XF-AVC Playback Delay in FCP

I've had an R5C for a few months now and been shooting HEVC 422 no problem. But on a recent higher profile job switched to XF-AVC 422 Long GOP and playing it back is a nightmare. Every shot takes about 4-5 seconds to playback once I hit space. I edited the project with proxies and vowed to avoid showing XFAVC again but now I'm curious why it was an issue?

I've installed the Canon XF Utility tonight and found I can playback XF-AVC files in Quick Preview or QuickTime near instantaneously no problem. But the delay playback issue still persists in FCP. To be fair, if I skip around a QuickTime file there's a short delay but still nothing like the delay in Final Cut.

Watching some YouTube reviews of M1 systems, Mac Studio's and the like I can see some have the same playback issue as me and for some it plays like butter. I've looked in this forum for answers and found that making a new user profile may help. Which I did, but no change.

Any idea what's going on or how to fix it? I'm using an M1 MacBook Air.

Have you installed the Canon import software for FCP? Because with it FCP re-wraps the MXF off into a QuickTime container. Once this is done all clips play back normal. At least here:-)

There’s canon import software? 😆 that might help. I saw there was a canon raw FCP plug-in but haven’t installed because I haven’t touched raw yet.  Let me look for it too install.

It’s also a good point that after installing CF Utility I just opened an old project with XFAVC clips not started a new one. If it rewraos clips on import that might explain why the old project didn’t play but if I start a new one it might. 

Do you mean this eos movie plugin?
It looked like it converts the files to pro res. Which would definitely work but can’t FCP do that by itself?

www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer_product...n.html?os=&language=

It also doesn’t explain why I can play native XFAVC clips in finder no problem but Final Cut struggles 🤔

No the import plugin just rewrapes the orig codec into a QuickTime container. But I can’t see it anymore? I installed it years ago. When you open the imported clip with QuickTime does it have the .mov extension or still the .mxf one?

I made an archive from the Card so all the clips are .mov in finder. in Final Cut there are also .mov.

I'm beginning to think somethings wrong with my Final Cut installation but not sure I care enough to nuke macOS and reinstall.

CBlakeston wrote:

I've had an R5C for a few months now and been shooting HEVC 422 no problem. But on a recent higher profile job switched to XF-AVC 422 Long GOP and playing it back is a nightmare. Every shot takes about 4-5 seconds to playback once I hit space....I've installed the Canon XF Utility tonight and found I can playback XF-AVC files in Quick Preview or QuickTime near instantaneously no problem. But the delay playback issue still persists in FCP...

If you can upload a test clip to the below write-only DropBox link, I'll test it on several different Apple Silicon and Intel machines using FCP, Resolve and Premiere:

www.dropbox.com/request/ZHcAeL8SP5pkBvV6FltF

Many thanks. I've uploaded some test clips and a quick video from my iPhone of the difference in playback between Final Cut and just playing files from a finder folder.

It's not your M1 MacBook Air. That footage is also quite sluggish on my M1 Ultra Mac Studio. On my 2017 i7 iMac 27, it's like a slide show. I tested both "leave files in place" and "copy to library" -- it made no difference. Both machines were on Monterey 12.6.1, Apple Pro Video Formats 2.2.4.

My team has an R5C but we only shoot 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 All-Intra in the MXF wrapper. That is smooth to edit on all our Intel and Apple Silicon machines (without proxies). However the bit rate is 400 megabit/sec vs the 147 megabit/sec of the 10-bit 4:2:2 Long GOP codec you used.

The metadata in your file might imply it was rewrapped or processed by EditReady 22.3.2, is that possible? If so can you upload an original camera file?

The file you uploaded will not import to Premiere 23.0.0 due to error "The file has an unsupported compression type".  In Resolve Studio 18.1, it shows audio but no video. So it appears that specific format is problematic. 

At this point I'd suggest shooting 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 All-Intra MXF on the R5C.

Hmm I wonder if that's why. If I couldn't play it initially I would have used Edit Ready to rewrap it. That didn't even occur to me. Thanks to much for doing this.  That's interesting it won't play on your Mac studio. I'll film a new test clip straight from that camera and try that. Good to know All Intra works.  

I just shot two clips. XF-AVC 4k 422 Long GOP and Intra Frame. Imported them using the FCPX import browser and they play LIKE BUTTER.

I think what happened is I'd shot a number of things on the card over multiple days and I like to create archives of footage for each day. Final Cut wouldn't let me just select the XF-AVC clips so I dragged the folder with that days name into edit ready to rewire the files thinking it would do no harm. But it clearly did something. Thanks for helping me figure this out.