FCPX on Mac Pro 6,1 12-core D700 slow rendering, system idle

Hi guys..

Just bought a Mac Pro 12-core d700 and doing some video editing.
I imported a 1080p 60fps video, transcoded it to optimized (no proxy) added magic bullet looks contrast filter and renoiser and let it render. Footage is 30 minutes long.

Now I can see the system actually isn't doing much.. it's almost idle and the background renderer is really slow.

is it just me or is there something wrong ?

FCPX 10.3.4 on High Sierra
Editing off a WD Thunderbolt duo 4TB (250 mb/s max)

EDIT: the background render is 5hours in and still on 42%

thanks in advance

There are all kinds of anomalies between High Sierra, FCPX 10.3.4 and various plugins. You can spend lots of time chasing a problem only to find it's an odd interaction that can only be resolved by updating FCPX (see below) and plugins and/or by reverting to Sierra.

I don't know of specific problems with Red Giant's Magic Bullet Looks and ReNoiser vs FCPX on HS, but I don't have those.

If you just bought a 12-core D700 new and it's still in the return window you might want to consider returning it and evaluating the iMac Pro which is released this Thursday. It is much faster than the top spec nMP plus apparently has hardware accelerated H264 encode/decode. This is a separate issue from your stability problem which could just as easily happen on an iMac Pro or regular iMac.

Re background rendering you normally don't need that. In some cases it can cause problems so I'd suggest turning it off and trying your edit operations without it. It's possible FCPX 10.4 may be released this Thursday with the iMac Pro but nobody knows. If so, that version of FCPX would be better suited to High Sierra, and updating FCPX on your current hardware might fix the problem.

Thank you for your reply!

I also tried transcoding optimized media for the same file. And that was also painfully slow. Maybe even slower than on my MBPr 2015.

Will also try other files mentioned here on the forum by you. Test with the Sony 4k footage.

I bought the Mac Pro 2nd hand in Holland. Got a sweet deal and it works fine with other programs such as Handbrake and other encoding program which really put it to work! Like 150 fps H.264 encoding..

I'm going to do more tests and try to go back to Sierra or wait for FCPX 10.4 and see what that does.

Thank you again . Will reply once I know more and maybe you can help me out some more.

I did the test with the Sony 4k/25 footage:

h.264 master file export: 08m:06s ??
optimized media transcode: 02:20s
proxy: 00m:25s

I'm going to try and see what result I get with imovie

For future viewers of this thread, see also this thread: www.fcp.co/forum/hardware/18250-brucex-t...mark?start=500#92248

Test results, 2017 top-spec iMac 27, Sierra, FCPX 10.3.4, 2 min 30 sec (1.8GB) UHD 4k material from vimeo.com/135670345

Output to UHD 4k (best performance): 1 min 4 sec
Create proxy media after import: 29 sec
Create optimized media after import: 1 min 9 sec
Separate BruceX test: 15.8 sec (background render off, fresh library, ProRes 422 output)

Test results, Martin's Mac Pro 6,1 12-core @2.4Ghz D700:

h.264 master file export: 08m:06s ??
create proxy: 00m:25s
optimized media transcode: 02:20s
BruceX = 15 sec

Martin, some of your above numbers are very roughly in line with my past tests on a 12-core D700 Mac Pro, but others are not. My previous tests showed the nMP was about 1/2 as fast at transcoding to optimized media (which you observed). However my "create proxy" test was also about 1/2 as fast on the nMP but yours was slightly faster. I don't understand that.

On the master file export test to 4k H.264 "faster encode", I expect the nMP to be somewhat slower but not 1/8th the speed. Please re-check your export settings, also make sure background rendering is turned off:

Master File>Settings:
Format: Computer
Video codec: H.264 Faster Encode
Resolution 3840 x 2160

The BruceX test is very sensitive to test procedure. I always create a new library, restart FCPX between each test, have background rendering off, and output to ProRes 422. I usually repeat each test 3x and take the average time (yes that's a lot of work!)

My previous BruceX tests on a 12-core D700 Mac Pro were around 17 sec.

Since you got the Mac Pro 2nd hand, you can be satisfied with it. Even today it is a good machine for multi-core CPU tasks and on ProRes media it is very fast. It is very quiet under high load, unlike my iMac.

Yeah, I had the settings all wrong..

H.264 "Faster Encode" = 2m:29s

So i'm good?

Yes that is roughly the expected performance for a nMP for that media type and export options.