FCPX And El Capitan

ronny courtens wrote: ....For the rest CS6 seems to be working fine for some...

We've tested CS6 (on Windows) on the new 4k files from our AG-DVX200, and it works OK. However since Premiere -- including CC -- has no integrated proxy workflow this increasingly becomes a problem on 4k, especially with multicam.

I didn't think we would move to 4k as quickly as we did, but it happened -- even though we have no plans to distribute in 4k. Tony Northrup articulates some of the reasons in this brief video:



There are manual workarounds for Premiere's lack of proxy support (which Northrup references) but I would hate to roll that out in our group. The integrated proxy support of FCP X is a huge advantage in this situation.

Another advantage of FCP X is Quick Sync support, which becomes more significant with 4k. Without that, exporting a large 4k timeline can be agonizingly slow. I have no idea why Adobe doesn't support Quick Sync in Premiere -- there was a 3rd party plugin for CS6 but I don't think it's available for CC. There must be some internal software architectural impediment, else they'd have done it long ago.

In the relatively near future this will get even worse with the rollout of H265 which is highly CPU-intensive. Of course the only current CPUs with H265 support are Skylake.

Thank you for this interesting information, Joe.

I only can say that CS6 seems to be working fine for some people who have updated to El Capitan, not in general. I am fully aware of the problems Premiere (any version) has with demanding media workflows. In my world (national television stations, big production companies and post houses) I predominantly see large Avid systems, and a quickly increasing number of FCP X installs along with this. Premiere does not seem to be present at all. This probably has something to do with what you point out. But there are also other problems with Premiere CC, such as increasing stability issues in networks. And these are unrelated to the OS.

- Ronny

Any information on a fix for El Capitan?
I'm still having issues with FCPX - Mainly the timecode window is still jacked up.

Drives me nuts that Apple can't even get their own software to work correctly on their OS. Apple has gone down hill since Jobs died.

Schwyhart wrote: Apple has gone down hill since Jobs died.

Totally Agree!

I noticed apple put out El Capitan 10.11.2 beta for testing and have asked people to focus on graphics amongst a few other more minor things… Maybe, just maybe this may fix the timecode window problem?

If you rely on a certain software, you should not update any OS until that software has been confirmed to work with it. As FCP X has not been updated since EC was released I wouldn't even think of putting EC on any of our production systems.

Besides the tc window glitch, FCP X works perfectly with El Capitan on my test system. Projects launch faster and the UI feels snappier too. We also have seen reports here that EC provides a real graphics boost on older MacPros running FCP X. So besides the time code display, which is merely a UI glitch due to the new system font in EC, what other problems do you notice with FCP X and El Capitan that were not there in Yosemite?

- Ronny

Well I was told by another FCPX editor that it was fixed. I just now upgraded to EC.
There have been a few weird things happen with FCPX, but nothing as major as the timecode window, which really isn't that major. However, outside of FCPX I've had many issues. One weird one is my mouse freaks out on me sometimes. And my keyboard will sometimes lockup.

and the reason I upgraded from Yosemite to EC was that I had issues with it too. Again, nothing major, just irritating. It's like EC fixed most issues I had with Yosemite and replaced it with new issues.

I installed the 10.11.2 beta last night but it doesn't fix the cosmetic issue of the timecode window. It's annoying but doesn't affect the performance and usage of FCPX. I'm guessing it has to do with the new system font.

For me (I do not use a lot of plugins, but the ones I do work fine.) FCPX and El Capitan has been a great update.

Yosemite was horrible--it degraded unreasonably the performance of my other older Mac. Safari and wifi connections were frustrating under Yosemite.

El Capitan addressed those issues for me. My old 2008 iMac worked much better. And El Capitan has worked great with my 2010 Mac Pro.

My biggest "gripe" has been the yearly OS upgrade cycle. Slow it down and continue to give me a stable system before adding too many "features" in a new OS. It's frustrating having to do this every year in my opinion even though the price of the upgrade is free.

ronny courtens wrote: If you rely on a certain software, you should not update any OS until that software has been confirmed to work with it...

