Final Cut Pro and Spinning Beach Balls

After some investigating it actually looks like a Mac OS issue not a Final Cut Pro issue linked with the 10th gen CPUs so please can everyone also submit a form for Mac OS and report it as a bug report and explain your issue

Here is a sample that I wrote:

There is an issue with MAC OS and the new 10th gen CPUs when using applications such as after effects and Final Cut Pro. There is clearly a bug that is causing this issue. It looks like it's linked to the GPU on these new 10th gen processors potentially with with the G7 graphics. please fix this problem as I'm sure you're aware that many customers are returning these MacBook pro's with these new 10th gen processors because they cannot use it with these Pro apps. I am using Mac OS Catalina 10.15.5

Link is down below:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

Just wanted to check in and say that after I installed 10.15.6 the beach balling seems to be gone. I'm working on a project for about 45 min now and had now beachball and no need to force quit final cut. I'll see how it holds up after a long working session (2h+) but so far the problem seems to be fixed. Yay!

Two things to try. Make a new admin user. Run FCP only. Import video from your iPhone into the library created on the new user. Run nothing else. Do you have the same problem?

The WindowServer was using a lot of CPU.

Trust me, I have nearly tried everything to see if there is a fix, the only fix is what Apple can do with Catalina and Final Cut Pro. They need to fix it with an update but no word yet on when. I would say return it now because there is no guarantee they will fix it, reports show Apple Support have not been helpful but please report this issue to Apple

If you can report your issue using this please: https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

Also it looks like it's a bug in MacOS as After Effects is affected too, something to do with the CPUs and MacOS.

I have the exact same issue on my 2020 MBP (4 Thunderbolt + 1TB SSD version) but I did encounter it as well on a 2020 Macbook Air (CTO) with the i5 & 16GB RAM. In both cases I had the project and files on an external Samsung T5 SSD. On the MBP I also moved the files on the internal storage just to see if it solves the issue, but it did not. I find it unacceptable that these brand new laptops have these issues considering I was able to flawlessly edit on my old 2015 i7 MBP (integrated graphics).

Strange thing is that on the MBA, I tried to export the files via Compressor (as I usually do) but I could not because it always gave me an error and I had to do the export via FCP X. The solution was to cleanup both the FCP and Compressor installation and install them again.

So today I decided that I should try a reinstall of the OS (+ drive format) and install just 3 applications on top of the default installation: Final Cut Pro X, Apple Compressor, GarageBand. So far on a small project it's fine and I got well over the usual 20 minute mark.

I upgraded to 10.15.6 this morning and have not yet had a spinning beachball after 3 hrs editing. (knock on all forms of wood) In 10.15.5 this would happen after 15min of use of FCPX. I am using a 2020 13" MBP i7 with 16Gb RAM and 1Tb HD running FCPX 10.4.8

I think the update fixed certain kernel panics scenarios.

I did the macOS update 10.15.6 when it arrived. After the update until today, I have not experienced any beach ball loadings even on many hour editing sessions! My machine is the 2020 13” MacBook Pro with four thunderbolt 3 ports, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM and i5

You were misinformed. The computer meets the system requirements. Listed cards are for after market graphics cards. That said I would agree that the computer should be returned at this time while it is still returnable until the issue has been resolved.

Maybe post an EtreCheck report will full drive access. Otherwise it’s Apple Support and sending it in.

Did you download the Pro Video Formats and the additional content?

It may be worth trying the new update of Catalina 10.15.5.

I think someone in another thread mentioned it helped with issues with the new 2020 MBP.

Avoid docks. Even be careful with powered docks. They’rea major bottleneck and source of performance issues.

Did a restart and it seems like it fixed the issue. Also tested Zoom and all seems good...no lag.

Please post the full Etrecheck report as Tom requested.

And just in case ut is not clear yet: what you are experiencing with beachballing on such short projects is NOT normal.

One other thing: are there any other resource hungry applications running at the same time?