Continous 100% CPU Load, No Background Tasks?

After upgrading to 10.1.3, I am noticing that the activity monitor shows 100% CPU load for extended periods, 1 hour, when I am not doing anything, I just have a project open. When I try to stop FCPX, I have to use force quit because I get a notice saying that FCPX is waiting for background processes to quit. But, when you click on the project background process button (green 100%) it says there are no current background processes.

Any ideas on how to fix?

Hi Christopher,

Select your Library in the FCP X browser and in the Inspector Click the Modify Settings button. This will open the Storage Locations window for your Library.

In the Storage Locations window click the drop-down bar next to Backups and select "Do not Save" from the list, then press OK.

Does that solve the problem? If so, confirm and we will tell you what to do next.

- Ronny

Thank you for the help. Since making the change I worked on a couple of projects, and notice the old familiar behavior, high CPU usage when doing things like sharing a master file or adjusting color, but back down to low CPU use when FCPX is idle.

Please advise on the next steps.

ronny courtens wrote: Hi Christopher,

Select your Library in the FCP X browser and in the Inspector Click the Modify Settings button. This will open the Storage Locations window for your Library.

In the Storage Locations window click the drop-down bar next to Backups and select "Do not Save" from the list, then press OK.

Does that solve the problem? If so, confirm and we will tell you what to do next.

- Ronny

So you mean that switching off Automatic Backups did not help at all?
Dd you do his for every Library you have opened?

When you shut down FCP X do you still get the message that it is waiting for background processes to finish?



- Ronny

I am Sorry for the confusion, no. What I am reporting is a substantial improvement following your instructions. Before the load was 100% all the time regardless of what I did. Now it only goes up when I am working and goes back down when I leave he program idle. FCPX also quits instantly now when I close it. As I type this, FCPX is open and is at 3% CPU load. So in my mind, everything is good, back to the way things used to work in my experience before the upgrade to 10.1.3. Thank you. So I am ready for the next step.

ronny courtens wrote: So you mean that switching off Automatic Backups did not help at all?
Dd you do his for every Library you have opened?

When you shut down FCP X do you still get the message that it is waiting for background processes to finish?



- Ronny

Ak okay, thanks for the clarification. 100% CPU usage is quite normal when FCP X is running CPU intensive tasks, but it should come down when the app is idle. Glad to hear it does now.

Seems you are experiencing the infinite backups loop, which is a bug that affects some systems running 10.1.3. Although there is no official solution for this, you can try a little trick that seems to work:

In Finder go to your Final Cut Backups folder.
Select the folder and press CMD+i to open the folder Info window.
In the Info window (at the bottom) you will find the Read and Write permission settings.
Select "everyone" and set the permissions to read and write.
Close the Info window and restart FCP X.

This should take care of the little bug and you should be able to work normally without needing to disable your Automatic Backups. So first enable the backups for very Library again, and then test to see if the problem is gone.

If the problem does return (which has happened in a few exceptional cases) I'm afraid you will need to keep automatic backups disabled as a provisional workaround until the next FCP X bug update.

- Ronny

OK. Your fix took care of the problem. I have backups re-enabled with the write permissions changed, and FCPX is using about 1% CPU after I finished my last project. So I have the problem, but the work around you suggested fixed it.

Thank you.