I've recenlty upgraded my iMac memory to 12Gb in order to speed up my editing and all seemed to be much, much quicker initailly. But now, as I'm doing more and more editing, everything really slows down again (eg it take about 10 minutes to write the text on a slide!)
Any ideas why this is happeninig?
Thanks
Final Cut Pro X, Mac OS X (10.7.1)
You're probably trying to do too much in one Project / Event. It's best to limit projects to around 25 Mb - and Events (in my limited experience) to 500 clips or fewer.
Hopefully, things will improve when the Cavalry arrives (FCP X Update).
I have 8 GB ram on my MacPro and it works fine with FCP X most of the time.
Andy
You're probably trying to do too much in one Project / Event. It's best to limit projects to around 25 Mb - and Events (in my limited experience) to 500 clips or fewer.
Hopefully, things will improve when the Cavalry arrives (FCP X Update).
I have 8 GB ram on my MacPro and it works fine with FCP X most of the time.
Andy
Thanks for your answer.
I'm a complete novice in anythinkg other than iMovie. I think my projects are each more than 1Gb as I probably uploaded them in too higher res or something. Any suggestions gratefullt receieved!
Cheers
Stephen
stephenfromcotignac wrote: I think my projects are each more than 1Gb
Stephen - those are (hopefully) your media files. The size of the media files is not so critical.
You need to find the actual project file (in your movies folder on your system drive unless you specified otherwise) and find out how big it is.
The Event Browser will tell you (at the bottom) how many clips are in there.
Andy
Hi Andy
It seems that my project files sizes are rather on the large size - between 35-80Mb
How can I reduce them in size so everything wroks a little quicker?
Many thanks
Stephen
You can duplicate a project and then delete the first part of one, and the second part of another - although, I would split them into 10 Mb chunks if you can.
Not sure whether you can mark in and out and then duplicate that part of a project - I doubt it, knowing FCP X but it's worth a try.
BACK EVERYTHING UP BEFORE YOU START!
Another way to speed things up is to make sure Waveforms are not displayed (in the Storyline and also in the Browser) unless you really need them. Waveforms look harmless enough, but they take a huge amount of processing power. Also turn off any Video scopes unless you are actually color correcting.
Andy
It seems that my project files sizes are rather on the large size - between 35-80Mb
In my experience this is definitely your problem. I've written extensively on this topic in the past; it boils down to Apple's implementation of autosave, which updates the project file after every action (and blocks the application from doing anything until it is complete). This causes the spinning wheel to appear as well.
Your only option (at the moment) is to split your projects into smaller projects. That means to copy/paste sections of the original project into new projects. Your goal, until an update from Apple which hopefully will allow the large project file sizes, is to keep your project file sizes to no more that 30MB. When splitting them up, give yourself some headroom. So try getting each project file down to ~ 15MB, no more than 20MB. So split the 35MB projects into 2-3 new projects, and the 80MB projects into 4-5 new projects. If you select parts of a project and then use copy (command-c), you can then create a new project, and paste right into it (command-v). After you've done this successfully for the entire project, you can delete the original large project.
hafken wrote:
If you select parts of a project and then use copy (command-c), you can then create a new project, and paste right into it (command-v). After you've done this successfully for the entire project, you can delete the original large project.
Of course, this is the way to split your projects - I was forgetting you can't rename the duplicated project.
Andy
You guys are being really helpful and I appreciate this.
As I've said before, I'm a complete novice and i was expecting FCPX to be a little easier than it's turning out to be.
You're righ in that I get the spinning wheel all the time. But whilst my project a too big, they are typically one clip of a 30-60 second interview. There are no seperate scenes or anythinkg fancy going on.
So is splitting a continuous scene the best option?
Do I need to change my import settings in the future so I dont have such huge files?
Thanks
Stephen
Hmm, so you are saying your projects consist of a single clip of 30-60 seconds and the resulting project file (the "currentversion.fcpproject" file) can grow to 80MB is size? Something doesn't sound right.
It could be the number of events and projects as well. How many of those do you have? You might need to hide some from FCPX by temporarily moving them to another folder.
Sounds more like the Event file than the project file. As hafken said, check the 'currentversion.fcpproject' file.
(Probably in Movies > Final Cut Projects)
With a 30 to 60 second project, that should be tiny.
Andy
Ok, so I think you and hafken have nailed it. My Project files was 95Gb and my Events files 130Gb...
Thank you both very much.
I guess I need to alter the Import settings next time?
Cheers
Stephen
still not making sense -- i think you are giving us the sizes of the entire project/event folder, not the individual file inside that folder that has the name "currentversion.fcpxxxx'.
To answer your question about import settings, they shouldn't make any difference regarding this problem, though using proxy media can improve performance in some cases. I'm still not really positive what exactly the problem is though.
stephen,
Can I suggest you go to Ripple Training and pay a small subscription for an excellent series of FCP X tutorials?
It will help to understand the basics of the application.
If you are still having problems after you've watched the tutorials, come back here - at least we should be able to understand what you're trying to tell us then.
Andy
Hi Andy
I think the Ripple Training looks like a fine idea. I didn the Lynda.com traininig but maybe this is more thorough.
Thanks to you and hafken for your help. It's great to know I can get such good answers if I get stuck.
Cheers
Stephen
I have small projects, small events, and STILL run into this problem. I can't believe you all posted this last fall and the problem still exists. As a last resort, I am removing projects from the system. I was very eager to get Premiere out of my workflow but am now rapidly losing patience with Apple's new editor.
APPLE!!!! Hurry up with an update!
:-/
Final Cut Pro becoming increasingly slower
