FCP Unusable after Yosemite Update

Yosemite
FCP 10.1.3
27-inch, Mid 2011
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
20 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB

FCP has become unusable since Yosemite upgrade. Make move and get 3 seconds of the spinning beach ball. Change a color and the entire program and then system hangs. It’s a total nightmare.

Used Digital Rebellion tools to clear/delete everything (preferences, caches, etc.). Rebuilt permissions. Tried some plug-in testing to see what might be causing it, but like most people I have a lot of plug-ins installed.

I’ve had nothing like this for a long time. Many versions ago it was happening after an FCP update. It turned out to be a plug-in. But how can I troubleshoot so many plug ins?

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Try making a new user without any plugins and see how the application responds.

Tom Wolsky wrote: Try making a new user without any plugins and see how the application responds.

...and if that helps then take the hard road: Add your plugins to the plugins folder one at the time, - relaunch FCPX in between each added plugin, - until you find the guilty plugin(s).

I had exactly the same beachball experience after upgrading. I had to do a clean install to get things working and even then I had issues with a USB3 hub that worked fine under Mavericks but caused FCPX to be unusable under Yosemite.

After the clean start and learning not to plug my AVID Fastrack Duo into the offending USB3 hub, I'm finding FCPX to be the best it's ever been. A joy to use.

Thank you guys for the suggestions. I have FCP set up on a new external system disk and it seems to be working fine. This just expands the possibilities of what's wrong on my original system.

If/when I find the solution I'll post it here.

Thanks again.

If FCP X is working fine from your external drive the solution is quite simple, as Jeff said: an erase and clean install of your system drive.

- Ronny

As painful as it can be, there are so many possibilities for conflicts and things going wrong when you do an update of an existing system that it's just not worth the time and effort to try and fix them. The half day (or less) it takes to clean install and have a fast, stable system is completely worthwhile.

I'd also highly recommend keeping notes on the order you reinstall and testing FCPX after each addition, both software and hardware. If I hadn't, I'd never have been able to pinpoint the hardware conflict that was causing FCPX issues even after the clean install.

I should have mentioned in the initial post that this is happening on a clean install. Of course "clean" doesn't stay that way for long after one starts installing third party software and using the system.

Because my SECOND external Yosemite system is working fine (with all the same FCPX plug ins) , it would be safe to deduce that it's not a FCP plug in causing the problem. Which then might mean that it's a third party software conflicting with FCP.

Better Touch Tool? iStat Menus? A system wide third party is probably the problem. Just putting it out there in the hopes that someone else discovers it before I do. I'll post if I do figure it out.

Thanks again.

You should try what Tom said and create a new user acct. now since these other system-wide utilities are installed. Also I wouldn't necessarily conclude that plug in's aren't the problem. For instance, are you sure there aren't older plug in versions installed from a backup? Load Activity Monitor and see if there are any clues there with processes running.

For what it's worth, I have iStat Menus 5 and BTT installed and have not had problems. I have several menubar utilities, in fact I use Bartender because there are so many menu bar items :ohmy: