10.3 issues

Is the problem only 10.3 or in combination with Sierra? I ask this as I was having so many problems with 10.3 and Sierra, when I downgraded to Yosemite and 10.2,3 no issues.

Look I could just be plain wrong about the link between 10.3 and Sierra, but if my laptop is the same, same source, the only things changed are the operating system and the app, then logically there must be an issue with Sierra.

I think the code of Sierra is the bigger issue, after all the code for 10.3 is not all that new, it is amended to change the user interface, but I am sure there is a lot of 10.2 code left in the 10.3 version, after all the update from 10.2.3 to 10.3 was not a huge update, suggesting only "patching" took place instead of a total re-install of brand new 100% new code!

This reminds me of the pain we had when 10.0.0 was released, then a rash of updates, it has only been a short time since the 10.3 was released, maybe a patch will be released soon, although experience tells me to not expect one for many moons!

In my experience, drag lag on long format productions is related to all versions of both FCPX and MacOS for the past 3 og 4 years.

This issue is most severe with long timelines containing several multicamclips.

You are almost not able to work in the timeline when drag lag is at its worst.

ronny courtens wrote: Chris,

We are looking at your project. It is indeed very laggy.

What I am noticing:

Most of the clips on the timeline are multicam clips with anything between 4 and 8 GoPro clips + a number of stills inside the mutlicam clip. Furthermore, many of these multicam clips also contain a lot of cut up clips on the same angle. Multicam clips in FCP X always stay "live". This means that any of these multicam clips on the timeline holds a multitude of different references inside them, which FCP X needs to keep track of. So it's not only about the number of clips on the timeline, it's also about the number of clips inside clips on the timeline that the NLE needs to track.

This could explain why you are seeing lag while we don't see any lag on a feature film timeline that is much longer and with with many more clips than yours. And it would explain why reducing the number of clips on the timeline also reduces the lag: each clip actually represents dozens of clips inside them.

Of course you also have lots of animated titles and effects and a quite lot of picture animations. But that should not be the real culprit. I will send your XML to some people I know.


- Ronny

Hey Ronny, thanks for trying it out for yourselves!
I have another couple of XML's with no multicams and fewer items on the timeline, but still exhibit the drag-lag. I will post them as well for you or others to try out. Behavior is better, but not great.

Regardless of what the timeline is comprised of (multicams, animated titles, effects, etc), I would expect scrolling and clip dragging to be better in an NLE.
This kind of project is "typical" for us. We want to utilize the features of FCPX and sort of expect UI performance to be able to keep up. I would understand it, if Resolve showed this behavior, but FCPX is supposed to be an NLE, and it's from Apple, so I have higher expectations.

ronny courtens wrote: Chris,

We are looking at your project. It is indeed very laggy.

What I am noticing:

Most of the clips on the timeline are multicam clips with anything between 4 and 8 GoPro clips + a number of stills inside the mutlicam clip. Furthermore, many of these multicam clips also contain a lot of cut up clips on the same angle. Multicam clips in FCP X always stay "live". This means that any of these multicam clips on the timeline holds a multitude of different references inside them, which FCP X needs to keep track of. So it's not only about the number of clips on the timeline, it's also about the number of clips inside clips on the timeline that the NLE needs to track.

This could explain why you are seeing lag while we don't see any lag on a feature film timeline that is much longer and with with many more clips than yours. And it would explain why reducing the number of clips on the timeline also reduces the lag: each clip actually represents dozens of clips inside them.

Of course you also have lots of animated titles and effects and a quite lot of picture animations. But that should not be the real culprit. I will send your XML to some people I know.


- Ronny

Ronny,

I can easily provide you with an XML or two containing projects with hardcore drag lag. Let me know if you are interested.

Hi Mikael,

Yes please send me the XMLs: ronnycourtens@mac.com

Ronny

I've upgraded finally in between projects. I do a lot of multicam event editing and I've found an issue straight away that used to be present a long time ago and was fixed. When changing multicam angle, the audio 'pops', is the best way to describe it. Has anyone else encountered this?

This is because FCP cuts the audio as well as the picture. You need to handle the audio differently, either as extended expanded audio or as detached audio. That way FCP doesn't cut the audio.

Yeah, I've detached the audio stream which was the workaround when it used to happen before in 10.0.x.

Ronny

The XML's are in your inbox..

Chris B wrote: Regardless of what the timeline is comprised of (multicams, animated titles, effects, etc), I would expect scrolling and clip dragging to be better in an NLE.

^^^ EXACTLY this. Let's not blame the editor here. FCPX should be able to handle it. It's 2016 after all.

