Extremly Slow Export

Im running FCP on a 2019 Macbook Pro 16
2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
32gb Ram
1 TB SSD
AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB

For the first few months my export times were extremely fast... all of a sudden the last month, my export of any type of format is extremely slow. I'm running everything off of my internal SSD (R/W 2500MB/sec +).

I've looked through the forums and I've reset my preferences to attempt to fix this. Nothing I'm doing is restoring my export speeds. Can anyone help me ? Is this an issue with a recent Mac OS Catalina software update ?

Thanks

On your internal drive, how much is used and how much is left as free space?

jinhim wrote: ...For the first few months my export times were extremely fast... all of a sudden the last month, my export of any type of format is extremely slow. I'm running everything off of my internal SSD (R/W 2500MB/sec +)...

Assuming you're doing the same export type, a possible cause is an effect or an FCPX issue with using cached render files. This can "suddenly" happen due to unpredictable interaction with effects in the stack.

You can examine if this is happening by making a snapshot duplicate of your timeline, open that, select all clips with CMD+A, then remove all effects with Edit>Remove Effects, then try the export.

While it's normal that effect processing entails CPU/GPU cost, if the timeline is fully rendered the export should not be extremely slow. In general (and esp. with problems like this) it's best to disable background rendering in FCPX preferences, delete all render files with File>Delete Generated Library Files>Delete Render Files>All. Then select all timeline clips with CMD+A, then do a one-time render with CTRL+R. You can subsequently select clips and re-render them as necessary.

Before an export, it will sometimes help to re-launch FCPX, then manually re-render the timeline, then do the export. Other times this won't help. This procedure should not be necessary, it is simply an attempt at a workaround.

I explain the problem details here: www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...roject-switch#104227

The above is a common cause of the symptoms you describe. However there can be other causes such as inadequate disk space (as stated by FCPX.guru). Also if you began using a compute-intensive codec, such as certain 10-bit HEVC versions from Fuji or Panasonic's 10-bit 400 mbps All-Intra from the GH5, S1, S1H and EVA-A. Any export to 10-bit HEVC is currently very slow on all Macs due to FCPX not using hardware acceleration.

For general proofing and evaluation, try this export: File>Share>Master File>Settings, Format: Computer, Video Codec: H.264 Faster encode, Resolution: 1920x1080.

If you are using Neat Video, make sure you have upgraded to the latest version which is significantly faster than previous ones. Then use the built-in config tool: Open the Neat Video interface and select Tools>Preferences>Performance>Optimize Performance. It will run a quick benchmark and list the achieved frame rate using all combinations of CPU, GPU, inc'l CPU-only and GPU-only. This will help some but it does not solve the problem of interaction between some effects causing FCPX to not use cached render files.

75% of my 1TB SSD is available.

Is it advisable to create optimized media when importing 1080p video files for a faster export at end of project ? I've stopped creating optimized media because it was taking more space up in the FCP library.

Is it possible to import original media, create an optimized version and then delete the original media and work only from the optimized version ?

I would not bother to optimize 1080 media at all, only 2.5K+ and even then, depending on the Mac I was using.

Do not delete the original media.