the card itself, it was copied to my hard drive months ago when it was shot. I keep the file structure intact.

As for memory...I was actually referring to RAM. I still call it memory sometimes and because I had downloaded an app called "Free Memory" to deal with this "inactive memory" issue, that's where I should have been more clear. My external drive has about 400GB free and my OS drive has about 250-300GB free at the moment. Its the "free" RAM that dropped way, way low during this process of rewrapping.

You also mentioned that it rewraps the AVCHD files from the Panasonic HMC150 cameras to QT and converts the audio to uncompressed AIF...so why does it say H.264 and then "linear PCM" in the "codec" column?

So yeah, it took about a few minutes for the import window to close while it imported the files while it "processed" and then about 30 minutes for all 600 clips to "rewrap" in the background. During that 30 minutes my computer became increasingly slow as I literally watched my free RAM drop to almost nothing. And no, I wasn't doing anything else at the time. Just had the app open, occasionally clicking files but not trying to edit because it started going slow during this RAM free fall.

I'll definitely report it like you suggested. But now that I've hopefully cleared up my workflow, if you have any more info on what was going on that would be great. Thanks!!!

o why does it say H.264 and then "linear PCM" in the "codec" column?

Because that's what it is, QuickTime in H.264 with Linear PCM audio.

There is definitely RAM issues with the OS, and has been for quite some time. Unfortunately Apple doesn't see it that way.

To clarify, AVCHD is a file format. H.264 is the video codec that it uses. So it's not transcoding, just rewrapping. It's changing the container format for the video, not the codec.

BenB wrote:
FCP 7 needed a Log & Transfer plugin from Sony or whoever to ingest AVCHD. So does FCP X.

Ben, one of my B-roll cameras is actually a small Sony Handicam that shoots 1080 60p in AVCHD. FCPX ingests this fine and I never installed any plugin to do it. Just connect the cam via its USB cable and the import window opens.