FCPX And El Capitan

There is one plugin that constantly crash FCPX under EC and that is AutoBalance from Crumple Pop and that plugin is expensive. I disabled that one. Otherwise I hardly ever have crashes and never with titles.

Might be a graphics card. Number of problems with nVidia cards. They updated their drivers, which seem to work with 10.11.1.

Makki wrote: There is one plugin that constantly crash FCPX under EC and that is AutoBalance from Crumple Pop and that plugin is expensive. I disabled that one. Otherwise I hardly ever have crashes and never with titles.

I use AutoBalance all the time under EC and have never had a crash attributable to that -- that I know of. By "constantly crash FCPX" do you mean it happens immediately when applying that effect, or when rendering it, or what? Does it happen when it's the only effect on a simple timeline, or only in conjunction with other effects on a complex timeline?

Joema: Immediatly when I ad the plugin. I use huge amount of layers it seems to happen when I apply the effect to one of those overlay clips. Tom: My Mac Pro late 20013 does not have nVidia card. Just to ad it is the great software Pro Maintenance Tool that gives me the culprit info instantly.

El Cap update:

Being almost done with the project that really needs RX4, I once again updated to El Capitan.

Here's what I discovered:

• RX4 fails to validate in FCPX. But it still works! So if you have a project that uses instances of RX4 they still work! But you cannot add them to new clips from the effects browser. But you can copy them from old clips that have it and paste onto new clips!

• RX4 fails validation in Logic and is unavailable. Even for old project with RX4 already there.

• RX4 passes AU validation in Digital Performer 8 and seems to be working fine.

So, with the combination of RX4 working in old projects and being able to export audio to Digital Performer if need be, I think I'm staying in El Capitan this time.

iZotope still publicly states they're not EC ready yet. If you get it working, cross your fingers. Keep an eye on their site for the official update to stabilize it.

Seems to me it's a validation thing more than anything else... That said, I check the iZotope webpage daily

Speaking (off topic) of iZotope, I wish they would update their little free plug-in 'Vinyl' to 64bit. Loved that one for special effects.

Here's the developers site for Metal.
developer.apple.com/metal/

After reading through it, I don't think FCPX will be, or needs to be "Metal enabled". Apple codes their apps to be as efficient with their own hardware as possible from the get-go. Metal seems to simply be a programming interface that helps developers leverage more of the OpenCL and OpenGL system calls more easily. I don't see it is a separate entity or does anything faster, outside of writing code.

Thus, I'll assume FCPX is as fast as it can be at present. If future updates make it more efficient (faster), that's just coding, not necessarily "Metal". Metal also looks more geared for gaming than for simply video playback.

But if you understand programing, read through the linked page above, see what you think.

BenB wrote: ... I don't think FCPX will be, or needs to be "Metal enabled". Apple codes their apps to be as efficient with their own hardware as possible from the get-go. Metal seems to simply be a programming interface that helps developers leverage more of the OpenCL and OpenGL system calls more easily. I don't see it is a separate entity or does anything faster, outside of writing code....

Thus, I'll assume FCPX is as fast as it can be at present. If future updates make it more efficient (faster), that's just coding, not necessarily "Metal". Metal also looks more geared for gaming than for simply video playback.

That is also my initial impression. However at 37:50 into this video they demonstrate a high-performance Gaussian blur on OS X using Metal. This is closer to the kind of thing that could benefit effects in FCP X:

developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2015-607/

Whether it will make a major overall difference is hard to say. The GPU on a given machine obviously doesn't get any faster -- any speedup can only come from removing inefficiency.

However Metal supposedly has much better programming, debugging and performance profiling tools. Maybe there is a lot of inefficiency to find and remove.

Coding to make system calls for OpenCL/GL is not easy, is a little messy, and many developers just aren't being very efficient. All Metal does is helps them be efficient. FCPX is already written to optimize those system calls efficiently, without Metal. Will the FCPX/Motion team use Metal to make life easier for themselves? Maybe. But that doesn't mean FCPX/Motion will get faster. Just that they can code faster. But again, we'll have to wait and see what develops. Even the info on the Metal dev site is fuzzy about some things, and not detailed about what I'm trying to pin point. Apple, need-to-know only and all that...

Either way, I'm sure the next updates will be very interesting. And I'm hoping more than just bug fixes. I'm going to place a bet for Jan/Feb/March time frame. I'd hope for sooner, but that's my best guess.

This thread made me take a deeper look at Metal.
My take on Metal it that it is a direct replacement of OpenCL and GL. There remains a small amount of CL/GL code mainly for low level hardware calls and most likely some legacy chips. Remember, Open GL is directly implemented by hardware and calls go to drivers written by the device manufactures.
Apple is not the only one moving away from Open CL/GL as Vulcan and Direct X(3D) are also replacement developments.
A small matter of irony is that Apple originated Open CL, but does not support the latest versions. Apple has forked/extensions and uses its own version of Open CL. It also is not supporting the latest Open GL versions either. Now I speculate that this is due to Metal being the replacement for much of the code.
So Metal is not just about making it more efficient/easier to code for CL/GL. IMHO

Yes I understand programming, but I am not a programmer. If I got paid by the # of lines of code I could write, I would starve.

If indeed Metal is far more than just a more efficient means of programing for CL/GL but is a replacement, then it also inherently improves CPU processing, at least in the run routines, allocation of and sharing of memory etc… It frees up the CPU by moving processes to the GPU, but can still share resources so the GPU does not have to repeat the same calculations already done.
Metal allows much tighter integration of CPU/GPU in a number of other areas. The APIs give programmers greater control and Metal as demonstrated in WWDC can reduce overheads by 50% or more for certain processes.
Some pretty amazing improvements in Xcode, Swift as well.

While yes Metal is indeed used by game developers, I think it will prove valuable in other areas. Apple has not been known in the past as a good gaming platform, Metal is bringing some respect to gaming on a Mac. Full disclosure, I don't game at all.

Will it speed up FCPX 2X, I doubt it very much as the percentage of time in FCPX that could be improved by Metal is a very small percentage of total editing time. Having said this, Metal may prove important for some of the most intensive areas of video like the application of effects.
I also wonder if this will open up 3D far more. We'll see.

Apple's development of Metal is even more understandable in iOS as the CPU/GPU efficiency is even more important there. Apple's use of ARM chips and SOCs allows great integration and development of software, firmware and hardware. Efficiency is extremely important in terms of battery life and heat.

Anyway, just my wooden nickels worth of opinion.
Happy Editing, Greg

Metal works with GPU "system calls". And works with system calls based on OpenCL/GL. So it is not a replacement. It is a new API, nothing more, for developers to make those system calls much more efficiently. It also loads pre-created 3D elements (polygon configs and shaders), but does not create them itself.

Apple still writes OpenCL/GL stuff on a daily basis, their own apps are full of that code. And more complete and in-depth than most third party apps.

Yes, I have done programming, and have worked for software developers for over 30 years.

The most difficult thing here is that Apple is releasing next to no information about what it going on under the hood. Learning an API is not the same as knowing what is actually happening inside the black box. API only gives you access to call on the black box to do work for you. How the newest black box called "Metal" actually works inside, is another Apple secret.

So we have a new set of commands to access GPU functioning. It can't make a GPU or CPU work different, just gives you faster access to the GPU's existing functions.

joema wrote: ...I use AutoBalance all the time under EC and have never had a crash attributable to that...

I take it back -- Crumplepop's AutoBalance crashed several times. That was ver 1.0.0.9. They have an update, ver. 1.01 (1.0.1.1) which seems more stable.

I wish the plugins had more consistent, easier-to-identify version numbers and update procedures.

Totally agree, Joe.

BenB wrote: Metal works with GPU "system calls". And works with system calls based on OpenCL/GL. So it is not a replacement. It is a new API, nothing more, for developers to make those system calls much more efficiently. It also loads pre-created 3D elements (polygon configs and shaders), but does not create them itself.

Metal is absolutely designed to replace OpenGL - thats the point. OpenGL is an API to the GPU - Metal is a faster one. It's Apples answer to Direct3D which has given windows an advantage in real time 3D for years. The only black box is the GPU - which you can communicate with directly if you're so inclined.

I haven't seen anything about Metal taking over duties from OpenCL. OpenCL is a language designed so you can do calculations on the GPU, which is probably more relevant to most fcpx uses as this can allow faster results for effects etc.

Windows has had an advantage with 3D animation over OS X? Since when? Where is that documented? Because I've been consulting and supporting production facilities for over 15 years now, and most of them are Mac based, and the overwhelming majority have always been running Maya, Modo, etc, for 3D modeling and animation on Macs, not Windows.

This is interesting for the iPad Pro.


Wonder how this would work with Motion, or LPX?

Finally, justification for me getting an iPad Pro! I do a lot of photo retouching, which ordinarily makes me captive to a large Wacom tablet. I can neither draw nor am I left handed. Watching the artist in this video humbles me twice.

Tom

:ohmy: Wow! EC 10.11.3 has made this little gremlin even worse!!! lol Looking forward to 10.2.3

BenB wrote: Windows has had an advantage with 3D animation over OS X? Since when? Where is that documented? Because I've been consulting and supporting production facilities for over 15 years now, and most of them are Mac based, and the overwhelming majority have always been running Maya, Modo, etc, for 3D modeling and animation on Macs, not Windows.

Yeah the Xbox