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User profile for user: Tangier Clarke1
Tangier Clarke1 Author
User level: Level 2
304 points

FCP and Constant Drive Activity Preventing Work

Hey folks. Checking to see if any of you have experienced this with FCP. I just started a new project, imported all of the media (about 13TB of ProRes 4444), created ProRes Proxies, and synced all the media with Sync-N-Link. I am still in organization mode. Adding any clip to the timeline causes the drive to work aggressively and I have to wait to do anything else. Here's where things get strange.


1. More often than not when I select a clip in FCP or go to another event, the drive starts working hard and I get the spinning beach ball - Optimized/original or proxy playback modes.

2. When I go to the desktop (Finder), another open app, or anywhere outside of FCP and then come back to FCP the drive works really hard and I get the spinning beachball, unable to continue working for a while until it's done. Optimized/original or proxy playback modes.

3. I considered maybe FCP keeps trying to create waveform cache files so I scaled down all of my clips in icon view, expanded the window to see as many clips as possible at once to get FCP to draw the waveforms up front so I don't have to worry about it later. This didn't fix the problem.


I've worked on much larger projects in FCP so I am not convinced yet that the size of the library is the issue. Here are project, app, and hardware specs below:


1. Final Cut Pro 10.7.1

2. MacBook Pro M2 Max w/64 GB of Ram

3. FCP library is on the MBPs internal SSD separate from the media on the external drive. Cache is in the library.

4. MacOS Sonoma 14.5

5. Provided [OWC Gemini ](https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-gemini?utm_term=&utm_campaign=PMax:+External+drives+(smart+shopping)+US&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&hsa_acc=9360794409&hsa_cam=17553315506&hsa_grp=&hsa_ad=&hsa_src=x&hsa_tgt=&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_cuHTRqMEffj4tdamYGfChEtHc1&gclid=CjwKCAjw2dG1BhB4EiwA998cqPmjtyJTsVAXBsH3GyboBSf7RGFWAN8_TzcqTJOUcjE32SU-MkYYBRoCR4YQAvD_BwE)preconfigured and formatted to RAID 0, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) GUID partition map.

6. OWC RAID connected via Thunderbolt 3 (via the MBP's Thunderbolt 4 port)

7. I use an app called [Amphetamine](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704?mt=12) to keep the drive from sleeping. There is an issue, at least in Sonoma, whereas various external drives on the Mac constantly spin down with just a short amount of inactivity. The system preference to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" doesn't work, nor did the OWC-recommended Terminal command called "[caffeinate](https://www.theapplegeek.co.uk/blog/caffeinate)".


MacBook Pro (M2 Max, 2023)

Posted on Aug 8, 2024 6:19 AM

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17 replies
User profile for user: terryb
terryb
User level: Level 4
2,656 points

Aug 8, 2024 12:12 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1

What is this?

Launchd: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.micisarot.catomosat.plist


Do you need all the GSpeed drive related installations?


You have Silverlight installed, which suggests that you've been upgrading the OS in place versus doing a clean install for quite some time. You would likely gain performance by wiping then doing a clean install and migrating just your User files from a backup, but not any Applications or other system files. Download fresh copies of your apps from the AppStore and 3rd party developers.


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User profile for user: Tangier Clarke1
Tangier Clarke1 Author
User level: Level 2
304 points

Aug 8, 2024 4:10 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Thanks Tom. I remember about Chrome is bad. Would that cause the drive to perform this way along with FCP? Scrubbing is butter smooth once I can actually do something. It's like every time I lick anything in FCP or leave FCP and come back, the drive is seeking hard or reading/writing something every time.


I believe that USB hub is actually built into the OWC Gemini

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User profile for user: terryb
terryb
User level: Level 4
2,656 points

Aug 8, 2024 4:31 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1

Maybe a quicker test than wiping and reinstalling everything: if you have a spare SSD, you could do a fresh OS install to it, create a new user account and don't migrate anything to it, then only install FCP from the App Store and only what you need, if anything, to mount the RAID. Copy the library from the internal drive and see if it behaves any better. If so, then I'd say it's something on the internal boot drive.

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User profile for user: Tangier Clarke1
Tangier Clarke1 Author
User level: Level 2
304 points

Aug 11, 2024 6:22 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1

Spoke too soon. It started up again with the same behavior within hours. I wasn't even editing most of that time. Something I noticed though. It seems to be doing this only when I have proxy preferred or proxy only enabled. My proxies are ProRes so that shouldn't be a problem. H.264 or H.265 would make the system work much harder. Also, I upgraded FCP to 10.8 with this fresh install of everything.

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User profile for user: Tangier Clarke1
Tangier Clarke1 Author
User level: Level 2
304 points

Aug 14, 2024 10:28 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Some interesting updates. After Installing a fresh Sonoma macOS and Apple Pro Apps, wiping and formatting the RAID and restoring the footage to it I still get that same problem whereas the drive just locks up FCP with the spinning beachball when switching to proxies no matter what I do.



I am using FCP 10.8.1 as of this writing.


I also noticed that in proxy mode where I had no proxies made yet, the footage still showed in the browser and playback window. This shouldn't happen. The media should be offline since there were no proxies made. I confirmed that by turning on the proxy codec column so I could see whether or not there is a proxy showing in FCP's database. Additionally there is no "reveal proxy in Finder" in the contextual menu. So why is proxy only mode treating the footage like it's present and just instead playing the original media?


Secondly, a a lot of clips and triggering FCP to make proxies locks up FCP with a spinning beachball. Typically once the operation gets going, I can still click around and do other things in FCP and the transcode will pause until I stop doing things in FCP.

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User profile for user: Luis Sequeira1
Luis Sequeira1
User level: Level 9
67,672 points

Aug 14, 2024 11:25 PM in response to Tangier Clarke1

Wait… after all this troubleshooting, I don’t recall any mention of… deleting preferences. Maybe you did already, but anyway it’s worth a try (again).


To delete preferences, hold down command and option while starting the application and click Delete Custom Settings. The application will start with default settings and open an “Untitled” library. Adjust the settings, reopen the library you were working, and see how it works now.

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FCP and Constant Drive Activity Preventing Work

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