jonuk85

Q: Final Cut Pro X freezing on top spec new 27" iMac, help!

I finally received my new 27" iMac today and installed all the latest updates and then the latest versions of FCPX and compressor.

 

Spec of new iMac:

 

27" Late 2012

3.4Ghz Intel i7

8GB RAM (I also added 16GB of third party RAM to the machine to take it up to 24GB RAM but remove this later)

GeForce GTX 680MX 2048MB Graphics card

1.12TB Fusion Drive (1.09TB free)

OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion

 

Immediately I noticed performance issues and then it kept freezing whilst running FCPX - the whole OS would freeze resulting in me having to actually turn off the machine and turn it on again. It happened repeatedly so have done all the obvious things but still have the issue.

 

So far I've tried (with no luck):

 

- removing the third party RAM

- restarting the computer, multiple times

- making sure everything is up to date

- removing the FCPX preferences

- doing a PRAM and SMC reset

- fully uninstalling and reinstalling FCPX

- running the short and long Apple Hardware Tests (no problems found)

 

I am working with a large quantity of video files off an 8TB Thunderbolt drive but I've been using FCPX on my old 27" iMac and had no problems with that at all, the spec of that being far less powerful:

 

27" mid 2011

3.4Ghz Intel i7

8GB Ram

Radeon HD 6970M 1024MB

1TB hard drive

 

I'm thinking it could possibly be the graphics card or a software issue?

 

Any help or advice would be great!!!

 

Thanks!

 

Jon

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jan 14, 2013 1:51 PM

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Q: Final Cut Pro X freezing on top spec new 27" iMac, help!

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  • by jonuk85,

    jonuk85 jonuk85 Jan 15, 2013 9:21 AM in response to Tom Wolsky
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 9:21 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

    Created a new user and have been using Final Cut for about two hours now without any freezing. Pessimistic that this will last but will update again if I have any more issues!

     

    Thanks!

  • by Russ H,

    Russ H Russ H Jan 15, 2013 9:48 AM in response to jonuk85
    Level 7 (21,835 points)
    Quicktime
    Jan 15, 2013 9:48 AM in response to jonuk85

    Glad you're encouraged.

     

    If you scroll back in this thread to 8:18 this morning, you'll see that I suggested you create a new user account at that time.

     

    Russ

  • by jonuk85,

    jonuk85 jonuk85 Jan 15, 2013 9:51 AM in response to Russ H
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 9:51 AM in response to Russ H

    And about 5 minutes after I left that reply, surprise suprise, same old freezing problem! So it didn't solve the issue unfortunately...

     

    Looks like I'm going to have to return it or swap it. Although it's a slower machine, my old iMac is working much better with FCPX!

  • by elohel,

    elohel elohel Jan 15, 2013 11:08 AM in response to jonuk85
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 11:08 AM in response to jonuk85

    edit: woops didnt see your first post!

     

    was going to suggest trashing preferences, but looks like you already did

     

    : ( so only a swap seemed to work? there's no fix for this im running into the same problem

  • by TriTYR,

    TriTYR TriTYR Jan 15, 2013 11:48 AM in response to jonuk85
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 11:48 AM in response to jonuk85

    Just a heads up, I've read that some people are having issues reading/writing data through the fusion drive. This may be the issue, especially if you're working with large file sizes that worked previously on a machine without fusion drive technology. It's worth looking into, I think. The GPU doesn't seem to me that it would be the issue since it uses CUDA technology, which supports openCL. I would try to find a contact directly to Apple engineer support rather than your local genius bar. Best of luck to you.

  • by TriTYR,

    TriTYR TriTYR Jan 15, 2013 11:54 AM in response to TriTYR
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 11:54 AM in response to TriTYR

    PS. I read that the reason why is because the SS portion of the fusion drive (being only 128G) freaks out when dealing with large files because it foresees not being able to store/handle the entire file. This may cause freezing and other OS panic symptoms.

