Extreme Lag with program

I'm new to the forums here so I hope this is the right place to ask about this, I'm very familiar with FCP X and such, I recently started editing my first music video. Nearing the end of the music video edit about 2-3 minutes of clips. I feel like this has caused my program to lag badly, Every time I replay the edit I get a rainbow spinning wheel for at least half a second or less. When watching the video the audio cuts out and the video remains playing. It's caused me to have a lot of trouble just getting a little bit of editing done. I can possibly blame myself for organization I guess, I assumed I had too many clips in my events, timelines and in general was causing the lag. I deleted a few events, not really any help to the lag. I should mention that I've also edited 8-10 minute montages on this same desktop computer without any problems like this. I'm going to bang out this music video whether I can solve the lag or not, and then possibly purge my FCP program of everything and start fresh. I recently got a laptop where FCP runs smoothly so I'm happy about that at this point.

Thanks for reading
-MrWomprey

This is a known issue and something that Apple seems uninterested in fixing. It's just what you get when you use FCPX.

There are some that say they don't have any problems, like Ronny (who has never had any issues with FCPX ever and it's only ever worked 100% perfectly for him).

What are your hardware specs and software versions?

You shouldn't be getting this on a music video cut of that length, no matter how complicated it is. It will start to get sluggish with things that are 30+ minutes with a ton of titles and effects, but otherwise performance is pretty good (and even better on 10.2). You might want to check if the hard drive you're editing off of is failing. Also, you didn't mention what type of footage (codec, dimensions) you're using.

I get sluggishness on an edit that's 52 seconds and I have a Mac Pro trash can with the dual GPUs and lots of megahertzes and many RAMs.

There has got to be something else going on, Redifer, if you are seeing problems with that setup and those short projects. I am using a 12 core Mac Pro mid 2010 and I edit 30 minute to 60 minute mini documentaries quite a bit, along with music videos that have quite a few layers of effects and grading. I get pretty darn good performance almost consistently and I see no editing slowdown as projects grow. And, as mentioned 10.2 has vastly improved performance for me.

My media is on Sata 3 Raid 5 drives, OS on SSD and 64GB ram. Working mostly in 1080 24p or 30p XAVC Intra 100. My timeline is usually Prores 422 HQ, dual 27" Apple LED displays, viewers on Best Quality, 4 scopes going. I would think your tube would easily handle this, but if it isn"t, you might need to look into some system maintenance if you haven't already (i.e. resetting NVRAM, SMC, driver updates, bad plugins, etc.).

Clearly FCPX performance varies based on specific hardware, and I would think the hardware you have wouldn't be an issue.

This is a fcp issue and not hardware.
too many report the same problems, and to see it on the new trash can macs reenforces me to back up that it is only a software issue.

redifer is right. I also have seen this on very short projects as well.

The problem with the timeline playbar not moving when you press play for the first second or so is a horrible problem causing frustration over and over in so many of my edits. I would think that making a music video would be close to impossible with fcp. Footage used and rendering or not has NO influence on the playbar issue.

this has been going on for all versions of fcpx. redifer is also right that this is an issue apple doesn't seem to care about... as well as overall sluggishness and beach-balls

Kurt

What kind of drives are you editing from? In my experience, beach-balling is often caused when accessing storage.

I am editing from a Thunderbolt 2 (my ONLY option with a Mac trash can) G-RAID 8TB drive. Is Thunderbolt 2 wimpy? Is it less good than SATA? The drive never sleeps. Ever. FCPX just has poor coding. That's really all there is to it.

dkag7 wrote:
The problem with the timeline playbar not moving when you press play for the first second or so is a horrible problem causing frustration over and over in so many of my edits. I would think that making a music video would be close to impossible with fcp. Footage used and rendering or not has NO influence on the playbar issue.

Tons of people use it for music videos and very compex edits, including myself, so you have to ask yourself if there's something wrong with your setup or particular hardware combo. Try a clean install, eliminate all your variables, and add things back one at a time to see what's going on. This is par for the course when troubleshooting. I honestly don't know what to say to people having issues with a minute-long edit because it's not my experience as well as the majority of users. Take a good look at any plugins you might have which could be causing problems.

