Too Many Free Effects Making FCPX Slow & Crash?

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

It is not a very good idea to put either project or events on the system drive. The project folders, unlike legacy FCP, actually contain media and render files also. Your system drive needs to focus on managing the applications and OS and it cannot do this uninterrupted if it is also dealing with project media.

For best performance, both project and events should be placed on the fastest non-system drive you have. If moving your projects to the system drive made any type of perceivable improvement, then you have another issue still lurking.

Hmm... I'm currently using a LaCie Big Drive 8tb eSata raid 5. Brand new. Use Disk Warrior regularly. Plenty of space. Wouldn't think the drive is the issue. Really seemed more like X was the issue.

BTW, can't seem to find in the documentation best practices as to where to put events and projects but the default for both events and projects is indeed the system folder. Not tenable for large projects. Not common sense either.

But based on my (limited) experience, I'm not sure it makes sense to put the project on the same drive as the event, either, since you would need to be pulling date from both simultaneously.

That said, I'd be interested in hearing other folks' experiences.

The project folder and the event folders can be moved to any drive as long as they are at the top root level. You can separate them on different drives if you prefer, but they work fine on the same drive....just NOT the system drive.

Wow. That is strange. I definitely saw a BIG leap in performance once I took the project files off the external RAID (kept the events there).

I appreciate your advice. Just curious: any documentation from Apple as to best practices (although they may not know).? When I was trying to trouble shoot my performance issue, I was on the phone with Apple four times and they seemed completely agnostic as to where to put events and projects, all things (disk speed) being equal. And frankly, they were not much help. Although it surprising you can just call 'em up like that.


The one thing they said NOT to do was to use the sparse disk image concept -- which is what had been using, so had to copy out all the media (500gbs!) onto the drive and ended up putting the project on the internal system drive.

A RAID 5 configuration is not optimal and performance will suffer to some degree. Because of heavy read write operations associated with editing, there is a latency in RAID 5 striped drives due to the parity requiring to be recalculated. See the link below for more information:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

And here is a Larry Jordan video about understanding projects and events in FCPX:

There is no issue I know of with Sparse Disk Images, I use them all the time.

As for RAID 5, there's nothing wrong with it, it's actually pretty much the standard for large RAID systems. Just don't use it for smaller systems, as you lose too much storage space. If you have anything over 12TB, you definitely want RAID 5 for sure. Under 8-12 TB, use RAID 1. For you small 8TB RAID, use RAID 1 to give you redundancy without loosing storage space.

FW800 with RAID for video editing really is a mixed bag. FW800 speed actually is slower than a RAID is capable of. eSATA makes more sense. T'bolt flies. But you can still have the safety of the RAID redundancy.

Now, I thought you were on an iMac. How are you getting eSATA out of an iMac?

Projects on the system dive is OK, as there's no "media" in them, just the database. Render file playback is only one video stream and two (for stereo) audio streams. It's not preferred, but would be ok. If you move a project to the system drive and see a performance increase, it means you've having a bottleneck in the external drive speed.

@Benb I didn't say there was media in the project, I said there was media in the projects folder, and if the OP was experiencing better performance with it on the boot drive, there were other issues.
As for RAID 5, I agree on larger RAID systems, but for the OP, RAID 0 or 1 gives him better performance. Did we conclude the same thing?

I"m on a laptop, working on a small project. Can I put the Event & Project on a 8 gig flash drive?
thanks

We said the same thing.

A "flash drive", as in USB? USB can't do the "sustained" data rates required for real HD video editing. I'd avoid that.

ok thanks
guess I'm stuck with the laptop internal HD for now

The teaser from Larry Jordan does recommend keeping Events and Projects off the system for better performance. So thanks for the heads up on that.

Wonder why Apple doesn't make the same recommendation.

In an effort to stop the freezing & crashing, or at least hinder the spinning beach ball of death, I thought, as has been suggested here, to remove some of the many plugins I have. So I made a folder for the "resting plugs" that I could use when needed. Divided that folder in to another 3 & inserted large collections of Effects, Transitions & Generators, directly from Home/Movies/Motion Templates folder.

Then I started FCPX, with eager anticipation that everything would be suddenly faster & smoother. Guess what? It took for ages to boot & then... ALL the removed Effects, Transitions & Generators were RIGHT BACK AGAIN!

It's like some creepy horror movie where the evil entity just keeps returning. Checking that Motion Template folder, sure enough, every one I'd removed, has somehow been regenerated (so now duplicates were made). So, obviously that's not the way to remove them. Perhaps some kind soul here could share the proper method, in a clear, not vague or cryptic manner please.

As it stands, I once again have too many Effects, Transitions & Generators, many probably do the same thing, but I can't tell because everything is so slow & 99% of the previews don't work. Being on a laptop with a single drive, I can't put my Project or Events on a different drive than the system... Thus the FCPX nightmare continues...

Something seems wrong here, I regularly move templates around to be either recognised or not by FCPX.

Are these templates that are straight from Motion, such as found on this site? Do they come from an installer etc. etc? If they are from mixed sources is it consistent that it happens with them all? Where are you moving them too and what folder are you moving etc. Any details that can let me try to reconstruct this?

Yes, it sounds like you copied them, and didn't move them. FCP X has no way to find templates not in it's own structure and "bring them back" in any manner.

I find it hard to believe that FCPX has problems with a large number of effects and plugins. This sounds to me like perhaps this is occurring on systems with insufficient RAM.

Personally, I have over 700 effects and transitions in my browser of FCPX. This includes several licensed packages from FX Factory, Yanobox Moods, MBL2 and others. I also have many of the Trial unlicensed FX Factory packages enabled in the host. Additionally, I have published a hugh amount of templates and various effects from Motion to FCPX. Ton's of generators, self made and purchased.

Add to that, I have 16,000 still images and nearly 20,000 songs/stingers/soundFX, etc. all in the media browser loading each time I run FCPX.

So, my point is that I have a hugh amount of media in the browser and I do not notice any problems with FCPX handling that. My MP has 48GB of RAM, so maybe that is the key. What do others think about this?

EDIT: I should also add that I have every single effect, transition and generator that has been generously provided thru this forum installed as well.

I only have 4 gigs of ram. This machine maxes out at 8 gigs, which I should probably buy, soon.
As for the other question, I didn't copy them, I dragged them right out of the Motion Templates folder & put them in their own folder inside the Downloads folder, 3 deep as I described. Upon restarting FCPX, all those Effects, Transitions & Generators appeared back in the respective folders. Duplicates, as the originals are still where I put them. Impossible or not, it happened. I can do it again while filming it if you don't believe me...

The 4 GB RAM most likely is why a lot of effects are causing you performance issues. As far as the other question, I'll take a stab at some possibilities. Maybe you have an issue with your FCPX preferences....did you try trashing them and retarting FCPX? Are you also on the latest 10.0.4 version? And, what OSX version?

Hi Guys,
I went on a free effects binge there a few days ago too. I got a load of TKY and RT (then bought some crumplepop.com FX too). Is there currently a list of plugins which slow down one's mac?
I's love to know as i would drop those plugins like a hot potato. Why does a plugin which is not in use slow down a system, i mean how non-sensical is that?

A specific plugin that is not in use should not effect anything. And bashing gays has no place here.

I'm on FCPX 10.0.4 & OS X 10.6.8
How do I trash my FCPX preferences?