Need help, How to benefit using FCPX and my new external SSD drive?

Hello, I am somewhat new to using FCPX and have some questions and i have searched around the web but i cant seem to find much on my particular questions. If anyone could help and answer them or give me advice i would appreciate it.

Running a late 2013 27" imac
3.5 GHz Intel Core i7
8gb ram
512gb SSD drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2048 MB

FCPX 10.1.3

Ok, I record video reviews of products and put my videos on YouTube, I like to upload 720p or 1080p. A 30 minute 1080p video will take around 6-8 hours to uplaod to YouTube using the Share To YouTube button in FCPX. I am not sure if this is normal but figure i would ask some questions to maybe help speed up the process as much as possible.

My setup goes like this.

I have a Sony HDR-CX150 camcorder then i live feed via HDMI into a BlackMagic UltraStudio mini recorder that is connected to my iMac via thunderbolt

I record my videos using quicktime, If i choose to record in 720p it records the videos in H264 but if i record my video in 1080p then quicktime will record in ProRes422.

I hear ProRes422 is better so i usually record in 1080p.

I record 3 video clips, each clips is normally 20 mins in length.

I then import the 3-20 min clips into FCPX.

I create a new project, import the clips and then edit each of the 3 clips seperatly. I drag 1 clip down to the timeline and all i pretty much do is use the blade tool and cut out parts i dont want in the video. Each clip, I usually blade/cut parts out about 10-15 times. I cut out all the times i say "UM" or "OK" in the video.

Once i am done editing 1 clip, I select all, then right click and create new compound clip.

After that,i remove that compound clip from the timeline and drag down video #2 and do the same process. I do the same for the remaining 2 videos.

Once i am finished editing all 3 videos and making 3 compound clips, I then drag the 3 edited, compound clips down to the timeline, and pretty much hit Share To Youtube and off it goes.

Now as i said, it normally takes 6-8 hours to upload a 30 min long 1080p video, I am on a broadband connection 50mbps. It isnt the upload that is taking forever, its whatever FCPX has to do to the video first that is taking forever.

So i was told, Never to edit videos on the same harddrive as your running FCPX on, So i went out and bought a External Firewire SSD drive. So i then record my videos with quicktime, Save them to the external, When i import into FCPX i select (keep files in place ) so that way the videos stay ON the external.

My issue is though, When i am done editing each of the videos and select "New Compound Clip" is it saving the edited compound clips to my actual iMac HD? or to the external? because even though the videos i recorded are on the external, I dont see FCP saving the Compound clips to the external ( it doesnt give you a option as to where to save them )

So my question is, When i make these compound clips, Is that making my external HD useless? because if its saving the compound clips to my iMac HD, then when i go to upload the video, FCP is still using my iMac HD to do all the encoding Not the external, Understand what i mean?

I was told that a good reason why it takes so long for my videos to upload is because i had the videos on my iMac HD and that it would be faster if i put m videos on a external and let FCP grab the videos from there and encode them rather then my iMac HD.

Also, Is it better to record my videos in H264 via quicktime or ProRes422?

Which has better quality and which will upload faster after i edit them?

Hi Vapn, welcome to the forum.

This has very little to do with internal or external drives, actually your drive won't make any difference in this process.

The format you are recording to is perfect. ProRes422 is better for editing than H.264.
The problem is that sharing to Youtube involves three steps:

- Converting your 30 minute program to H.264 with the correct settings for Youtube. This will take 2 to 3 hours on your system and it will result in a file that is approximately 4 GB.

- Uploading the 4 GB file to Youtube. This will take anything between 2 and 3 hours, even with a fast connection. Providers always cap the upload speed, your download speed is irrelevant for this.

- Waiting for Youtube to do its internal transcoding. No matter how you send your video, Youtube creates different versions for people with different internet speeds. If you don't have a professional (paid) account with Youtube you will first have to wait in line for your file to be re-encoded. This takes an extra average of 45 minutes to 1 hour.

So the total process adds up to between 6 and 7 hours, which is what you see. The drive has nothing to do with this.

Try this: instead of sharing to Youtube, export your timeline as an H.264 file.
Then go to your Youtube account and upload the video to Youtube. You may win some time with this, but don't expect any magical speeds. Uploading long files to Youtube simply takes time.

- Ronny

ronny courtens wrote: Hi Vapn, welcome to the forum.

This has very little to do with internal or external drives, actually your drive won't make any difference in this process.

The format you are recording to is perfect. ProRes422 is better for editing than H.264.
The problem is that sharing to Youtube involves three steps:

- Converting your 30 minute program to H.264 with the correct settings for Youtube. This will take 2 to 3 hours on your system and it will result in a file that is approximately 4 GB.

- Uploading the 4 GB file to Youtube. This will take anything between 2 and 3 hours, even with a fast connection. Providers always cap the upload speed, your download speed is irrelevant for this.

- Waiting for Youtube to do its internal transcoding. No matter how you send your video, Youtube creates different versions for people with different internet speeds. If you don't have a professional (paid) account with Youtube you will first have to wait in line for your file to be re-encoded. This takes an extra average of 45 minutes to 1 hour.

So the total process adds up to between 6 and 7 hours, which is what you see. The drive has nothing to do with this.

Try this: instead of sharing to Youtube, export your timeline as an H.264 file.
Then go to your Youtube account and upload the video to Youtube. You may win some time with this, but don't expect any magical speeds. Uploading long files to Youtube simply takes time.

- Ronny

I always hear people saying that i should store my videos on a different drive then i edit on. I went out and picked up a 250.00 ssd external but if the external is going to serve really no purpose, I might just save money and return it.

Can you explain why some people suggest to put the videos on a separate drive?

Thanks

It's always better to have your media on an external drive, but that is for editing reasons and it has nothing to do with sharing to YouTube. So I would not throw that drive away, you can safely use it as a media drive. FCP X will indeed run smoother when your media are on a fast external drive. But encoding and uploading to YouTube will not go any faster by this.

- Ronny

ronny courtens wrote: It's always better to have your media on an external drive, but that is for editing reasons and it has nothing to do with sharing to YouTube. So I would not throw that drive away, you can safely use it as a media drive. FCP X will indeed run smoother when your media are on a fast external drive. But encoding and uploading to YouTube will not go any faster by this.

- Ronny

Could you answer one more question that i seem to always have an issue with?

When working in FCPX after a period of time FCPX will become sluggish and begin to lag. If i close it and reopen it, Its perfectly fine.. Until, After a period of time and using it, Then it will begin to lag and run sluggish again.

My system has 8gb of ram, Which should be enough but i was thinking about upgrading to 16. I have read around about a memory leak in FCPX, If that is the case, upgrading to 16gb wont do much, correct?

Is there any way i can find out why its doing this?

FCPX is like that, and 16 GB RAM upgrade would help. Would it solve the problem 100%? Maybe not, but the problem wouldn't be as bad, probably. You'd see some overall system performance improvements, also. I know, not much of an answer. "Yeah, sure, it might, maybe, one would hope!"

No problem, we are here to answer your questions.

There is NO memory leak in FCP X, that's one of the many stupid things about FCP X you sometimes hear on the internet.
But there is a problem with the OS not releasing unused RAM fast enough, which in some cases can lead to sluggishness after a certain amount of time. When you quit and re-open FCP X you clear the RAM cache, which explains why it does work faster again after a relaunch.

The more RAM you have the longer it will take to fill up your RAM. So adding 8 GB of RAM certainly will improve your editing experience a lot. IMO 16 GB of RAM is a minimum to work comfortably, especially with longer edits.

- Ronny