Btw, older versions were also fine to use; they just have been steadily improving performance, especially for more complex projects.

32 gigs ram
mac pro 2010 3.33 ghz
yosemite installed on SSD 1TB >>>>CLEAN INSTALL<<<
NO 3rd PARTY PLUGINS<<<
GTX 680 2gigs VRAM
SSD Media drive and 12 TB RAID media drive.

How much more of a faster system do I need to get FCP to run right?

I just edited a multicam shoot.
Last night I did all the sync work. (3 video clips and 2 audio clips, @ 422)
Today all that I did was play the clip and change angles as needed.
1 hour long.
By the time I got done the memory was 75% used.
Again all I did was change angles, thats it.
In order to put in simple titles, I needed to shut down FCP and reopen it to get my memory back to a usable place for FCP.

That is pathetic.


This is the second time I have installed FCP on a clean system (also on another mac pro)

Other than Joe who has THE machine and does not like it ...

Maybe you should check "Open CL" (not GL ) capabilities and specification for your card, the standard GTX680 does not, the GTX680MX does.

just a suspicion

support.apple.com/en-us/HT202239

Thanks,
I did check into this however I am not finding any user reports that the Radeon HD 7950 7970 have any better performance (in FCPX) than the GTX680.

If you have any ideas for better graphic cards for FCPX, please post..

thanks

You are right these cards although openCL 1.2 are only supported in OS X Mavericks ...

A better video card will always help, but I dont see this as the issue.

Memory.

In every slowdown I have come across (beach balls, trimming, playing (playbar delay), copy/paste delays, all of it.. the memory is about 1/3 to 1/2 used up.

But it keeps getting used up... (memory never releases after various functions performed) so more memory isnt really the answer either. So again I have to point to the software and its memory usage.

I'm not suficiently architecture savy but i think if the GPU does not do it's part of the job, the CPU will have to take care of the load. I must admit that I am more in Ronny's situation were every thing is running smoothly. I usually work in 30 minutes formats, the only time I had LAGS was on a 2 hours but quite simple structure edit. All projects are however workflow tested before the big import...

To everyone having issues - Have you reported this through the Feedback page? They do read them.

Here's the thing that you all need to understand very clearly:

People should not have to do a clean install just to get FCPX to work as advertised. That's just stupid if that's the case. Also, I did a clean install a few months back and it did not help the issue at all. LOTS of people complain about this. Lots. It's a problem with the software. It's not coded well. The end.

If you did do a clean install and still have basic issues, then it's probably some hardware problem. Could be related to your RAID. I have heard of failing RAIDs that will give you intermittent beach-balls. You could try putting media on something else and see if you have the same issues. It could be RAM or even the GPU. Btw, I'm working on a Mac Pro ash can upgraded from Mavericks, so a clean install is definitely not necessary if everything is working fine. This is not to say that they can't also find optimizations in the software in the future. Short of inviting you into my office to give you a demo of how things work, I'm not sure how to convince you that those performance issues are not normal.

To summarize my first post in this thread "... something else is going on". Having said that (twice), it seems counter-productive to keep using an app that is so inefficient at editing and bug ridden AND whose developer offers no hope in site of fixing or caring about the problems. Honestly, why would anyone keep using a program that is a source of constant headaches, annoyance, etc. Final Cut has a very low investment, and even with Motion and Compressor the cost is minimal ( and those apps can run independent of the NLE ). Why not switch to another platform ( Avid, Premier, Vegas, Smoke, Hitfilm, DaVinci, etc ) or any other alternative? The hardware can still be used with any of the other mentioned apps. Is there a specific reason to be tied to the program if it doesn't work?

I use FCPX almost everyday and it is our main editing software for our business. If I was experiencing the severe performance issues described by some in this thread then I would be forced to switch to another NLE.

So, the issues can be blamed on anything I guess, but WHY would one still choose to use it?