My crashes have come back with a vengeance! I'm working in 4k red-raw footage and most of issues I'm experiencing seem to be caused by the RED workflow plugin (the most recent one). I've been in touch with tech support at RED, which hasn't offered me any solutions yet. Surprisingly, when I posted the crashes on the feedback form, Apple reached out to me asking for my crash logs. I've also seen some crazy display glitches (random bright red boxes all over the UI). Hopefully all of this nonsense will be addressed going forward. I think this was rushed out as to provide some more marketing mojo for the new touch strip MBPs. I can still work, but I'm getting about 3 crashes an hour!

My trashcan mac is totally pimped out, and my work drives are Pegasus2 R6s...

I'll post back once the RED software guys get back to me after the holiday (presumably).

Happy Thanksgiving!

But it's not 2050. What's being done today on computers is absolutely out of this world totally frakin ridiculous compared to a few years ago. If you've worked in video from the beginning of digital technology, frame digitizing tape, rendering 30 seconds over 48 plus hours and then sequentially laying frames back to tape. This is not that many years or ago. Sorry it's 2016 doesn't mean much to me.

Please stop being an Apple apologist. This CAN work better. FCP7 doesn't have this issue. Premiere doesn't have this issue. FCPX should NOT have this issue. That's really all there is to it. FCPX is not as good and as well-coded as it can be. And yes I have been using FCP since version 1 and I used lots of other NLE's before that. Never did it take 2 days to render 30 seconds of video unless I was doing actual CGI. All that was on a Mac with a PowerPC G3 processor and my current Mac Pro trash can is nearly 10 times as powerful. Oops I meant 100 times. Maybe even more. But again this isn't a hardware issue, it's a software issue. CPUs never get maxed out, available RAM barely gets touched.

I agree with Redifer, how is it possible that the same laptop, same video source produces 2 very different results when the only thing that has changed is the base operating system from Yosemite [great results] to Sierra [purple squares/errors/lag]?

What Apple have done is totally wreck the code, almost as if they, Apple, are trying so hard to poison the goose that lays golden eggs...

One of the ripple twins said 10.3 should have been called FCP 11.. Actually this should be called FCP 8.. 10.3+ Sierra is a total mess, this thread when complete will be the longest by a nautical mile on FCP.co.

Old code+new code=buggy... Sierra was never ready for public launch, it was and is buggy, then Apple broke 10.2, instead of fixing 10.2, they released an less stable, bug infested version.. And no updates????

This is why public beta has to be done, we are all doing beta testing on live code, no fair Apple, not fair.. If you want us to public beta test, then stop selling FCPX, call it FCPX Beta.. 10.3 is not fit for selling, it is too error prone...

Did you see the XML that was uploaded? FCP 7 could never do that. Not close. That's bullshit. All I'm saying is that it wasn't long ago that you could do way way less, so saying it's 2016 means nothing at all. Didn't mention GPU which is what's running all the filmstrip/waveform display in the timeline.

I've seen your other thread and do not get the issues you've reported. I have not seen similar issues reported in other forums for this version.

P.S. After Effects 2.

All I am saying is that based on my observations and experience, there is a problem either with Sierra or Sierra and 10.2/10.3, or just 10.2/10.3

Since downgrading to Yosemite and 10.2.3, I have not had a single error, yet 100% of my work on Sierra and 10.3 was full of purple squares, that leads me to suggest there is an error with Sierra or 10.2/10.3 or both, impossible to rule out as 10.3 will not work on Yosemite.

Why Apple has chosen to hide public beta testing for FCPX is frustrating and confusing, yet every user here is told over and over to "feedback" to Apple, what is the feedback other than a beta test report????

To add more fuel to my suggestion Sierra is faulty, I have not had a single open as preview a pdf file error, yet when I was running Sierra, I would annotate a pdf in preview, and it would only save a random section of what I had filled in, with Yosemite, no issues, same laptop, same file, strange....

Did you use 10.2.3 with Sierra?

Yes, purple squares as reported here, and reported to Apple.

I did a full re-install of Sierra, and 10.2.3, errors, then after talking to someone using Yosemite and 10.2.1, I decided to downgrade my late 2013 retina macbook pro 8GB RAM, to Yosemite and 10.2.3, as that is the only version I saved, and 100% error free.

If 10.3 worked on Yosemite, I would have tried that, I had lost my contract, so at this point I was just trying to find something stable, the plan was to work up from the lowest spec to the highest, Yosemite+10.2.3 to El cap+10.2.3 and so on, but as Yosemite+10.2.3 is stable, error free, fast, reliable, I ended my experiments at that point.

If I had a second laptop, I would try and try, to find the best option, but I only have one laptop!

I will add that I suspect the newer the OS, the more errors I would have encounted, I have heard others complain about faults in newer versions of Mac OS post Yosemite!