Slow rendering on one user, on another user everything works fine

Let's see if anyone else has experienced this issue or knows a way to fix it. I've had it for a long time and haven't been able to find a solution.

I use a late 2013 retina MacBook Pro for editing and when it was new FCPX worked pretty smooth. After 6-10 months I started noticing performance issues. Especially when I had a heavier color grade going on or added a lot of titles, the overall performance and especially rendering got significantly slower. It wasn't a major change after a certain update or anything, more like a steady slowdown over a course of time.

When I noticed the change I started troubleshooting the issue. It didn't matter what footage, project, event, library or hard drive I was using. The weird thing came up during the troubleshooting when I tried running FCPX on another user account. I created a new user, logged in, opened FCPX and those same projects on same hard drives were rendering and performing significantly faster. The difference was huge. This is still the case today. I have a million things set up on my main user account, so I didn't just switch to another account, even though that would've been an easy fix.

On my main account I've tried everything from resetting FCPX settings, uninstalling and re-installing FXCP, pretty much tried every troubleshooting trick I've found online. I think I'll just go through the hassle of setting up everything on the new user account, but I'm curious to know what caused this. What can be so broken on my main account that it causes FCPX to be so sluggish.

Hi Antti,

If applications run fine in one account but not in another this means the account directory is corrupted. That's why when anyone is reporting serious performance issues my first advice is always to create a new user and see if the system performs better with the new user. Apparently this is the case for you.

The directory structure that defines a user account is stored within the hidden /var/db/dslocal/ directory, unlike other system and user settings that are within preferences folders either the library folders. When a setting within these configuration files becomes corrupted, the account becomes unstable and your computer performance will suffer. This often gets worse over time.

The most drastic way and the most effective way to solve such issues is by wiping your system drive clean and starting fresh. But that can be a lot of work. However, there is a way to restore the integrity of your existing account with just a few actions. Here's the ink to a page where they explain how to do this:

www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-rebuild-a-user-account-in-os-x/

As you can create a new admin account it's very easy and it requires no Terminal commands. Just start reading from "Once you have a new admin account" and follow the steps from there. Actually there are only 3 steps needed to restore your existing account. If the directory is not damaged beyond repair, this should solve your issues.

- Ronny

Hi Ronny, thanks for the reply and the great instructions! I knew something was broken "under the hood", but that's where I run out of solutions. I'll try the thing you suggested later today after work.

Gotta love this community, there's always an answer for every question.