That is excellent advice; however in my case my new 2015 iMac came with El Capitan and it won't work with Yosemite. The same principle applies about risk in production use, but you have fewer options since the OS upgrade is not discretionary. I guess I could have just left it sitting there until FCP X was updated, but I put it in production anyway.

So far FCP X 10.2.2 on El Capitan has been mostly stable during intensive work. I haven't had major problems with any plugins, except for Izotope RX4/5. As a workaround I just used RX5 externally.

I had some intermittent problems with the Beauty Box plugin from Digital Anarchy crashing but after I updated to the latest plugin version it did not reoccur.

The main thing I dislike about El Capitan is removing RAID support from Disk Utility, and the poor UI design of the new utility. However Terminal commands still work for running verify and creating new RAID 0/1 volumes. Nonetheless it's a potential problem for lots of users since they can't run disk verify on AppleRAID 0/1 volumes from the GUI after an abrupt shutdown. It's a more immediate situation than mere inability to create new RAID volumes.

Exactly, it's a free update...so why is Apple rushing these releases? Send the OS to every department of Apple and have each team test it. Then release it to 3rd party software developers. Then release it as a beta to the public and then when it's 100% with all of Apple's own software, then release it to the public. They can at least control how compatible their OS is with their software and hopefully during the 3rd party dev stage, they will have time to adjust and prepare for the new OS.

Yes, there have been many little annoyances with this update. Unfortunately this seems to happen more frequently with any software these days. That's why I am always very reluctant to update anything until I have thoroughly tested the consequences of the update on a test system.

Of course, if you buy a new machine now (I just got a new 5K iMac with a 27" TB display that I'm installing at this moment), it will come with the latest OS. Actually you can downgrade the OS. But if everything you need works on it without too many issues, there is no reason why you should.

I'm afraid the cosmetic issue of the tc window is not something that will be fixed by an OS update. The new system font remains what it is, and it's the FCP X dev team that will have to adapt the UI to the new font. Either there will be a minor bug fix update soon, or they will wait and include it in a next feature update.

Thanks for all the reports so far. It's especially very interesting to hear how EC provides a boost to older systems. If they can iron out the last little annoyances, and when every third-part vendor has updated their software to work with it, El Capitan could be a solid basis to work with. And when it gets to that point, I entirely agree they should stop updating the OS so frequently and wait with releasing updates to the public until all bugs have been ironed out internally. Unfortunately, that's not the way software development seems to work these days. Shareholders seem to require some "big" news being announced on a regular basis.

- Ronny

Few minutes ago, I updated nvidia driver 346.03.03f02 and some issues in FCPX (yellow shape over transition and line over timecode) and "compressor" (yellow preview window) finaly gone. Unfortunately "motion" doesn‘t work smooth unlike on yosemite 10.10.5. :blush:

In my brief experience wit El Capitan, RX4 seemed to be the only thing not working. And the only major thing (that's been of cencern to me at least) has been the AU Validation. But El Cap introduces a whole new version of Audio Units (v3). AU v2 should be able to coexist with the new ones, but a brand new version of the Audio Units probably explains why there's some initial bugs...

As far as yearly upgrades, and bug fixes…
Remember Apple is a consumer driven company, if they don't release the latest and greatest, we would all be using 128k mono color 10" Macs and Apple would not have cleared $85B / $11B profit in the last quarter.

While we tend to be focussed on FCPX and video, the OS is for all computing needs and since Apple is really an ecosystem, then it also includes iOS and now WatchOS interactions.

What we don't see unless we look, is all the changes to the underlying frameworks, optimizations, APIs and everything else that goes into every OS change. Also how will Apple incorporate the feature requests we all want.
I for one am excited about some of the possibilities that I think we will see in the near future. I base this on watching some of the WWDC presentation videos and seeing the changes in places like Swift. Remember, FCPX10.3 is not out yet, so any improvements to 10.2.x are just a extra benefit to EC. I am slightly surprised that 10.2.3 hasn't happened to accommodate advancements in hardware like "Force Touch". Maybe the delay is because 10.3 is near.
A new library structure is coming. I really doubt the 10.3 will run on Yosemite. Is 10.2.2 the last Yosemite version?