  • by digibudII,

    digibudII digibudII Jan 15, 2013 12:45 PM in response to TriTYR
    Level 2 (415 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 12:45 PM in response to TriTYR

        I wonder if we are starting to see issues with FCPx and fusion drives ?  One of the reasons I got a 2011 refurb recently was because of the unknown fusion drive. I couldn't afford the big SSD that was going to be offered in the new iMacs and didn't want to hang my hat on a fusion drive but now I understand that one can break the fusion drive and reformat them as separate drives. That might be a possible thing to try.

  • by stumbleone,

    stumbleone stumbleone Jan 15, 2013 12:51 PM in response to TriTYR
    Level 2 (317 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 12:51 PM in response to TriTYR

    But in the case of FCP X projects being on an external drive, there really wouldn't seem to be anything of major size associated with FCP X on the boot/fusion drive to confuse the SS portion?

  • by TriTYR,

    TriTYR TriTYR Jan 15, 2013 1:01 PM in response to stumbleone
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 1:01 PM in response to stumbleone

    You and I wouldn't think so, but I wouldn't rule it out. Fusion Drive is functional through software, so at it's infant state it's hard to say for certain whether or not even external source drives would confuse it and cause performance issues. It's definitely something I would look into.

     

    Also, something I found out recently is that the NVIDIA GTX 680MX that you're running supports CUDA, but not OpenCL directly. You may need to download a driver/CP from NVIDIA in order to get better performance out of your processors. I still don't think that your GPU is the issue, but you never know...if you're trying to exhaust resources anyway.

  • by jonuk85,

    jonuk85 jonuk85 Jan 15, 2013 1:02 PM in response to TriTYR
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 1:02 PM in response to TriTYR

    As stumbleone says above, I'm running everything off an 8TB G-Raid so there shouldn't be any issues with file sizes affecting the fusion drive. The only thing I have installed on the fusion drive is the OS, the standard applications that come with it, FCPX and Compressor.

     

    Macworld look like they did some extensive stress testing of the fusion drive here:

     

    http://goo.gl/LC1QY

     

    And they dont report any freezing or crashing issues even when maxing out the storage.

     

    I'm going to get it swapped for another one, test that one out and see if the same problem is happening.

  • by digibudII,

    digibudII digibudII Jan 15, 2013 1:37 PM in response to jonuk85
    Level 2 (415 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 1:37 PM in response to jonuk85

      I'll be curious to hear whether Apple will in fact swap it out for you. Keep us posted.

  • by jonuk85,

    jonuk85 jonuk85 Jan 15, 2013 1:39 PM in response to digibudII
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 1:39 PM in response to digibudII

    I'm just going to return it under the 14 day returns policy then get a new one!

  • by stumbleone,

    stumbleone stumbleone Jan 15, 2013 1:55 PM in response to jonuk85
    Level 2 (317 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 1:55 PM in response to jonuk85

    Jon -

     

    One other thought, for my own curiosity if nothing else.  The fact that a couple of the things you tried worked for a while before failing again, and also that rendering (high processor load) seems to create problems suggest the following to me:  If there is a heat build up over time and resulting overtemp situation, that could affect performance.

     

    This could result from faulty fan functions or other things.

     

    There are some freebie programs  -  istatpro? - that give you data on temperatures, fan speeds, etc.  Might try running one of those.

     

    If indeed that turns out to be the problem you can't deal with that and should return the machine,  but at least it would bring some closure to the issue.

     

    I have an older 27" iMac, and amazed how hot the top of it gets.  So some cooling malfunction could possibly give you the erratic behaviour you see.

  • by elohel,

    elohel elohel Jan 15, 2013 4:15 PM in response to jonuk85
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 15, 2013 4:15 PM in response to jonuk85

    were there any tests done without the harddrive?

     

    my freezing issues went away once I ejected my external

  • by jonuk85,

    jonuk85 jonuk85 Jan 16, 2013 1:02 AM in response to stumbleone
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 16, 2013 1:02 AM in response to stumbleone

    stumbleone - Yeh, could well be that. I did run the short and full Apple Hardware Test though and it didn't flag anything up, as far as I'm aware it tests the fan and all other internal hardware?

     

    Elohel - I have tested it with and without the hard drives and other peripherals plugged in but it still happens. Either way, I have to work with an external hard drive because of the volume of large video files i work with.

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