10.3 issues

Kyster wrote: Another disturbing example of DRAG LAG in FCPX.

It is simply impossible to work in a timeline as unresponsive as this.

vimeo.com/194057113

More items in a timeline is the same as more unresponsive behavior.

Unbelievable..

#1 - Why does the video author have two copies of Final Cut Pro?

#2 - Report this to Apple and send them the link to the video in your description of the problem.

Redifer wrote:
#1 - Why does the video author have two copies of Final Cut Pro?

#2 - Report this to Apple and send them the link to the video in your description of the problem.

Maybe they are running 10.2.3 and 10.3 side-by-side.

Redifer wrote:

Kyster wrote: Another disturbing example of DRAG LAG in FCPX.

It is simply impossible to work in a timeline as unresponsive as this.

vimeo.com/194057113

More items in a timeline is the same as more unresponsive behavior.

Unbelievable..

#1 - Why does the video author have two copies of Final Cut Pro?

#2 - Report this to Apple and send them the link to the video in your description of the problem.

Redifer.

Answers to your questions:

1:
While 10.3 is more feature packed it is also a huge update and version one of huge updates are often connected to various bugs and quirks. That's why I have two versions of FCPX: 10.2.3 for important broadcast work and 10.3 because I'm curious.

2:
Believe me, I've reported to Apple two times this week alone.

Interesting. Have you tried that XML in 10.2.3? I'd be curious to see how the drag lag compared or if it is even any different at all.

I currently have three outstanding FCPX issues. One is that whenever I launch the app, the audio meters always default to "Unnecessarily wide" which is a problem when using a MBP. The other which has just started happening since 10.3.1 is that the clip appearance settings always default to the narrowest "Display clip labels only" setting when i open a project.
It's driving me nuts having to keep making adjustments all of the time. The third issue is the amount of times the app hangs or just quits. It often hangs when copying from one project to another or copying out of a compound clip and quits during the simplest of dragging operations such as extending a clip. Whilst not a constant problem it is getting a bit tiresome now. I was hoping 10.3.1 would resolve some of the stability issues but for me they seem to be somewhat worse.

has the obnoxious h264-noise bug been mentioned already? whenever you export in any kind of h264 and downscale in the export window, the resulting output gets a nasty static noise overlay. you might need to push gamma a little but it's clearly visible on any bigger screen. it has been discussed and conformed before, currently no fix besides exporting in prores and compressing externally.

Redifer.

Same in 10.2.3...

Kyster wrote: THIS IS CRAZY:
Watch how disturbing easy it is to recreate DRAG LAG in Final Cut Pro X:…

on risking - again - to be the stupid guy defending Apple/teaching others:

you don't put 600 items in the timeline.
you put (copy((copy(((copy((((copy((((copy))))) into the timeline.

so, when you move a clip, poor database has to check the clips alias which is an alias of an alias which is an alias...
think you got the idea.

should a database that calibre hiccup on that level of matryoshka? Perhaps No.
But is that real-life usage? No either, at last in my tiny hemisphere … (oho, Karsten, you're teaching others, again!)

… I see comparisons to complains of lag-on-playback when compounds stick in compounds stick in compounds … in my engineering ignorance, I guess, FCPX is forced to pre-hold your 600 (copies of)clips for playback ... which is … unreal.

and, btw, we've seen far more complex projects with thousands of clips in the timeline, and folks like Mike Matzdorff would wipe-off FCPX in a second if their edit-tool shows off any lags …

You are correct, Karsten.

Putting thousands of copies of the same 2" clip on a timeline does not prove anything because that's not a real-world situation. I have asked Marc Bach and Benjamin Mercer if they had any issues with drag-lag on hour-long timelines with thousands of clips, they confirmed that they did not have any such issues. Yesterday I have tested a 2 hour 48 minute tilmeline with 2036 clips myself, and I had no real problems.

But I can confirm that there IS a drag-lag problem in Mikael's projects, and in projects of some other people I'm talking with right now and who work with very similar projects and timelines. We are getting closer to finding the root of the problem, which we will report to Apple

- Ronny

Is anybody willing to share a considerably big timeline that doesn´t have the drag-lag.
That would be interesting.

I downloaded the XML and saw the drag-lag that has been reported.

This is the same thing I was seeing in projects under 1 minute in previous versions of FCPX. My projects were typically vertically heavy with multiple layers of text and video with effects applied.

I do not see this issue in over 90% of my projects (I have still seen it in isolated instances) when using FCPX 10.3 so hopefully Apple will also be able to correct the problem on these longer form projects.

Thank you for confirming this. It has indeed nothing to do with just the number of clips on the timeline, nor with the length of the timeline. We have been testing this on many projects for a full week now, and the real bottleneck seems to be the number of short stacked instances on the timeline, especially tons of short instances such as title clips or SFX audio bites. This is the common factor in every project I have seen that shows this kind of drag-lag, while there are no problems whatsoever with other projects that have thousands of clips in over 2-hour timelines. We are looking for an answer.

