10.2.3 Dropped Frames on many systems/set ups

Yes, they are 1920 x 1080. And 72 DPI. However if you have a total size like 1920x1080, then DPI is not really relevant. All video is 72dpi. Nevertheless, they are low-complexity frames, relatively speaking...

sorry its been awhile...so in the end to this thread. I still see the stuttering regardless, even in the Apple Store....but the Mac Pro tower failed. In the end Apple changed it...after it failed 4 more times...they have a policy that something has to fail a lot before they swap...but that was the major issue. Heat build up destroying the GPUs

I've started using FCPX since 10.3 and i've been having these problems from the beginning.

In addition, I get weird hangs. I'm editing a documentary and reviewing footage. It would drop frames for 2-3 seconds from time to time and some other times I would get beachballing and FCPX stopping responding. Every time this is happening, other apps start behaving weird as well. I force quit FCPX then try to open activity monitor. The icon would bounce in the dock forever, same with other apps. Then I would try to restart, it would go to a black screen and to nothing, forcing me to hard restart.


This is happening sometimes more often, sometimes it wouldn't. I had 2-3 hangs a day, some days no hangs.

I also sometimes get beachballing for let's say 10-15 seconds then FCPX starts responding again.

I'm on a 2013 Quad Core Mac Pro with D300s, using a Pegasus R4 for storage, working in Prores Proxy.

I was using El Capitan. I've tried to wipe out the whole system and install everything fresh, I've even installed Sierra but I still get these problems. I've also tried exchanging libraries, etc. It behaves just the same. I've tried working on my Mid 2012 macbook pro and it doesn't seem to be having any of these issues. I'm starting to wonder if there's a hardware problem with this unit.

What do you guys think? This is really frustrating to happen, especially with the client next to you.

I know this thread is quite old, but I wonder if anyone is still experiencing these same issues? We are experiencing 2-3 seconds dropped frames from the start of playback in FCP10.4.
A bit of background, I am the information services manager for a production company in South Africa, managing about 17 Edit Suites, 7 Audio Suites, 4 control rooms, SAN, Network, Servers and anything else with zeros and ones.
One of our productions, a daily Soap for SABC, is in the process of “finally” migrating to HD and we have just moved from FCP7 to FCP10 in preparation for this. The footage in question is still being shot in 4:3 SD 720 x 576 25i IMX 30. FCP 7 has no playback issues in case you are wondering but FCP10.4 does with the same footage.
The Mac in question is a 4 Core 8 Thread Mac Pro cylinder D500 GPU, 256Gb PCI-e SSD with 70% space free, Thunderbolt Blackmagic Intensity, 50TbThunderbolt G-Tech 8 Disk G-Speed XL Shuttle with 80% space free and the Operating System is the most recent version of Sierra10.12.6 with FCP10.4.
The XL Shuttle is connected directly to the Mac via Thunderbolt and is also shared across the network at 1Gbps, frame dropout still occurs even if sharing is turned off so disk thrashing from network access is not the issue. The FCP10 Library and footage are stored on the XL Shuttle and you may think that this could be the problem but no, we have tested running the Library from the Local SSD and External Raid1 SSD’s thus separating the FCP10 library away from the footage. Even with the library on SSD, FCP10.4 still has 2-3 seconds of dropped frames at the start of playback. There are also no additional plugins being used that could cause this.
It must also be noted that when accessing the same library and footage on the XL Shuttle over the network from anywhere else via the Mac Pro’s network sharing , there are no playback issues at all in FXP10.4, even on a 2010 i5 Mac Mini, 16Gb memory and 512Mb of video ram has no dropped frames over the network.
This one has got me stumped, any thoughts and insights will be much appreciated ?

Can you try it with the Blackmagic Intensity and all related drivers disconnected and disabled? I don't have specific experience with that but I've heard many performance and lag problems from various capture devices. The other Macs accessing the same media and library over the net don't have that device connected; maybe that's why they work OK.

Thanks, I will remove the Blackmagic and post my results