FCP Hangs And Beachballs When Skimming Clips - EtreCheckPro Report Attached

You may have diagnosed the issue yourself with Chrome and CMM. I would completely remove Chrome following the instructions at https://chromeisbad.com Simply trashing the app is not enough to get rid of the keystone agents. Uninstall CMM, although it may have done damage to the system that will require a clean macOS reinstall to fix.

Once those have been removed, drag FCP to the Trash and download a fresh copy from the App Store. Upon launch, hold command and option to reset FCP prefs. It will open the default Untitled library. Reopen the library you were working on, set the prefs back to the way you like and see if things are better.

Looks like you are very close to a full drive. Recommended free space is 15%.

Just want to add that I have the exact same issue with the exact same MacBook. I can recreate this issue consistently with footage from the GoPro Hero 10 and it appears to also happen with certain flavors shot on the GoPro Hero 11 (though the new 10-bit encoded footage so far appears to only intermittently have this issue). I've also recreated the issue in iMovie.

I have been working on this issue off and on with Apple since April. It only appears to happen on late Intel-era MacBooks. I've even gone to the trouble of completely reinstalling Monterrey to a second APFS Volume, installing no other apps but Final Cut Pro, and then recreated the issue. In addition, if you try and transcode the footage in Final Cut, sometimes it will hang even though Final Cut appears to be functional. Thanks to a random commenter on YouTube, I learned that if you Force Quit VTDecoderXPCService in Activity Monitor, it will allow the transcode to continue.

I'd be curious if you also have the issue when trying to playback GoPro footage (I noticed GoPro's Quik software listed in your EtreCheck report, so I assume this is the case). Nevertheless, I think if you haven't already, you should call into Apple Support and very patiently explain to them what you're experiencing. The more we can call attention to this, hopefully the quicker we'll get a resolution.

PS- I also have a ticket opened with GoPro's escalation support and although they've been very kind, they haven't been very forthcoming, even going so far to say they cannot recreate the issue in-house. This apparently started happening after a December 2021 firmware update and they also claim no changes were made in the codecs. The camera still shows as "supported" on Apple's website.

Thanks for the quick reply and I really hope what you found will help someone! I have to disagree though that Final Cut only supports HEVC from an Apple device. Further in the release notes in the link you’ve provided shows that later releases support HEVC from other cameras, specifically Canons XF-HEVC format. And I can edit HEVC files from other cameras / recorders (DJI Mavic Air 2, Canon C70, Canon R7, and Atomos Ninja V, to name a few) and the native video files playback in Final Cut without issue.

And sadly, I’m not even shooting 5.3K. This is happening for me on basically any resolution / frame rate the Hero10 shoots in HEVC. But what’s weird is I can playback HEVC files recorded with the same Hero10 prior to a December firmware update for the camera. And I could downgrade but then I lose support for the Lens Mod and Volta.

Again, I’m very glad you’ve found a solution but sadly, I still think this is an issue with Final Cut. When I did the clean install, neither Chrome nor CleanMyMac were installed (and I don’t have CleanMyMac installed anyways) so I’m afraid those won’t apply here.

And yes, transcoding is a definite workaround but 1) I am concerned with lossy codecs despite any third party software claims and 2) on certain shoots it can add hours to my workflow.

Also to add, I have a 2013 Mac Pro as well as an iMac Pro at my work and both those machines playback the same files without issue. At least for me, it’s something to do specifically with my 2020 13” Intel i7 based MacBook Pro.

I most definitely will! At the risk of sounding over confident, I think we're closer to a resolution than we have been so hopefully the end is in sight.