Playhead "Stickiness" in FCPX

Hey folks - I have taken a moment to record a specific example of FCPX's deteriorating responsiveness over time.

I've done this because although it has happened plenty of times in the past I always just chalked it up to general deteriorating responsiveness over time which is a well documented issue with FCPX.

I like many others experience the "Phantom Background tasks" situation where a system grows less responsive over time and then warns of "Quitting background tasks" when restarting despite having nothing in the background tasks panel - but this is not that problem. (That issue only occurs when I am browsing large events).

In this case I am only working in the timeline. I am working with Sync'd clips and working in Proxy mode. This reliably happens until restart and then reliably happens again over time.

vimeo.com/115498917

Hi Doug,

Use the feedback form and add a link to the video. It gives a clear view of the issue and I'm sure the FCP X team will be interested in seeing this.

BTW did you record this using FCP X 10.1.4? Do you also have this playhead same lag when you close the Inspector?

- Ronny

Wonder if this is 'compounded' because they're compound clips.

This definitely seems to be a problem with FCPX. I don't notice it when editing short 30 or 60 second TV spots or even short promos but we just finished a 22 minute documentary and the problem surfaced many times over 3 or 4 weeks of editing. Restarting, as suggested usually solved this issue temporarily, but on a few occasions I had to manually delete the render files in all events associated with the project. Likely it may have been a corrupted render or analysis file in just one event, but it was more practical to delete the render files from all events rather than trying one at a time. I would also add that this performance issue wasn't noticed as severely on versions of FCPX under Mavericks, so perhaps Yosemite has made the problem worse.

Thanks for the responses:

Tom - Some are compound clips, some Multicam and some regular clips. it doesn't seem to make a difference.

dgwvideo - i don't think it is Yosemite - this goes back further for me.

ronny - Correct - 10.1.4 - Yes indeed i have contacted the FCPX via the feedback form and they got back to me immediately. Interestingly they simply said that the stickiness i described as a known issue but were more interested in the "Phantom Background Tasks" issue i described. My feedback to them was essentially the same as my original post here.

Good job, Doug. The feedback page is your best friend for getting issues solved.

- Ronny