Improving FCPX performance with complex projects?

Hi,

I’m looking for suggestions on how to improve FCPX’s performance when working with many layers/effects. I primarily edit footage shot against greenscreens, and I’m often compositing 5+ layers at a time, with a lot of effects (lots of color changes, drop shadows, animations) behind a keyed-out subject.



My render times tend to be around thirty minutes to two hours, on relatively high-end machines (a 2015 iMac with an m390 and a 3.3ghz Skylake i5, and a 2009 Mac Pro with an aftermarket Radeon 7970 and a 2.66ghz quad-core Nehalem i7). I render out my final projects to 1080p but I usually have the project set to 720p while I’m working.

I export and reimport individual layers when I can, but that’s often impractical. I use proxies sometimes, but I don’t get the kind of performance improvement I’m looking for.

Do you guys have any tips?