FCPX Rendering Motion object takes 16 days

I downloaded a free motion template from a website, it works well. Allows you to add 10 pictures to what appears to be cd or book covers representing chapters in the story. The camera moves in and out and it does look quite impressive.


The template was for an earlier version of motion but opened with the latest version of motion fine and imported ok to FCPX. However the template has been a nightmare from the beginning. Whenever I click on it in the FCPX timeline, it takes about 90s for my computer to respond and update the info view with the drop zones. The more pictures I set in the drop zones the longer this took. I was in the habit of actually having to close FCPX after one added, then start again as it seemed quicker.

I managed to finish the rest of my project, it consists of footage from friends and lots of pictures and a good mix of audio, FCPX dealt with all of this fine with no time lags, unless I accidentally clicked on the motion imported object.

Problem

The problem I have now is when I come to render the movie, my machines dies. It can cope with rendering everything in the project quite quickly, EXCEPT this motion imported object. As soon as it hits this, CPU usage goes up to 198% (dual core) and ram increases until it hits a limit of available ram (i have 8gb) and then swap space starts, then machine dies.

I tried just exporting it, rather than rendering first. I selected Master File, it estimated a size of 2.9Gb. It started running, I left it going to 12 hours, and it had only created a 30meg file, then died with an error saying quick time error.

Specs

FCPX 10.0.6

2.93 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
256Gb SSD Drive (project is on same drive as OS but it is an SSD drive, over 150Gb free on drive)
8Gb Ram
NVidia 1067 Mhz DDR3

I've tried killing all other apps on the machine whilst exporting or rendering takes place.

Surely this can't be right? There must be something wrong with the motion imported object. It only lasts about 30 seconds if that. The movie is 30 mins long in total.

Anyways, thanks for reading those of you that got this far, I would appreciate your knowledge in this matter.

It's for a present, and I don't have 16 days for this to complete, especially when I need to use the computer in between.

Cheers

Alan

Do you have Motion 5? If so, you could try doing all the work for this particular clip in Motion and then exporting it to FCP X.

Thanks for the reply, i'll be perfectly honest and say I didn't realise that was an option. I'll give that ago now and let you know.

In motion 5 I went to sharing, export Movie, selected H.264 and exported. It certainly proceeded much better, it got to 30% in about an hour, then Motion crashed with an unexpected error message.

Currently trying again to see if it does the same...

For what it's worth, your system specs are still a bit light. The fact that you have an SSD has no bearing on the fact that the OS and your projects and events need to be separated. The OS needs its' own drive simply to manage the OS, and those constant drive reads/writes will cause performance issues if that same drive is attempting to stream your event media to your NLE.

8GB of RAM is going to be barely enough for all but the smallest of projects.

dgwvideo wrote: For what it's worth, your system specs are still a bit light....

Thanks, I appreciate your comments. I've not been using it long enough to understand what the issues are. It's just a shame the specs on apples website indicate what's required to open the program rather than properly use it.

I take heed on separating the OS from the project. Any recommendations for an external drive?

Finally the technique of using motion to do the export has worked. In the end it only took just under 2hours to do, and now I can import that in as a completed video just like any other footage.

Glad to hear it worked out for you.

Cheers!

Stupid question: why exporting to h.264 if you want to import into an NLE for further editing? Render it out as a QT or ProRes file. That goes much faster. Especially with a machine of your vintage.

It's ready to go, no further editing is required for that part so I just wanted to change it to something that wouldn't kill FCPX when exporting or rendering.

As my machine is past it, what would you suggest. I would say I will only be doing this part time for a few 30min projects a year. I was considering one of the top spec latest iMacs and ensuring it has 16gb ram minimum.

ProRes will render out faster and be EASIER for FCP to deal with, than H.264. Stay away from H.264 if you can.

BenB wrote: ProRes will render out faster and be EASIER for FCP to deal with, than H.264. Stay away from H.264 if you can.

Ok, noted thanks. I seem to recall there was about 5 options, would prores always be the best option?

Yep.