Ronny's advice is valid, wait if you need to. No one is forcing you to update. Okay, if you buy a new computer, then you most likely will get the latest OS. Ronny are you sure you can downgrade? Apple in the past has blacklisted older OSs in newer hardware, especially when chips have changed, like Skylake. Now with SIP, users are prevented from easily changing system files. Just curious. I agree most will not want to downgrade, and little need to do so.

I think we may also see a new MP early next year. New chips and standards are mostly in place for upgraded equipment. Might be waiting for DP1.4 for 8K displays or TB3 . Just guessing. I was surprised to see the new iMac not include USB C ports. I bet legacy ThunderBolt ports are going bye-bye. Intell has said TB3 will be USB C only.

Just out of curiosity, why do people think the timecode display is related to the San Francisco font? Has anyone tried to change the system font to see if the issue goes away?

Happy Editing everyone
Hope this helps, Greg

Just tried to change the system fonts with TinkerTool...no luck.

Also, I do agree to never upgrade during production. I'm not currently in production right now and I was told it was fixed with 10.11.1; however it must have only fixed some, not all.
Typically, I don't participate in the beta's because I need both my computers to function without the worry of probable beta crashes, so I can't tell if everything is good or not until I take the plunge.
Yeah, I could go back to Yosemite, but what a pain. The older I get the less I like upgrading to the "latest and greatest" because it more often than not is not greater.

Really? You've got to be kidding me. FCP should rush out a fix for a purely cosmetic problem that has no effect on the application performance at all? Sorry, but that's ridiculous. Who gives a sweet flying f**** that the text is off set.

VidGreg wrote: As far as yearly upgrades, and bug fixes…
Remember Apple is a consumer driven company, if they don't release the latest and greatest, we would all be using 128k mono color 10" Macs and Apple would not have cleared $85B / $11B profit in the last quarter...

There is another possible reason for annual OS releases. It forces the development team to maintain achievable goals and not get bogged down in "flights of fancy". The history of computing software and hardware is full of cases where development projects took on too much and spiraled out of control. "The Mythical Man Month" is a famous book about this syndrome: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month . More recent examples include Microsoft's Cairo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) and Longhorn.

Well known hardware examples include the IBM Future Systems Project, Data General Fountainhead Processor (discussed in Soul of a New Machine), and more recently Intel's Itanium.

Hey Greg,

You can always downgrade. Every time we install a new OS on our production systems, I create a bootable installer for that OS:

support.apple.com/en-au/HT201372

This way, if anything goes wrong with a system and it requires a re-install of the OS, I can always re-install the correct OS for that system even if the App Store forces us to use a newer version that we don't support yet. As a matter of fact I have configured two new systems in the past week. Both came pre-installed with EC. Because I refuse to use EC in production yet, I have wiped the system drives clean and with the bootable installer I have installed Yosemite on them.

The new 5K iMac that I am installing now will remain on El Capitan to become my new test system. Its memory and flash drive are faster than those of the 2013 MacPro and I want to use this machine to fully test the new frameworks of EC. But it may take another few months and/or a significant update to FCP X before I consider EC fit for production.

- Ronny

Tom Wolsky wrote:

Really? You've got to be kidding me. FCP should rush out a fix for a purely cosmetic problem that has no effect on the application performance at all? Sorry, but that's ridiculous. Who gives a sweet flying f**** that the text is off set.


There's more than just problems with FCPX. But I guess I should say sorry that I care about the quality of releases from Apple and should be like you and not give a sweet flying f****
Great contribution by the way.

The purpose of a free annual OS update is solely for marketing. It has absolutely nothing to do with application productivity. FCP has shown itself to be on a cycle of updating to a new full point version when it's moving up to a new OS. For machines using FCP for production there is no point in moving forward on the OS until Apple has readied an OS compatible version.

So what other Apple software is giving you a problem? Not third party plugins and extensions, but actual Apple software. Got bugs in Logic because of 10.11? What's not working in Safari? Won't ask about Mail, because that's never working. Legacy FCP is still working, slowly and creakily, amazing as that is so many years later. What's broken? Considering they rewrite the core OS every year, what's remarkable is not what's broken but how very little is broken.