FCP 10.1 Horrible Performance - HELP!

I upgraded to Mavericks, FCP 10.1, Motion and Compressor. I have a Mac Book Pro Mid 2012, 2.7 i7, 16mb ram, two external drives, USB contains Libraries & Thunderbolt for Video files, both have plenty of space. I've run Geekbench and my machine reports better than benchmark performance. My internal drive has plenty of space too.

I blew out everything. Took the MAC to the Apple store, had them reload the OS. Restored only my data files from time machine. But, RELOADED EVERY APPLICATION.

FCP is horrible. Background tasks take forever. An edit takes 10 minutes. Even after letting the render finish, when I hit the space bar to play, spinning wheel for literally 5-7 minutes. If I pause and then try to go back to edit, freezes for 3-5 minutes.

Someone has to have an idea about this. I have read thread after thread on this and many other sites about the performance issues. Please, does anyone have any ideas? I'm about to miss a pretty significant deadline.

Help me...

Dave

Create a new user account and see if this helps.

- Ronny

Thanks, Ronny.

I did create a new user and it is a little better. Not great, but better.

So, how do I fix my regular login?

Again, thanks for helping me.

Dave

Hi Dave,

This a known issue restricted to some specific types of hardware. If the new user account helps and you can get your work done with it I would suggest you do this and certainly post feedback to Apple. I know they are aware of the issue but the more people get on their heels about it the harder they will work to get it solved

If you want to see some better performance using your regular login the only thing you can try is to delete the FCPX preferences, then delete and re-install the FCPX app and immediately perform a Repair Permissions before you launch FCPX again.

Anyway you proceed, make sure you optimize your FCPX performance by turning background rendering OFF, hiding audio waveforms when you don't need them, working with optimized media and setting your Playback preferences to "Better Performance". Also make absolutely sure you are not editing from a USB2 drive. Hope this helps.

- Ronny

You are awesome sir! I will start employing these changes immediately. Thanks so much.

Also make sure "Disable App Nap" is checked. Highlight FC app do command-I, or file>get info and you'll see that setting.

Davop. Let me know if the permissions/reinstall/permissions has any affect. As I'm experiencing some lag with 10.1 as well.

I created a new user with Admin rights and it seems to be much better after using the program for about an hour.

I did the Disable Nap App - no effect so far. But I've been working constantly. We will see.

Disproportionate Pictures - I went into Disc Utility and Repaired Disk Permissions. Is there another procedure I should perform?

Update - I also repaired Disc Permissions for my normal user account. PROBLEM SEEMS TO BE SOLVED. FCP is actually working the way it is supposed to work. I do not see the "unprecedented performance" as advertised. However, I can once again get my work done.

I will also report that when using my normal user account, it does seem to run a little slower than when I use the new user account. I haven't run any tests to prove it though. I am going to stay with the new user account until this project is complete.

Thanks to all for your help!

Dave

Hi Dave,

Thank you for posting your feedback, this is very helpful. I don't know if this was the case for you, but there seems to be an issue with Mavericks being installed over the existing OS on certain computers. Mavs seems to install new kinds of preferences and .store files without replacing the old ones, which can lead to corrupted or conflicting prefs and permissions. This leads to decreased performance, and as 10.1 heavily relies on the new Mavs structure the decreased performance affects 10.1 as well. People who did a fresh install don't seem to have any issues.

That's why creating a new user, which creates entire new sets of prefs and permissions for this new user, often solves problems like this. As you have found out repairing permissions is also a good way to deal with decreased performance. In fact everyone should always repair permissions after updating the OS or any apps.

We clean-wipe all our machines on a regular basis, and we did the same when we installed Mavericks and 10.1. I can say that with 10.1 on Mavs do notice a major speed bump on all of our systems (maxed out MacPros and iMacs).

Anyway, glad you are up and running again.

- Ronny

In case anyone is following along, I've started doing some testing into my performance issues.

