Too Many Free Effects Making FCPX Slow & Crash?

Too Many Free Effects Making FCPX Slow & Crash?

I've been on a little effects binge here lately, & now it seems I'm paying the price. On a little MacBookPro with only 4 gigs of ram, yes I want 8, but have to wait. FCPX has never run smoothly with this machine & configuration, but it's serviceable. Although it sometimes freezes & crashes completely. So with all the free effects offered here, I loaded up. I mean, I love effects, & the work you guys do is fantastic. Now here's the problem, FCPX has slowed down to a crawl, render times have become epochs. Even just to check what one of the effects does is time prohibitively crippling. Nobody told me, just adding these effects would make my already slow machine like jogging in quicksand. Attempting to check an effect's effect on even a little still photo, takes forever to render, subjecting me to the spinning wheel of death, & then sometimes a complete crash! The next development in this process was that after installing a bunch of the free effects posted here, FCPX 10.0.4 would crash on startup, with an error report blaming FXFactory. Hmm... weird. So I uninstalled FXFactory, which says it will reinstall the plugs in FCPX as needed. Rebooting showed they all came back, except Genarts Saphire, which isn't even part of FXFactory, but it deleted it from FCPX, although it was still there in the Applications folder. Super weird. So I uninstalled Saphire, then reinstalled it, now everything seems to be working & back to normal. Why can't effects just sit in their folders & not effect the software's operational process until you need them? Does having more effects just sitting there waiting have to slow everything down? Is there anything else I can do to speed things up? Don't tell me I have to uninstall them all again, until I need them, then install each one, one by one, whenever I need it`? What kind of tedious crap is that? I might as well be on a windoze peecee if I want my time wasted in weeks.

I can't talk for the FXFactory or Genarts plugins as I don't know what's going on behind the scenes with all that stuff and I don't have any installed, but for Motion Templates being opened and read by FCPX, as found on this forum, do you get the problem if it's just these? If so how many do you have installed?

I have a lot with no affect on how FCPX performs.

Don't put Events and Projects on your system drive. FW800 is barley fast enough for major HD work. More RAM would boost your performance a lot (price it at Other World Computing).

Gen Arts stuff will bog down a system. Be sure you have the latest version of FxFactory installed, it shouldn't be a problem.

My rule is, I only get effects and templates as I need them for specific work, only.

Am I reading that right enough. Just having the GenArts stuff installed, without being in use, will bog down the system?

I had a review copy, and the minute I would open it to use it, my system bogged down hard. I hated it. As soon as the review was written, I removed it. There's other software that's cheaper that does the same thing.

Thanks, good to know.

I really don't the the reason (beside piracy concern) behind FxFactory's plugin system. I personally don't like the way to have a 3rd party app to manage the plugins.

If I knew about this before I paid for the Moods plug in I wouldn't even bother getting it.

Personally I love the FxFactory system. They have their own render engine, which is what you get with FxFactory Pro, to make your own. They originally did this system to give all of those developers a place to easily sell their works. Today, it's simply more organized and helps the developers and end users to stay in touch, stay organized, and makes life easier in general. And assures you of the quality you're getting. I don't see any problem. It also insures all of your FxFactory engine based plugins are up to date for your current software. Rather than having to update each plugin individually, they have the updates done all at once. Very nice. I've no problems at all, and really like it. Great system to make for an easier end user experience for me, personally. Unlike GenArts who's stuff breaks constantly and is super over priced, IMHO.

Hi Ben, I know what you mean.

TBH I am a control freak and I like to install stuff manually whenever possible. I have experience After Effects CS 5.5 not launching after I installed FxFactory (in order to activate Moods and XEffects to work in FCP). I ended up have to remove fxfactory plugin manually from After Effect's core folder to avoid the crash....and I am running the latest 3.02

I have no use for AE, so not an issue on my systems. So, yeah, use what works for you.

pollux wrote: ..and I am running the latest 3.02

Yes...3.02 is the latest version of FX Factory. I use it with no problems. I do disable any FX that I haven't licensed, otherwise the media (effects) browser gets pretty full.

Thanks for all your input guys. Please tell me what other company does the same thing as Genarts but is cheaper.
thank you

I have the same problem with this new FPCROX update. I don't use Fx Factory but I have some plug-in like Mojo from Red Giant and some of the free stuff from your Forum.

FCPROX now is slow and crashy, I can remove some plugin but I need some of them... is it possible a downgrade to previous version?

Oh man, light leaks and lens flares are so over used now, their in just about everyone's effects package.

I've had one or two plugins such as CoreMelt get buggy upon a new FCP X update, but I'm finding those folks are fixing them very quickly.

Oh yeah, tell me about the lens flare and light leaks

I agree they are everywhere

After trying "almost" all available plug in effects I realized many of them have so much overlap in functions. Not only that. Some have faster preview during playback and some stutter really badly.

After the long and stressful test of each I am now settled with 7 sets of effects, 3 sets of transitions, 2 sets of generator stuff. My decision is solely based on the playback speed

That's more than I need ........ For now

If you're found a compact set of plugs that does the trick without slowing things up, share your wisdom. Please post your results here or in the appropriate thread, but place a link here in this thread so those of us learning about plugins & FCPX can learn from your experience. In my last post I requested that BenB tell us the plug that did the same thing as Genarts but cheaper?
thanks

I think Ben was meaning FXFactory (?)

I was referring to the many plugin packages that have those effects. Search the web, there's a good many out there. Including the freebie section of this forum.

Ben: You mentioned never put your Events and Projects on your system drive.

I agree--events are too big for the system drive. But I had huge performance issues with 10.0.3 and the solution (for me) was to move the project to the system driver. Things ran a lot smoother after that. Oh, and I stopped using sparse disk image to house events, too. That seemed to help.

Still very crashy but at least I could cut. Just updated to 10.0.4 last night but fingers crossed.

TrixTrax9000 wrote: If you're found a compact set of plugs that does the trick without slowing things up, share your wisdom. Please post your results here
thanks

Don't worry I will post a list later today or tomorrow. Can't say it is "wisdom."

It is more like what I have experienced