FCP suddenly sluggish after every edit function

Today FCP started misbehaving and it has me scratching my head.

I'm on a new Mac Pro (32GB RAM, D700, 8 core) with FCP and OSX fully up to date. The system is fast in every respect, except that suddenly whenever I make a change in the timeline- cut in a shot, tweak a transition, change an audio level, etc- there's a significant pause before I can do something else. I can move my mouse, but FCP becomes unresponsive. No spinning beachball, however. Once I get control back navigation is quick and the skimmer is fluid. I can speed through source clips and use JKL keys without issue. It's only when I make a creative change that everything slows down.

I've quit and relaunched FCP, rebooted, done a complete shutdown, trashed preferences (and shut down again), and anything else I can think of. The Library is only 2.7GB and on fast local storage, and the media is external on the Xsan. I suppose I can delete and reinstall FCP, but this system was just built from the ground up two days ago.

Is there something I'm missing? As always, thanks in advance.

Bill

Did you speed test the san? That could be what may be having problems. The other question is, did you update your projects from 10.0.9?

Thanks for the quick reply. I tested the Xsan earlier and it's consistently ~600MB/sec read and write, and the local drive is faster than that. Playback performance seems fine- it's just when I make a change that things come to a halt.

This is a project that started in 10.1.1.

Bill

What types of footage are in the project?

Mostly ProRes, with some C300 media mixed in.

I see, are the C300 clips long takes? The spanned clips from that camera has been a slowdown in FCPX as well as the other NLEs I've used it in.

The other thing is what plugins have you installed? Are any of them being used at the moment?

I've got a few thoughts.

- I've had a bit of trouble with large libraries causing issues in compound clips. Are you edition in compound clips? If so, try not to.

- Try moving your timeline/project to it's own event (not library just own event.).

- Create a new library on the same drive as your first library and move the project to there and see if that isolates it.

I've seen corrupted clips cause all sorts of problems and they are difficult to isolate. So let us know how any of these steps go.

Great suggestions, which reminded me of another one..

When you make the new library, drill into the library bundle and delete all the aliases. (Or move everything out to a new folder) Then drag and drop into the event all the media. Make sure 'leave files in place' is selected in the prefs.

This sometimes fixes a lot of gremlins.

The Library is definitely complex with a lot of projects and compound clips, and multiple versions of each. Thanks for the troubleshooting suggestions. I'll have my work cut out for me this weekend.

It's as if I crossed some line of complexity that FCP cannot handle- I've been working on this Library for about two months with few issues, but today things took a troubling turn just as we're moving into the finishing and delivery phase of this job.

Cheers,
Bill

Ahh, then definitely try making a new library, and then copy pasting the finishing projects to that and see if it helps.

Try the event trick first, especially if you have lots of timelines in an event. Please update us on status.

I appreciate the support! So far I've taken the rather large sequences event and divided the active timelines from each category (full broadcast program, promos, episodics, etc) into their own new events and jettisoned the older cuts. Performance is not perfect, but much better.

As an additional test I created a new Library and dragged the most complex timeline into it. After the copy and long list of keyword collections it created I tried it out and it was full steam ahead fast. So I have that as a fallback, but I will avoid that until absolutely necessary as it hoses the organization of the work. It's great to know that the option is there.

Thanks again, guys. This community is the best out there.

Bill

I have found that moving a timeline to its own event also helps.

I have a very large event that was going for 8 months. Thousands of items. Browser performance was a smooth as butter, playback was fine, but some timeline operations suddenly ground to a hault. Turns our we were editing in compound clips which was apparently part of the slowdown.

I would encourage you to write up some feedback and maybe record a screencast on youtube, etc. and shoot it off to Apple FCP feedback.

I will do just that. I think Apple might be tired of hearing from me these past few weeks.

thefcpguy wrote: I will do just that. I think Apple might be tired of hearing from me these past few weeks.

The more reports of a bug the sooner they fixit I'm sure.