FCPX freezes (but does not crash/quit out) when attempting to do any kind of built-in tracking

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Level 1

4 points

FCPX freezes (but does not crash/quit out) when attempting to do any kind of built-in tracking

Hi all! Hoping to get some help. Self-confessed newbie to editing and Final Cut Pro.

I've been wanting to do some very basic tracking of faces and objects and have been attempting to do so in FCP for the last two weeks. For the life of me, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong that's resulting in FCP always freezing whenever I attempt to analyze a clip.

To be clear, when I say 'freezing', I mean that I put my tracker shape onto the clip; I click "Analyze" with the analysis method set to "Automatic"; the pop-up window shows that it's analyzing; and despite waiting for up to 1 hour, the progress bar never changes and FCP never closes the pop-up window. I can still click on cilps behind the pop-up and FCP seems responsive. Activity Monitor does not suggest that FCP has locked up, though it does report that it's using very little resources.

The clips I've been trying this with are usually only 1-2 minutes in length and are 1080p clips from my iPhone, directly stored on the onboard hard drive of my Macbook. I'm using an M1 Max MacBook Pro 16", so I don't believe it's a hardware issue.

Am I doing something obviously wrong?

MacBook Pro (M1, 2020)

Posted on Jul 1, 2024 4:41 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

terryb

Level 4

3,382 points

Jul 1, 2024 6:03 PM in response to Mizumon

Things to try:

Reset FCP Settings. Hold Option and Command while launching FCP and choose Delete Preferences... It will then open the default Untitled library. Be sure to go into FCP Settings and disable Background rendering -- it's almost never needed, especially for modern Macs.

Close the default Untitled library and create a new test library. Import one of the short iPhone movies, add a tracker and see if analysis works. Is the video vertical or landscape?

Make sure you have at least 15% of free disk space on your MBP drive.

If it's still not working, post an Etrecheck report.

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Answer 2

Mizumon Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 2, 2024 11:40 AM in response to terryb

Update -- it does seem to be an issue with projects that were exported from LumaFusion. Interestingly, editing the clips directly does not seem to have an issue with tracking, but trying to do any Tracking editing within a project that was generated in Luma Fusion results in tracking not working at all.

This makes me a bit sad since I use LumaFusion quite a lot for "on the go editing" before getting home, just so I can have a cut... On to another solution.

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Answer 3

Mizumon Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 2, 2024 9:58 AM in response to terryb

Thanks Terry! Working after your suggesting to clear all previous preferences. I actually ended up using one of the same clips as you suggested and there are no issues.

Still not sure what had caused it to glitch previously. I'm in the process of seeing if I can re-open the prior project file and seeing if it will still crash. The only other thing I can think of that is resulting in repeat issues is that my project file is created from Lumafusion, which I am now suspicious may be exporting an FCP XML file that, for whatever reason, FCP does not like.

Will update this thread with more results once I've tested it more thoroughly.

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Answer 4

terryb

Level 4

3,382 points

Jul 2, 2024 10:17 AM in response to Mizumon

Great! Glad I could help. For some strange reason FCP Preferences/Settings are brittle and can become corrupted causing strange behavior in FCP. It's odd but resetting them is often the first thing to try when something weird is going on with FCP. Yes, please keep us posted with your testing results.

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Answer 5

Jul 2, 2024 12:50 PM in response to Mizumon

Would you post an fcpxml of a minimal example exhibiting the problem?

You could send it to yourself using wetransfer and post the link here. The link will probably be removed, but we still get it in the e-mail notification.

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