Fully Loaded imac dropping frames during multicam editing (Using proxies)

It just occurred to me what the problem may be. Go to Preferences-Playback-Uncheck If A Frame Drops, Stop Playback and Warn. And Uncheck If Frames Drop Due to Disc Performance, Warn After Playback. I think it is normal to drop an occasional frame in multicam, you just don't need to know every time it happens. Playback will still seem smooth to the eye, even if a frame is dropped every few seconds.

otherwise:

I just want to put this out there again. If you have your media on an external drive with a USB 3 connection, you should probably be able to play back 3 channels of HD material (even without Proxy, unless it is some strange codec). If you have no effects applied and you are in proxy mode, then you should have no trouble with a dozen angles.

If indeed you are trying to play back 3 streams of proxy HD with no effects, and you have a problem, then you should contact apple. There is something wrong with either you hardware or software.

Tom Wolsky wrote: If you're using proxy you don't need optimized. The GPU is of primary importance for graphics processing like effects. You can either render to help playback or live with the dropped frames, switching off stop on drop.

I already have "stop on drop unchecked"

Tom Wolsky wrote: Have to add that Pixel Film Studios does not have a great reputation, though I don't know this effect.

Well then do you know of a different plugin that can do this desired effect to the light sources in my video without making multicam clip laggy so hard in FCPX..??

Daniel Rutledge wrote: If you have your media on an external drive with a USB 3 connection, you should probably be able to play back 3 channels of HD material (even without Proxy, unless it is some strange codec). If you have no effects applied and you are in proxy mode, then you should have no trouble with a dozen angles.

If indeed you are trying to play back 3 streams of proxy HD with no effects, and you have a problem, then you should contact apple. There is something wrong with either you hardware or software.

I have 3 clips in the multicam and they each have 5 effects. But like I stated before the look of the effects (as you can see in the screen shot above) helps me decide which angles i like. So I find it hard to believe with a brand new fully loaded iMac that I can't add the effects I like and then edit a multicam clip while looking at the angle viewer??

Am I just wrong??

That's serious processing. If you want smooth playback on those kind of effects you're going through have to render. It's a major pain to work with this kind of stuff. Best thing is the get a good handle on the effect and the look it's going to produce and do the cut without it.

Tom Wolsky wrote: That's serious processing. If you want smooth playback on those kind of effects you're going through have to render. It's a major pain to work with this kind of stuff. Best thing is the get a good handle on the effect and the look it's going to produce and do the cut without it.

So I render each individual clip inside the multicam editor? SO I have 3 rendered clips?
If I do that now will i still be able to insert the rendered clips with the angle cuts I made in the multicam clip?

All the rendering has to be done in the project. It's a major pain because as soon as you make a cut you have to render again. That's why effects are always done after the cut.

If you insist on doing it this way, then your best bet is to export each angle as a prores file and then make a multi cam clip out of those. The big downside will be that the effects are baked in.

Daniel Rutledge wrote: If you insist on doing it this way, then your best bet is to export each angle as a prores file and then make a multi cam clip out of those. The big downside will be that the effects are baked in.

While inside the multicam clip is won't let me select the individual clips and export it. It only lets me export a selection in the main timeline. like the actual multicam clip itself

mgmartino wrote: ...I find it hard to believe with a brand new fully loaded iMac that I can't add the effects I like and then edit a multicam clip while looking at the angle viewer??

Am I just wrong??

Every effect is different. Some look simple but require tremendous computation. Sometimes it is unavoidable from an algorithmic standpoint, and sometimes the plugin developer just took the easiest way which resulted in slower runtime performance.

Just because you have a fully loaded iMac doesn't mean you'll never have to wait on anything or you'll never need to take prudent optimization steps. This is also not unique to Macs or FCPX but happens in some fashion on all editing software.

Just to be sure, after *generating* the proxy files did you switch the viewer to proxy mode? Otherwise it's not using the proxy files even though you transcoded them.

Tom is correct -- usually the best practice is doing the editing first, then toward the end apply the effects. This is *especially* so with compute-intensive effects like video noise reduction, de-flickering, or stabilization. This is further magnified on 4k. If you think this is slow you haven't seen anything until you try this on 4k.

If you want to apply the effects as you go, you'll need to render the timeline to get good playback performance, esp. on multicam. IOW CTRL-A to select the entire timeline, then CTRL-R to render it. Or you can have automatic rendering enabled in Preferences and just wait.

FCPX is extremely fast -- much faster than Premiere CC on the same hardware in my testing. However 3rd party plugins each have their own unique characteristics and FCPX can't compensate for a compute-intensive plugin. Part of the end user evaluating plugins is a performance evaluation, not just whether you like the effect.

I don't usually use effects like that so I can't answer whether there is any alternative that runs faster. But in the case of Neat Video noise reduction, it's the best one and it's slow. There is nothing you can do about it. Likewise with Digital Anarchy's Flicker Free which can fix shots that would otherwise require re-shooting. It is extremely slow but it's performing a virtual miracle: www.digitalanarchy.com/Flicker/main.html

You will have to examine the other plugin products and see what is available. FxFactory is a good place to start. It is like an app store for plugins: fxfactory.com/

What you are experiencing is why larger productions have a dedicated Asst. Editor to do all this grunt work of evaluating and solving technical problems so the lead editor doesn't have to.

I am on proxy mode I, have minimized my timeline to just titles, all apps are closed etc. I am doing everything to optimized FCPX smooth performance.

I think it is this new star filter plug-in that is giving my processing issues. So now I have my multicam clip and inside that I have put the effects on each angle because the light hits each angle a little differently...But now how can I export just the clips inside the multi cam clip individually? I know the effects will be baked in but I don't care they look how I want, I just want the ease of selecting different angles and moving on to the next part of the video.

I would just export from the project. Select angle one for the whole clip and export. Then select angle 2 for the entire clip and export the whole thing, and so on.

I'm doing that as we speak. I guess that is my best bet for now