fcpx 10.2.1 performance

Is it just myself or fcpx 10.2.1 performance is worst than previous versions. Working on simple projects is OK, but as far as I add some effects and B-roll clips, I get a delay on every thing I do. Is like working with an online software. Very annoying. I've been trying Premiere CC 2015 and is so responsive and fluid to work with that I'm considering to use it for larger projects (nor to say that Lumetri color is just amazing for me, coming from photography. And I already have Color finale). But then you don't have the magnetic timeline and the powerful tools for organizing media, and rendering times seems to be much slower...
I really hope that fcpx grows in performance (specially inside the GUI), hopefully Metal + El Capitan will give us some of this?

Just wondering if the others have similar issues on similar hardware. I guess that on Macs Pro fcpx works much better.

Macbook Pro Retina 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7
16gb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
ssd disk
Thunderbolt externals

First, you'll never get prime performance from anything on a laptop. You can get good performance, but not the best.

I have a 2014 15 inch MBP, RAM maxed out, and have great performance using a T'bolt SSD external drive for my Libraries. Yosemite and FCPX 10.2.1l give me great performance on both that and my nMP. My MP greatly outperformed my MBP, but that's expected.

T'bolt externals? Specifically what?

I understand that laptop performance will be always under desk machines, and in fact is amazing that nowadays we can actually edit on our laptops. I'm not expecting magic here. My concern is about GUI performance. I understand that you cannot get realtime rendering of a 4k clip color graded, stabilized and denoised on a laptop, but once you have rendered all, you should expect a normal behaviour, as it happens with Premiere Pro.

I use a Lacie Thunderbolt 2tb little big disk (the oldest one, from 2011) for libraries and a Western Digital 4tb thunderbolt for media.

Hi Pablo,

The majority of FCP X users I know are reporting improved performance with 10.2.1., so I'm afraid you may belong to the exceptions. OTOH if you work with highly compressed 4K footage from DSLRs or similar cameras and you need to stabilize and denoise your video (presumably with Neat), you are putting a lot of strain on your laptop. You might try to use "Better Performance" playback to see if this works better for you.

The fact that Premiere seems to play your footage smoother means nothing. They use a totally different approach to playback and rendering. As you have noticed, there is a significant price to pay when you need to render and export the final timeline. If you want to know how Premiere 2015 really performs, go check the Premiere forums and FB pages. The reactions are underwhelming. Features don't make up for crashes and instability.

- Ronny

Hi Ronny,

I have had occasional FCPX GUI performance issues on complex timelines since 21.6.2011 until today.. On various types of media and systems including NMP/D700. Restart app, delete renders and re-render may help for a while.
I try to keep my timelines as simple as possible, but sometimes have no other choice than using the (great) tools such as secondary storylines, compound, titles, effects etc.. all mixed together.

So I have high hopes on that « Metal » thing too.

Thanks for all the help you bring to the forum

Hi souitch,

This should not happen. We found that 10.2 (although still a little buggy) has added vastly improved performance when working with complex and long timelines and in workgroup setups. Soon we will post a story that will include video of very complex long timelines playing perfectly without any rendering on a 2013 iMac, and with no GUI lags while editing whatsoever. If we can do this, anyone should be able to do it. So it may be that the issues you are experiencing are not related specifically to FCP X.

Performance and GUI bogs are very often related to user problems. Have you tried creating an new admin user account to see if the problems you have still exist with the new account? If not, this is the first thing you should do.

BTW: happy to see that the Swiss national broadcaster SRT is using FCP X (-:

- Ronny

Well.. I've been using a dozen different workstations with different users (of course), some of them very carefully configured. So I don't know what to say.. Maybe you should come over

Well you got me intrigued and Switzerland is a beautiful country, so I might just do that. Are you located in Vevey? I am still waiting for the exact dates, but I probably will fly over to Genève some day in August to visit a studio and I see Vevey is only one hour by train from there. Drop me an e-mail so we can keep in touch: ronnycourtens@mac.com

- Ronny

Sounds very cool !

There’s another personal factor about FCPX: Since it’s all about speed and it really changed editing for me I’ve become too demanding.. for speed.

Yes it's definitely fast, but don't let this fool you. If you need to deliver quality content it's always good to go a bit slower than you technically can so you can digest and evaluate your cuts. Yesterday I cut a promo for a major tv production house and I did it in very little time. I took the spare time I had to take a long break and when I got back to FCP X I started recutting the whole edit with fresh ideas, making it snappier and better. That's the advantage you can have with FCP X: use the time you win to make your work better, not only to deliver faster.

- Ronny

You can do work fast, or you can do work with finesse and artisanship, but you can't do both. IMHO...

Fcpx10.2.1 performance is better than 10.1, but still have bad performance than other NLEs,
even on the most powerful mac pro with 16gbps sanlink.
I can post a video that have 10000 items on timeline, but have no UI sluggish.
FCPX can not do that, over 3000 HD items on timeline, fcpx will be very slowly.
If you have 14 cams, 8 audio channels and other audio effect clips, it's very easy to have over 3000 items on timeline! Even without subtitles!
The performance of RAID is good enough for 14 cams HD prores422 clips!


Apple should still do better.