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 sputuk,

    sputuk sputuk Apr 10, 2013 10:29 AM in response to GizLee
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 10, 2013 10:29 AM in response to GizLee

    Hmm, I'm not finding anything "slow" now, but its all relative. Sure, things are not instant, but knowing what's needed to be done by the software, I'm not finding FCPX "slow". What I did find was that much of the time, the disk speed even with the hybrid drive was acting as the bottle neck for many operations, so I invested in a fast external USB 3 256GB SSD, and now when all the assets and temp project files can work from that, things are significantly quicker.

     

    Of course with an app this complex and with all the different types of media and configurations and tasks expected of it, Milage will vary so its possible you've found something specific that's afflicting you which I'm just not seeing, but you might want to do some work to investigate what's happening when you find something is "slow" as it might not be a "bug", but something specific to your config/files/workflow. The difference with the issue we were all having before was that it was consistent, reproducible and affecting some basic functionality.

     

    Anyhow, good luck getting to the bottom of your issue and I hope I don't come across whatever it is as I'm quite happy with the speed etc across the board with FCPX now.

  • by GizLee,

    GizLee GizLee Apr 12, 2013 6:55 AM in response to sputuk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 12, 2013 6:55 AM in response to sputuk

    Allright, maybe I am working in the wrong rendering format, but if working with a better harddrive is nessecary I will definately buy a better drive cus it is important for us to work fast and it is pretty strange that if you buy such an expensive and powerfull machine as it is thought out to be then it should deliver the top specs

    We have previously worked with Mac Pro with 512 mb graphic ram, 6 gb ram, regular 7200 rpm 1 tb harddrives, we didn't have these issues as we are experiencing on the new iMac, and the iMac we got is 4 times better than the Mac Pro that we used to work on previously, when we didn't have access to them anymore we decided to buy ourselves a decent computer which came to discussion, we maybe should've saved up a bit more and bought the mac pro instead, things should at least render alot faster so this is pretty strange to us still, and keep in mind we are not even makming big changes, I can speed up a clip that is 2 minutes long from 100% to 109% and it takes final cut about 2 minutes to render

  • by Russ H,

    Russ H Russ H Apr 12, 2013 8:10 AM in response to GizLee
    Level 7 (21,835 points)
    Quicktime
    Apr 12, 2013 8:10 AM in response to GizLee

    GizLee wrote:

     

    I can speed up a clip that is 2 minutes long from 100% to 109% and it takes final cut about 2 minutes to render

    I would say there is a boottleneck that's specific to your system. My 4 year old iMac renders a 2 minute retimed clip in half that time.

     

    Russ

  • by sputuk,

    sputuk sputuk Apr 13, 2013 12:59 PM in response to GizLee
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 13, 2013 12:59 PM in response to GizLee

    Well, if it helps, I just took a 2 min clip and re-timed it to 109% and it rendered in about 30 seconds - that's on the 1TG fusion drive rather than bothering to move it to the SSD first, but that would be quicker - I'd estimate probably 15 secs or less.

     

    Now, clearly, a LOT depends on your source format as well as how you have FCPX configured, but there certainly doesn't seem to be a fundamental issue with FCPX performing such operations, but clearly something specific with your files/project/set up.

     

    Ah, full disclosure I just realised - I should say, the clip I used had been imported much earlier so proxy files etc are all already in place.  If you do a "fresh" import and try to work with it while FCPX is still copying the media/transcoding the proxy files in the background etc AND expecting it to render the result at the same time, you'll almsot certainly be hitting major I/O bottle necks.  NB the fussion drive doesn't actually make much impact if any when working with files like this, it's not what it's designed to speed up.

     

    But, its easy enough to see for yourself what's causing it to take longer using the Activity monitor.  If your CPU is ticking over below say ~80%, then it's not that limiting things.  If the disk I/O is flat out as I suspect you'll find, then that's your problem.  You can either ajdust your work flow so that import/proxy creation etc has completed before you need to do a lot more IO, or invest in fast IO - i.e. SSD (or RAIDed storage etc).

  • by Lank620,

    Lank620 Lank620 Jul 22, 2013 5:07 PM in response to jonuk85
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 22, 2013 5:07 PM in response to jonuk85

    FCPX is still freezing for me during playback.

    While working the program eats up 500 - 700% of CPU.

     

    I only have one project that exists.

    It's a seven-minute-long film using SD footage imported from DV tapes.

     

    Background rendering is OFF.

    Waveform previews are OFF.

    No harddrives or other USB devices connected (other than a mouse).

     

    June 2012 Mac Book Pro ver 10.8.4

    2.3 GHz

    16 gb RAM

     

    FCPX seems to be working at least a little better since the update but it has not stopped giving me the beach ball.

  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Jul 23, 2013 6:40 AM in response to Lank620
    Level 6 (12,500 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 23, 2013 6:40 AM in response to Lank620

    Maybe there is something gone corrupt in that project.

    You could try:

     

    1) Delete preferences - never hurts, and usually the first thing to try.

    2) Delete project and event render files.

    3) Copy everything from your project and paste into a new project. Maybe the project itself has become corrupt, and this is the common solution in this event (pun intended).

  • by Lank620,

    Lank620 Lank620 Aug 6, 2013 8:18 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 6, 2013 8:18 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

    I tried all those. Nothing. Thanks though.

     

    I tried a completely new project with different media and everything. That seemed to work pretty well but my cpu was still running around 150% during playback.

     

     

    There's defintely something corrupt in those original files but I have no idea how to find it. Using Event Manager, I tried editing by isolating events and seeing if the problem conintued. It happened no matter what event I kept on or off.

  • by GizLee,

    GizLee GizLee Aug 26, 2013 3:08 PM in response to jonuk85
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 26, 2013 3:08 PM in response to jonuk85

    Well, the 10.0.9 update is out, lets hope that it includes the fixes with the rendering problem and such, going to check it pronto on wednesday

  • by Iilankrt,

    Iilankrt Iilankrt Sep 22, 2013 6:00 AM in response to jonuk85
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 22, 2013 6:00 AM in response to jonuk85

    Nothing happens ! Apple let us moan on his support pages, but infact it doesn't care about us.

    The problems with the graphic card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB is well known, but why should Apple management care about it? The loyal idiots like me and other old iMac user will go on suffering and - buing the next iMac version.

     

    Mr. Incredible - you know who is using this word 2 times in every sentence - is taking Apple to the edge of the clip celebrating old stuff in new clothes. There is no real treatment, although many problems can be resoved with one effective update (like a new driver for this graphic card)!

  • by Tom Wolsky,

    Tom Wolsky Tom Wolsky Sep 22, 2013 6:20 AM in response to Iilankrt
    Level 10 (118,348 points)
    Apple TV
    Sep 22, 2013 6:20 AM in response to Iilankrt

    That well-known problem with that graphics card was a problem in the OS and was fixed some months ago with an OS update. There was a very long thread of iMac users until the issue was resolved, but it had been for some time in either the .3 or the .4 update. We're now up to .5 in the OS, which will probably be the last version.

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