A huge FCPX problem barely discussed - performance

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Level 1

59 points

A huge FCPX problem barely discussed - performance

I should post a screencap video of the incredibly laggy performance I'm seeing. My wife's 13" MBP with integrated graphics, running iMovie, had better performance cutting a simple SD AVCHD video than I did on my new i7 MBP with discreet graphics. Yes, I know FCPX is a RAM hog, but 4 GB should be enough for simple editing. FCP 7 performs much, much better. On FCP X I'm getting spinning beachballs of death all the time.

I want to be able to cut all the latest codecs natively. I don't want everything transcoded. And if transcoding is necessary, at least have decent preformance. My sytem is a laptop, but it is top of the line. Doesn't the word "pro" mean anything anymore at Apple. It would seem the answer is no.

I have been a loyal Mac user for a decade, but this is the straw that broke the camels back for me. Apple is extremely overextended, and it shows. For the first time I am seriously thinking about my other options.

Posted on Jun 25, 2011 9:10 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

151,064 points

Jun 25, 2011 12:32 PM in response to vinbot

Integrated graphics should not be used with Final Cut. Check the system requirements for graphics cards.

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Answer 2

Jun 25, 2011 12:50 PM in response to vinbot

I made a post yesterday about my performance issues.

I have a mid-2009 MBP. No, it's not the best system for editing. But FCP7 ran GREAT. It never had any hangups, rendered fast considering the complexity of some of my edits, and was just great to work with.

FCX is the opposite. It takes 5x the amount of time to render the same thing in FCX. And after my project got to around 2 minutes, it just decided that it didn't like all the stuff I threw at it and made working impossible.

The thing is, there are many people on this forum who have top of the line Mac Pro's and are experiencing the same problem. Could the hardware have something to do with it? Sure. But this program is buggy as **** and thats no help at all

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Answer 3

DCTenor1

Level 1

8 points

Jun 25, 2011 1:02 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Tom, did you even read Vinbot's post? He's using an i7 with a discrete graphics card.

My Core 2 duo with 2GB of RAM has been having problems, and I assumed it was naturally just time to upgrade, but I'm reading a LOT of reports about the latest computers having problems.

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Answer 4

Jun 25, 2011 1:21 PM in response to vinbot

Sorry to tell you but the few good things about FCPX is its performance.

We tested FCPX on an i5 15" Mac Book Pro, side by side with a Mac Pro xeon 8 core FCP 7.

and the performance of FCPX was awesome.

RAM is everything in 64bit. if you just have 4gb can't really test FCPX performance.

is not like I'm defending FCPX don't get me wrong I think Apple blew this one bad. I had great expectations for this one. and this one is just an iMovie upgrade.

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