FCPX - slow, crashing, using all RAM - Advice needed!

Hi,
I'm about ready to through my macbook out the window, if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.
I'm basically experiencing total slowdown and hanging/crashing within the programme.

I'm editing (or trying to) a short (2 mins) trailer shot with Canon EOS 550D in FCPX. I'm using a 13" MacPro, 16GB RAM late 2011 on Mountain Lion and latest FCPX version. Its 24fps, 1080p. I used MPEG Streamclip to convert the RAW files to Apple ProRes 224 before importing from a 1TB external hard drive (on advice from another website). The project and events have been relocated to this drive too. The project does use keying and has quite a few effects.

After battling through the beachball, crashes etc I went to the genius bar and was told I didn't have enough RAM. So I've upgraded from 4GB to 16GB, after being shown the dwindling few megabytes being wrung in Activity Monitor. Now Final Cut is draining the entire 16GB of memory, giving me a few minutes of normal use then bottoming out and failing.

I've exhausted all advice and troubleshooting I can find. I've turned off background rendering, just rendering as I go along (which seems to really put strain on things), turned off audio waveforms etc etc.

Am I missing something and being a total noob?

Please help, i've been struggling with this for days and have already missed the deadline for the project. FWIW, i've successfully used FCPX to edit projects before on this machine, it's so frustrating because I really just want to get stuck in and can see what the programme is capable of if only I could get it to work for me.

Sorry for the essay

If you started this Project with 4GB ram, perhaps there are problems in the Project that are carried over. Perhaps create a new Project of anything to see if the MBP is responsive.

Perhaps something went wrong with the import process you describe for your Event clips.

Either way, also consider trashing your Preferences. You can do it easily with this app: www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/

If still not working smoothly, delete FCPX and reinstall from the App Store.

Welcome to the forum.

You say your Project and your Event are on an external drive. What type of drive and how is it connected?

- Ronny

Thanks for the welcome and responses, much appreciated!

Bobby - Thanks, i'll try starting a new project - haven't done that since upgrading the RAM. I've already scrapped preferences and reinstalled from app store.

Ronny - They started (at the beginning of the project) on the internal 500GB drive and I moved them to a 1TB USB 2.0 (i think 5400 rpm) Buffalo Drivestation.

Thanks again for the response. The only fix i'm working with just now is to restart FCPX when the RAM has gone back to normal, then I get about 20 minutes of normal use, and I can see the available RAM depleting, before I have to quit and reboot again when it gets too low :blink:

Okay, now I see where your problem is.

Before you do anything else you absolutely MUST get your Events and Projects over to a decent external drive. The one you are using is USB2 and this fully explains why you are getting the spinning beach balls and the slowdowns. You never, EVER should edit any video off a USB2 drive. USB2 is simply too slow for any editing.

- Ronny

Ah, thanks for the advice.
Does the same apply to the internal 500GB drive?

You can edit from your internal system drive because your Project is not that big, and on the condition that you don't have any other Events or Projects on that drive. But it is not really something I would do. Your computer already uses your system drive to manage the OS and any open applications, and to write and read temp and cache files. If the same drive also has to continuously read your video clips and handle FCPX it will eventually slow down and crash.

Drives are ridiculously cheap these days, so the best thing you can do is get a decent FireWire drive (I guess your MBP does not have Thunderbolt?) and move your Event and your Project to that drive. You will immediately notice a huge difference.

- Ronny

5200rpm is also too slow of a drive speed for video. Get a good 7200rpm drive, period.

USB 3.0 drive, verify your Mac supports USB 3.0. Otherwise as previously stated, FW800.

Ok doke, thanks again for the help. The general consensus is that I get a new drive, I don't have USB 3.0 but do have a Thunderbolt port. Any recommendations (lowest budget possible)

I have used, and have two former students who've been using the LaCie Little Big Disk 1TB and 2TB drives for a long time with success. But I would shop around.

* One warning, as I've seen tons of reviews and know a few folks who bought a Buffalo Mini Station is to stay as far away from this product as you can. Extremely unreliable, don't buy one.


You'll have two choices when you shop for 1TB Tbolt drives:
1- Good performance with a Tbolt drive enclosure using a SATA III, 7500rmp drive in it.
2- Amazing performance with a Tbolt drive enclosure using SSD drives.

Stick to known, trust-able name brands, and research lots of reviews, keeping in mind there will always be a "few" bad reviews of every product on the market. Watch out for "excessive" bad reviews.

Just really research the Thunderbolt drive to make sure it's 7200RPM. There are Thunderbolt drives out there that use 5400RPM drives and that makes ZERO sense to me, total waste of money. The Cheap Lacie use 5400 on their thunderbolt.