Thunderbolt HD For FCPX Files

I store my master files on a Samsung D3 external HD connected to my Mac Retina via USB.

When I play back the files from the D3 I find that my videos stutter. I am assuming this is because the data transfer rates are not quick enough.

I am looking to purchase a 6TBLacie D2 Thunderbolt drive and would like to know if this will solve the issue of video stutter?

Thanks for your help and advice.

Hey Barry,

What is the format of your master files?

- Ronny

Is that drive you're currently using USB 2 or USB 3?

Bazza wrote: ...When I play back the files from the D3 I find that my videos stutter. I am assuming this is because the data transfer rates are not quick enough...

I am looking to purchase a 6TBLacie D2 Thunderbolt drive and would like to know if this will solve the issue of video stutter?...

In general an externally-powered USB 3 hard drive is fast enough to edit 1080p H.264 video without causing stuttering due to I/O limitations. However it varies a lot by drive and using lower-compressed codecs like ProRes increases the I/O load, as does 4k.

In this test the D3 did about 160 MB/sec which is pretty good for a single drive: www.vrworld.com/2014/09/29/samsung-d3-station/

If you are scrubbing through highly compressed GoPro or DJI video, it could be laggy due to CPU not I/O issues. One way to test this is try transcoding a clip and scrub through that. It will increase the I/O load but decrease the CPU load. Just right-click on the clip in the event browser and select "Transcode Media..."

For 4k video rapid scrubbing can be laggy with some codecs due to screen resolution and decoding overhead. You can set the viewer in FCP X to "Better Quality" to test for that (upper right of the playback window).

Another test is move a sample of the same material to your Mac's main drive, assuming that is either Fusion Drive or SSD. Those are faster than the external drive and will help determine whether the behavior is I/O or something else.

The 6TB LaCie d2 is a good drive and Thunderbolt has advantages, and I'd personally prefer something like that longer term for production work. However it's not clear that's your main problem.

Hi All,

Many thanks for your replies.

My knowledge of FCPX and file formats is limited as I use it on a personal basis and am learning as I go along.

The videos I have edited and saved are in whatever file format that FCPX saves as standard. Looking at the file I am referring to it is a .mov file and is about 9mins in length with an opening title and some background music.

The original video files that I used to create this video totalled 11GB but I estimate that I cut about 4GB from that total after the edits.

The video was shot in 4K and I subsequently used Compressor to convert the 38GB file to H.264 for upload to Youtube (I used the standard file settings within Compressor and this has turned the 38GB file into one that is now 1.31GB).

At the time of posting my question I had not used Compressor to create the H.264 file but since doing so I have played the compressed file which is stored on the same drive and I am not seeing any stuttering and, to my eye, I can't see any obvious difference in quality between this and the original file.

Is this the process I should follow? Do editors view their edited videos using the original uncompressed files that FCPX creates or is the practice to compress them first and then view?

Incidentally the Samsung D3 is connected via USB 2 into my Apple Timeport (I had no spare USB ports to connect directly to my Mac Retina).

My Mac has a 4GHZ QC i7 Turboboost 4.4GHZ processor with 32GB RAM, 3Tb Fusion Drive and AMD Radeon R9 4GB Ram graphics card.

I took a copy of the 38GB file and put it onto my Mac HD. It took 43 minutes to transfer over.

I have played this back and there is no stuttering at all so I guess it is a case of the Samsung HD not being able to transfer the data quick enough but then how comes it can do so for the smaller file?

Again, thanks for you help.