FCP X + Mavericks = Frame dropping?!

Hi there.

I have a multicam project that I am working on. Prior to Mavericks, I had no issues with my 3x 1080p streams at all. Now, after upgrading to Mavericks, I wanted to finish my project. But FCPX is dropping frames - especially when the camera angle is changed.

Have anyone else experienced this?

FCPX seems to be slower at launching than before too. I have tried to remove the preference files, but that didn't change a thing.

About my system
I am streaming from a G-Drive FW800, running an iMac 2.93Ghz i7 with 16GB ram, 500GB SSD + 1TB HDD. All my FCPX documentfiles/videos are on the G-Drive. All software is up-to-date.

My settings are (unchanged from before the upgrade):
- No background rendering
- Using optimized media

I just switched to Proxy media and the problem persists!

I simply can't finish my work now, as the computer constantly stops the playback.

I will try to move the media to my built in 1TB HDD to see if it's a FW800 issue.

Is it possible that you had the "Warn when dropping frames..." checkboxes in the preferences disabled before. And now they, or one of them, have somehow become enabled?

It was disabled before, yes - but the video streams ran smoothly. I only switched the warning on, as I wanted to make sure it was actually frame dropping that occurred.

I'm assuming you narrowed it down to the "..due to disk speed" option and that's why your mentioning the firewire 800. I use a firewire 800 raid 0 and haven't had the issue yet, but I always have the "..due to disk speed" checkbox ticked and haven't been doing anything heavy in FCPX over the last few weeks.

Sorry I can't help, if you work it out please post incase it happens here.

I have now moved the whole project to my internal 1TB harddisk (not the built in SSD with the system). I have the exact same issues!

Next test: I'm currently copying the whole thing to my SSD - update in a little while.

Also, I have tried removing all of my 3rd party plugins - no luck.

I have now tested this with my built in 500GB SSD drive. I still have frame dropping!

I wonder what causes this, as I know for a fact that it isn't any of my drives (it all worked without a glitch a week ago - prior to Mavericks).

Anyone?

GOT IT!!

I nailed it down to this: When ever my Audio Meters are ON, they cause frame dropping. As soon as I turn them off (CMD + SHIFT + EIGHT) - no problems what so ever.

This must be a bug, don't you agree?

HOW I FOUND OUT:
I made a new user on my system. Booted FCPX. The Audio Meters are disabled as default on FCPX. Once I enabled the Audio Meters, the same problem occurred here.
I went back to my main user, disabled the Audio Meters - and everything ran smoothly again.

A bug or not it's definitely an issue they'll need to look at. I've not checked in a while but in early FCPX version I found that the wave form monitors used loads of GPU. I don't have the greatest graphics card, but it was either use dual monitors and keep the waveform monitors off or have horrible general experience in the timeline or event browser.

It wasn't that bad as you don't really need to be timeline editing or event browsing while dong colour work, but smooth playback while sound monitoring is pretty essential.

Thanks for the update.

I can bog down a FW800 drive with enoufh HD multicam streams pretty easily. Rendering before playback should help.

Funny thing is though, that I did not have this problem prior to upgrading to Mavericks - with the exact same conditions.

Daft question - how long since you upgraded to Mavericks? Doing so triggers a re-indexing of your drives, which can take a few hours and significantly degrades disk performance until it's complete.

I've not seen any such frame-drop issues on either of my systems, happily. They're both running Mavericks, and on both I keep the audio meters open.

About two weeks I believe.

THanks. now audio meter geting off:)

Yes, I'm also experiencing this since upgrading to Mavericks!

Just hoping it will be sorted by OSX 10.9.1 or FCPX 10.1...

I'm on a rMBP, btw...