- Ronny

ronny courtens wrote: ...I can confirm that there IS a drag-lag problem in Mikael's projects, and in projects of some other people I'm talking with right now and who work with very similar projects and timelines. We are getting closer to finding the root of the problem, which we will report to Apple...

I can reproduce moderate drag lag on a 12-min fully rendered proxy timeline. I use four video lanes on about half of it for a split screen. This is on a top-spec 2015 iMac 27 with media on a Thunderbolt SSD RAID-0 array. The original timeline was 6 min, where I could see some drag lag but not extreme. I appended the timeline to itself -- once -- now 12 minutes total, and the drag lag got much worse.

I used the new 10.3 "remove effects" feature to strip all effects from all clips, and it still happens. I then removed all adjustment layers, transitions, and plugins, and it still happens.

I then copied the project and only the media used in the timeline to a new library, and it still happens. It seemed each of the above steps improved it a little, but in the new library with no effects or plugins if I appended the timeline 4x for a total length of 24 min, the drag lag can be 3 seconds.

At the 12 min. length there are 413 total clips. However many of those are small ranges from a longer clip, so a consolidated library with that one project is still quite large -- 220 GB.

Does Apple have sufficient details to work on this or do they need more? My case cannot be uploaded due to the size. I could send them a hard drive but I'm not sure the scenario is so mysteriously complex that is needed.

Very useful information, much appreciated.

We don't need the media to test this. Could you send me an XML of your 12' timeline?

ronnycourtens@mac.com


- Ronny

Here are two videos I've sent to Apple showing some very annoying bugs in 10.3.

FULLSCREEN VIEWER BUG

AUDIO RANGE SELECTION BUG
The range selection seems to be snapping to the nearest frame rather than using the audio samples.

I have also had issues with some of my custom keyboard shortcuts, where they randomly stop working and I must restart FCPX to get them working again.

I've found these bugs occur on more than one mac so that rules out the individual machine or setup.

If you have these bugs as well, please let Apple know. I had hoped they would be fixed in 10.3.1, but no luck.
Feel free to send them links to the videos I supplied if they apply to you as well.

Thanks,
Shawn

Since 10.3 and still with 10.3.1 I experienced much more crashes 2 of them corrupted my Libraries :blink: . Not good. Never had this problem before (at least from 10.2).

As said before by others, exporting H264 may cause some glitches on the video and strange flickering.
I have to export in ProRes and then compress via compressor or Quicktime.

For the rest I'm quite happy with 10.3.1 but I don't feel "safe" as before.
Versioning libraries is the new black.

Overall, my biggest beef with the change to from 10.2.3 to 10.3 has been the changes to the UI. That said, I hadn't really run into any major problems until FCPX crashed on me about 4 or 5 times a few days ago. It occurred after I had added the Spot effect to a couple of clips that already had the color correction, Lock & Load, and Sharpen effects applied to it. The crashes occurred after I had activated Show Video Animation and was creating and adjusting settings in keyframes for the Spot effect. After each crash I sent the report in to Apple, and then reopened FCPX. Thankfully, no work had been lost by any of these crashes. The issue was more of an annoyance than a real problem IMO. Still,it disappointed me that it had happened.

Different issue, but wondering if someone can help. When I export to Quicktime (H264), I'm afforded some extra filter options, e.g. sharpening. I can't seem to get to the same export panel that allows getting to those options (I realize I can sharpen in FCPX).. When I export now to Master, it operates without the dialog box that is still in the older iMovie and was in earlier versions of FCPX.. Even if I use a 1080P destination which brings up the H264 menu (and allows X264) I still do not see those added filter option.

Appreciate any thoughts on adding this as a destination, etc..

Regarding the drag lag, I believe it's somehow related to the waveforms being drawn or redrawn. If I use the icon only display or the minimal display in the sequence, then dragging things around is quick and no lag. But turn on waveforms and a longer timeline gets super sluggish to drag things around. If you just use shortcuts to edit into the timeline or copy paste things there seems no lag. Only dragging clips around on a longer timeline with waveforms enabled. Certainly not good enough, but at least there is a way to work without going insane. The lag is so bad it's faster to change the timeline display, do the drag operation, and change the display back than to click and drag a clip with waveforms displayed and trying to move it around. Really hope Apple can fix this one soon...

Apple itself is not helping the cause, this thread about lag as been going on for a while, and so far no update to fix it, and to make matters worse Apple is selling FCPX saying 4GB RAM [8GB for 4K] now we all know this is a total joke!!

16 is barely enough to open FCPX if you are serious, and the top of the range is hobbled to 16, not 32 or 64..

For the majority of laptop video editors I will safely assume would not edit off the battery for any length of time, so a tiny battery and 128GB RAM makes more sense.. If you are going to edit on battery, then you will be using a proxy workflow, so drag lag would not be a real issue.

But no no Apple has not asked the editing community, what do you want? Big battery and low RAM or small battery and loads of RAM..

For me editing on battery is pointless, so more RAM..But no Jony and his best drinking mate Tim know what is best!!! grrrr!!! :dry: