FCP spinning beach ball after new start

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Level 1

53 points

FCP spinning beach ball after new start

I've been using Final Cut Pro for quite some time, and I have a setup that should handle it well: all my working libraries and footage are stored on a fast NVMe drive connected via Thunderbolt 4 to my M1 Mac Ultra with 128 GB of RAM. I also have two RAID hardware enclosures, one from OWC and another from Pegasus, which store archive footage. However, all the footage I'm actively working on is located on the fast NVMe.

Every time I start Final Cut Pro, it seems ready to go—I can play my timeline without any issues. But as soon as I attempt any significant task, like dragging a file from my library into the timeline, the application hangs. The dreaded beach ball appears and can spin for up to a minute. Once it's done, the task doesn't complete, and I have to redo it. Interestingly, after this initial hang-up, everything works smoothly until the next restart.

This issue has persisted across several Mac Studios and multiple clean installs of both the operating system and Final Cut Pro. I've also tried trashing preferences many times, but nothing seems to resolve it. I reported this problem to Apple some time ago; they were able to reproduce it or at least observe it on my machine. They forwarded it to their engineering team, but I've never heard anything back since.

It's really frustrating because it means I can't just start Final Cut Pro and let it settle before beginning work; I always have to manually trigger this delay by dragging a file. It's been happening for quite some time now. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Video can be seen here: https://adilo.bigcommand.com/watch/8MVusR7v

Part 1

EtreCheck Report

Mac Studio, macOS 15.1

Posted on Dec 11, 2024 2:38 PM

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Answer 1

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oxmox11 Author

Level 1

53 points

Dec 11, 2024 5:56 PM in response to oxmox11

After conducting further testing, I've discovered that the issue seems to occur only when libraries from other RAID devices are open, even if they aren't actively in use. When I have just one library open on my fast NVMe drive, the delay disappears.

I would still classify this as a bug in Final Cut Pro. Ideally, any necessary processes should be completed immediately upon opening the application, rather than causing a delay when I begin working. It's frustrating to encounter a one-minute spinning beach ball for the first action, especially when working with a library on a fast NVMe drive.

I hope this information helps others who might be experiencing similar issues and encourages Apple to address this in future updates.

https://adilo.bigcommand.com/watch/zpVcyk3S

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Answer 2

joema

Level 4

1,603 points

Dec 12, 2024 6:06 AM in response to oxmox11

I also have an M1 Ultra Mac Studio and multiple OWC arrays. I sometimes have other libraries open on the other arrays. All drives & arrays are formatted either APFS or HFS+. In general I don't see this behavior, but there are reasons it might happen.

Despite FCP having those libraries open, when you do certain FCP operations, it probably issues an "enumeration" API call to update information about drive status. Reason: when you start a drag/drop operation you might be doing that between libraries. The enumeration call should be very fast and not cause this.

I suggest the following steps:

Reset FCP preferences (Press Option-Command while opening Final Cut Pro)
If problem still happens, run Disk Utility First Aid on external drives, also rebuild Spotlight indexes on those drives. Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support
If you have not recently run Disk Utility First Aid on your system drive, also run that, however it should be done by starting MacOS in Recovery Mode. Procedure: Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
After that, use the above procedure to rebuild Spotlight indexes on your system drive. You can monitor the progress of that by doing CMD+space bar and typing "index".

If the problem still happens after doing the above, reproduce the problem and take a spindump on FCP and post that on a file sharing site I can access. To take the spindump, during the beachball phase, select the FCP process in Activity Monitor and press CTRL+OPT+CMD+S. That will take about 10-15 sec to run, so practice the procedure in advance to ensure it completes while FCP is in the beachball state.

Then reproduce the problem again, but capture the files FCP is accessing during that period by using the terminal fs_usage command. Start this command just before the drag/drop, let it run during the beachball, then terminate the command with CTRL+C.

sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys 'Final Cut Pro' > ~/Documents/fs_usage1.txt

After doing the above steps, upload the spindump and fs_usage files to a file-sharing site I can access.

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Answer 3

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,971 points

Dec 12, 2024 5:22 AM in response to oxmox11

Please use feedback for FCP to explain to the engineers the issue you’re seeing.

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Answer 4

Dec 11, 2024 11:11 PM in response to oxmox11

I am glad you found the cause.

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FCP spinning beach ball after new start

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