Deleting preferences and repairing permissions had no effect. Extremely laggy pucks in colour board and across interactive mouse-driven parts of the UI.

HOWEVER! I created a new Project in the existing library, dropped in footage and went to the colour board. Smooth as butter.

So, today I'm going to do a bit of research. Specifically where I'm having issues is in a compound clip containing a multi cam (I was compounding the multi cam to apply the Compressor to the audio across the entire video). I did not have issues with this before, but whether this is a new problem- or simply that Events and Project Converted from 10.0.9 are the problem is what I'm hoping to figure out.

So in the same Library, I'm going to try to recreate a new sequence with a new multi cam clip and see if I get the same slowdowns. If not, it's likely a conversion problem.

Hi Marcus,

Thank you for posting your findings. I think you are correct that your performance issue is related to a specific project and not caused by updating to 10.1 in general. In the past month we have been updating tons of 10.0.9 projects and thus far I haven't seen any problems with them.

Keep us posted on your progress, it will be interesting to find out what has specifically gone wrong with your project.

- Ronny

I'd recommend to not Compound the whole Multicam, but detach the Multicam audio. Compound that and apply your effects to that. Thus, FCP only has to deal with processing audio in a compound, not the whole Multicam. And in 10.1 when you detach the audio from a Multicam, that audio still has all of the original channels you can work with. Just a thought.

Great idea!

- Ronny

BenB wrote: I'd recommend to not Compound the whole Multicam, but detach the Multicam audio. Compound that and apply your effects to that. Thus, FCP only has to deal with processing audio in a compound, not the whole Multicam. And in 10.1 when you detach the audio from a Multicam, that audio still has all of the original channels you can work with. Just a thought.

Thanks Ben. I will try that, though I've been doing these videos like this for 2 years now and never had this performance issue with a compounded multi-cam clip.

As you say, I only need to compound the audio now with detachable multi-cam audio.

Incidentally, the other big performance issue was with a compound clip containing the multiple elements to make up a lower 3rd. Trying to alter the text is slow as molasses. But a brand new title has no issues.

You may see a difference between updated older Projects and new, native created 10.1 Projects. Not sure why, but I've seen this on occasion, thought not very much. Odd.

Latest wrinkle in my 10.1 upgrade saga. My FCPX now won't export to my Blackmagic I/O. FCP7 still works, so I know its not the connection, and in FCPX audio is still coming thru, but no video.

Urg!

Unfortunately- it looks like it must be a conversion issue.

In the same library, created new multi cam clip out of the same original media. Put it into a new Project, and then compounded it to match my existing projects. Going into the angle editor, there was no UI lag in the colour board, or anywhere else.

Good to know it's not an issue with the application, but my converted projects are going to be dogs to work with. Thank goodness most of the cutting is done.

Good to know all this. You might repot this to Apple. It could explain some of the performance issues people have been reporting after updating.

- Ronny

I finally finished my nine segment project with more than 25 hours of video this morning. Let me just say that FCP 10.1 made this a NIGHTMARE. I followed all of the steps recommended (and thanks to all for those), but the software performs terribly after the upgrade to Mavericks and FCP 10.1.

Remember, I did a total fresh install of the OS at the Apple store. It appears, the one mistake I made was restoring my user account from my Time Machine. If you are going to reinstall, create everything from scratch. I did reinstall all of my applications, but that didn't help. Most of the problems appear related to the user account. I would suggest backing up all of your data to a side drive and then bring it all back over.

After creating a new user and then repairing user permissions, FCP 10.1 did perform a little better. But, my main user account still sucks. I only had started the first segment when I STUPIDLY did the upgrade. I knew it was a big project and needed the so-called "unprecedented performance" boost. Dumb idea on my part.

DO NOT UPGRADE TO MAVERICKS OR FCP 10.1 until Apple figures this out. Now that my project is over, I am going to try to reinstall the application and see if it makes a difference.

Thanks to all of you for your help. I hope my hell will help some of you who use this great website.