Background Rendering On or Off?

I've been working on quite a few projects lately in 1080p quality, avoiding the use of Proxy edits.
I'm using a MacBook Pro 2010 model, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 with 182.9 GB free out of 319.21.
Now with that being said, I've had alot of "Beach Ball" issues as of late. Freezing, program crashing (only once, but once is enough to cause concern), and overall slow Background Rendering causing my progress to take massive hit.

Just seeking suggestions, but would you prefer to have it on or off to make your Work Session less difficult and more at ease to get things done?

Background rendering Off at all times. You can manually render whenever you need to.

Other things that can speed up your workflow:

- Disable audio waveforms if you don't really need them while you are editing. You can always enable them when you work on the audio.

- Close all applications that you don't need while you are editing.

- Disable Time Machine while you are editing.

- In Preferences > Playback set Playback Quality to Better Performance.

- Hide unused Projects and Events.

- Put your Projects and Events on a fast external drive and not on your system drive.


- Ronny

Oh, and please turn Time Machine off.

I think the core 2 duo and 4GB of RAM are the real issue. Upgrade to at least 8GB of RAM if you plan on using this computer to edit for at least another year.

Using event manager X to hide projects you aren't currently working on speeds everything up a lot.

Unless I'm playing with effects (especially slice x), I keep background rendering on while I'm doing my basic cuts and I have it set to start after 2 seconds. This keeps everything rendered completely while I'm looking for my next shot and I don't notice any decrease in performance. But I'm also using a 27" i7 iMac with 16GB RAM, 2GB GPU, external thunderbolt and 3.4Ghz processor.

The only time I get to use an iMac to edit is at school. Unfortunately, they don't use Final Cut anymore, and have adapted to ProTools and other editing software that I haven't fooled around with yet. I thank you for the input, but I'm aware that MacBook's and iMac's run very differently, seeing as ones a laptop and ones an overpowered tower

ronny courtens wrote: Background rendering Off at all times. You can manually render whenever you need to.

Other things that can speed up your workflow:

- Disable audio waveforms if you don't really need them while you are editing. You can always enable them when you work on the audio.

- Close all applications that you don't need while you are editing.

- Disable Time Machine while you are editing.

- In Preferences > Playback set Playback Quality to Better Performance.

- Hide unused Projects and Events.

- Put your Projects and Events on a fast external drive and not on your system drive.


- Ronny

How exactly do I "Disable" the Time Machine? By turning the Auto-Updates off? I don't really see an option to turn it off completely, just to disable auto-updates.

Open System Preferences and click the Time Machine icon (It's in the System group).

The Time Machine window will open. Just turn TM off by clicking the switch from On to Off.

Don't forget to turn it on again after editing.


- Ronny

ronny courtens wrote: Open System Preferences and click the Time Machine icon (It's in the System group).

The Time Machine window will open. Just turn TM off by clicking the switch from On to Off.

Don't forget to turn it on again after editing.


- Ronny

I tend to not use the Time Machine anyway, so is leaving it off a good idea? Or temporarily while working on projects? Sorry for so many questions, but I see I'm getting somewhere just from the advice you've given.

No problem, that's what we're here for

It's always a good idea to keep a backup of your files, that's what Time Machine is all about. So I would temporarily turn it off when you work on projects and switch it on again when you don't work with FCPX. This way you will work faster while editing AND have a backup of your files in case your system drive fails one day.

- Ronny