RED workflow ?

i am trying to do a music video clip with RED footage in 4K resolution.
I have a mbp i7 , 16GB RAM and external usb3 disk , full of footage.
What is the best workflow for red editing?
I tried to do native editing but it was unplayable in timeline.
I tried to make proxy filew, but for 2 minutes clip (i have a lot of them) FCPX made aboyt half an hour to transcode it!
Is it so slow or am i doing something wrong ?

Transcoding to Proxy is the way to go, 30min for 2 minutes is much longer than it should take.

Possible remedies for faster transcoding,

*Reset Prefs using digital Rebellion software
*turn off background rendering in playback prefs
*Make sure you have at least 100Gb free on System Drive and 25% on external.

*use a Mac Pro with multiple CPU'S

I use a 8 core mac pro and it takes ~ 5minutes to make proxy for 2 minutes of 4kREDRAW . It's a 2009 mac so it should be on par as far as transcoding with the latest high spec Macbookpros.

what is the best-fastest way to transcode media (r3d files) ?
Inside FCPX , or with another program ?

Redcine x used to be pretty fast with the redline multiple thread batch transcode, but the last time I used RedCine X pro I think this functionality was taken away. So FCP X from my experience is the quickest hassle free way to go.

You did mention that your external drive was full of footage. If it is full you may want to create the event and project on a new drive.

The best workflow is to bring in the REDRaw and generate proxies from inside FCPX because that way it will be best when needing to go out to color correction, etc. it shouldn't take that long to transcode. Maybe your drive is too full? For RED stuff I always recommend working on a RAID because the data rates can be kinda high...