Too Many Free Effects Making FCPX Slow & Crash?

www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/

This pro maintenance thing sounds good, is it worth the $139? Can anyone recommend it?

It is a must have. Been using it since FCP7

I'd only get it when you actually need it. Most of what it does is very rarely needed. Some of those modules don't work with FCP X.

I take it they will start working very hard to start making it fully FCPX compatible (If they want to sell some downloads of it). I will wait at least until i start having some problems.

thanks for the link, the preferences trasher appears to be free...

BenB wrote: I'd only get it when you actually need it. Most of what it does is very rarely needed. Some of those modules don't work with FCP X.

Actually, out of 17 tools, 14 support FCPX. Two of the remaining tools aren't aimed at FCP users anyway and the final tool, Autosave Manager, doesn't support FCPX because FCPX doesn't have an autosave function (it creates a single project backup and that's it). As soon as Apple adds a proper one we'll support it.

There's a free 15-day trial so we'd recommend downloading it to see how it fits into your workflow. We have thousands of customers and it's in use at most of the major broadcasters in the USA.

FCPX has a backup db file. Since it is a db I'm not sure I'd need 12 copies. Just be sure there's a backup of the whole folder.

BenB wrote: FCPX has a backup db file. Since it is a db I'm not sure I'd need 12 copies. Just be sure there's a backup of the whole folder.

Why would you need fewer backups because it's a DB? That doesn't make a difference.

Also, an autosave vault is useful if you make changes you don't like and want to go back to a previous version later on. You can't have too many backups of your project.

A database file and an app's project file (like Motion) are not the same thing. Look at the size of those Final Cut database files. They get pretty huge. I don't want to waste all that disk space.

Versioning is very easy. Duplicate your Project or Compound Clip, simple. This is how we did it in FCP legacy. Autosave was not really a versioning tool, but a backup tool. Again, making copies of very tiny project files. Make 12 copies of your database file on a drive and watch how fast it fills up.

Let me explain how we're managing backups on the movie I'm currently working on in FCP 7. There are automatic backups that happen every time you save (takes up about 6 GB in total so not a huge amount). We also backup manually when we know a certain change might need to be undone, however it can be difficult to predict in advance and we sometimes have to go back to the auto backups. We've also made use of the autosave vault once or twice.


On top of this, auto backups are compressed and synced to Dropbox for safety against fire or theft.


So backups don't need to take up much space and you don't always know in advance what you'll want to undo, especially if you make a change accidentally.

That same project in FCP X would have a database WAY larger than that, too.

I and my associates have always just duplicated the Sequence to version. We didn't rely on backups. We had access to it directly in the Browser window. Never had to launch a new project for versioning. That's just so much time I don't need to spend.

Backups are one thing, versioning is another, and HUGE database files are something different all together.

TrixTrax9000 wrote: 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.

Well I had the EXACT same problem. It had been harrowing me for almost 2 weeks. I had been using a lot of FxFactory's plugins - especially the Yanobox MoType. I finally figured out how to resolve this.

1. Update FCP X, FxFactory, CrumblePop (and whatever other plugins that offer updates) to the latest versions.
2. Uninstall FxFactory.
3. Delete System Preferences etc. for FCPX.
4. Delete all the rendered files and events (if you can afford to make a backup, that is)
5. Reinstall the plugins.

If possible, check the version of Motion in which the plugins were created (in case of standalone independent plugins). If they were created in versions prior to your version of Motion, they shouldn't pose much of a problem. If they were created in later versions, most of the times, they won't work - BUT, if they do, they will cause render issues.

And the process is tedious, yes. But that's the price you have to pay for less RAM. I have cut 4 feature-length films on my MBP with 4 gigs of RAM. No problem as long as the films are cut-to-cut. The moment there are even some basic graphics involved, like text-titling, 3D transitions, Glitches - FCP X goes like, "Say hello to my little friend - the multicolored circle of death".

Wow, this post takes me back. Alas at that time I was in another country & severely frustrated with the system's performance. Not sure I like my tone in that post, but hopefully folks will forgive the rant, as I'm sure they can empathize. These marvelous little machines are such a help when all is well, but when something goes wrong they provide no end of grief.

Once I upgraded my Ram to 8 Gigs, & updated the software, pretty much all that trouble disappeared. Though I must say that even 8 Gigs isn't optimal with large projects or complicated clips with many effects. I guess the next step up is the MBP with Retina Display & 16 Gigs of Ram, plus 2 drives with the software one being flash.

But as soon as you buy it, you know it's going to be obsolete... & the cycle continues.

Thanks for all your tips. Hope I never need them, God forbid I do, I now know where they are.