FCPX painfully slow and jumpy playback

Hi guys


I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make FCPX playback better.


I'm on an M1 mac mini with 16GB RAM. Working on a music video with probably twenty clips of various lengths, some masking, some glitchy type plugins from pixel films, and some frame rate plugins. It's a 60fps background shot, so I believe the whole session is working at 60, right?


Playback is very rough and jumpy, to the point where I can hardly tell how the timing is working unless i export the file and playback in QuickTime or something.


Is there any way to give FCPX a break by printing the effects so that it will play back a little smoother? In audio land I'd call this offline printing or rendering a track so the CPU doesn't have to do as much processing on it. I tried creating a couple of new consolidated clips, but that didn't seem to help much.


FWIW, i still can't hear the fans on this M1 even when FCPX is moving so slow! :-D


THanks

Geoff

Mac mini, macOS 14.5

Posted on Sep 5, 2024 11:38 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 8, 2024 9:21 AM

Render (print, bounce) the problematic section by selecting the clip or clips and pressing Control-R.

Manage render files in Final Cut Pro for Mac - Apple Support (English)


Also, if it hasn't already been mentioned, change playback from Better Quality to Better Performance.

Control playback quality in Final Cut Pro for Mac - Apple Support (English)


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38 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 8, 2024 9:21 AM in response to geofffromdowney

Render (print, bounce) the problematic section by selecting the clip or clips and pressing Control-R.

Manage render files in Final Cut Pro for Mac - Apple Support (English)


Also, if it hasn't already been mentioned, change playback from Better Quality to Better Performance.

Control playback quality in Final Cut Pro for Mac - Apple Support (English)


Sep 6, 2024 1:08 AM in response to geofffromdowney

In addition to what Ian said: if playback is not smooth you can switching from Better Quality to Better Performance in the little View menu at the top right of the viewer.


Please give details about your mac RAM, drive space (as Ian correctly pointed out, don’t want to work on a full drive).


Also, if working with an external drive, that may the bottleneck if it is not an SSD.


There is also a chance that those PFS templates may cause some difficulty.


For a more complete portrait of your system: Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here.

Use the “additional text” button and paste the report into the text box.

there could well be other issues (I can almost say the name of a certain web browser…)

Sep 6, 2024 10:49 AM in response to geofffromdowney

I'd start by following the instructions at https://chromeisbad.com to completely remove all the files that Google scatters across your drive. Once that's done, reinstall a fresh copy of FCP from the AppStore.


I also see some CoreAudio crashes. You might run a test without them by temporarily disabling AU plugins before launching FCP. Audio Units are in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/  Rename to something like Components.ignore to have FCP bypass loading.


Finally, I see Topaz is installed. If it's applied to clips it can be extremely processor intensive.

Sep 8, 2024 8:24 AM in response to terryb

Ok, I went through and removed the effects one be one to find the culprit. Each removal stage cleaned up the playback just a bit, but the biggest impact was tossing out the scene removal mask. After that, the whole thing played back cleanly and nicely as it should.


I can experiment with this, but does anyone know if creating a new compound clip will print the effects? (ie like rendering in a DAW) so that the processor doesn't have to do that on each playback and just plays the clip? Or is it just a wrapper for viewing convenience?


If not, I suppose I will have to open each clip in a separate project, process the scene removal mask, export the file, and re-import to my music video as a new clip. Which would work, it's just more tedious.

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FCPX painfully slow and jumpy playback

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