Why does FCP X re-render projects that have already been rendered?

I can not believe I stumbled across this thread. I thought I was the only one with the same problem. I have an early 11 17" MacBook Pro, i7 quad, 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM and have the exact same problem. I'm running OS x 10.8.1 and FCPX 10.0.5. I keep praying with each upgrade that it will be fixed, but NO. Everytime I launch FCPX it re-renders EVERYTHING, sometimes it can take up to 15 minutes to get going when I have absolutely nothing else open and I want to start a new project but NO it loads the last one I had open and I can't stop it without a force quit but then I just have to wait again when I open it next time and it reloads and re-renders without me wanting that project anyway. What am I missing? Do I have to delete everything from the Event bin and trash it once I have my finished piece? What if I need to change something later?

I was an on road news cameraman/editor and when we FINALLY got MacBook Pro's with FCP 7 on them we were in heaven. Cut a news story while the reporter was driving to find 3G reception, whack it into compressor and upload it to our FTP site. M A G I C !!!!! Luckily news stories are only 1:30 and took 45 mins to upload.

I have cut on loads of different editing software and FCPX is easy to use and nice to cut on except the wheel of DEATH makes something I usually would have done on an old MBP extremely frustrating, it's been 3 years since I left TV and this is taking me hours to get a minute up on the timeline if I'm lucky because of this insanity. The re-rendering is SO bad and it crashes all the time, Actually it has crashed on me everytime I've used it since I bought it in November last year. I have jumped ship to creative cloud to access Premiere Pro for the interim.

Now due to the nature of my old job, we didn't have the pleasure to learn the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of editing and the software. We'd just hook up our XD cams and cut away furiously. If it was different software all we needed we to be shown, in, out and add, blade and trim. Hey it was News.

I'm now using a Nikon D800 or D7000 nowdays and doing a mixture of things from time lapse to general vision. Why don't Nikon and Apple get along, Why isn't the D800 supported yet, it's been out for MONTHS and it's vision is incredible, not to mention the pictures if someone wants a montage put to music. I set my camera to 1080p 24 fps as I do with FCPX. I was never a full time editor so I'm at a loss as to why this is happening. I thought it was the Nikon Apple thing now I don't think so at all. I want to use FCPX as I'm way more familiar with it but it won't let me play. I'm off to try some of your pointers now and if any FCPX experts know what I'm doing wrong please tell me. I have 300GB of free space on my 750GB drive.

Yes pjslo I read every single comment, watched more online tutorials and opened it straight away, It took 10 minutes for the ball of death to stop spinning. I deleted everything and then I imported all my compound clip into a new event and bingo, it worked. I did have both boxes checked and unchecked create proxy. It's iinteresting to note that while watching the online tutorials that I noticed it was happening ON THEM TOO!!! BUT it was very quick, maybe only a second or two when he was switching from the editing page to the library page. I just opened FCPX and it loaded in recod time, just under a minute but I only had a few compoud clips in there ON the timeline.

Beware of Premiere Pro it has it's own ugly can of worms too. There are A LOT of very unhappy PC users out there. Make sure if you do use it you have a compatible graphics card or you will encounter pretty much the same problem. MBP's with these graphic cards suppot their new mercury accelarated playback engine with openCL

• AMD Radeon HD 6750M (only on certain MacBook Pro computers running OS X Lion (10.7.x) with a minimum of 1GB VRAM)
• AMD Radeon HD 6770M (only on certain MacBook Pro computers running OS X Lion (10.7.x) with a minimum of 1GB VRAM)

I have the 6750 by pure chance as all easrly and late 11 MBP's do, the newer ones don't. So be sure to see if you're able to use it to it's maxium capacity!!!! You might not need to get a PC if you have one of those cards. Triall it if you haven't already and don't rush out and get a PC if you have one of those graphics cards in your MBP. It works OK, a little glitchy but you can get an edit done without a crash or freeze and quickly too, not as quick as FCP 7 but better than this does. I thought that working referenced was my problem even though I have a 6TB LaCie Thunderbolt, it doesn't make a differeence if it's on my computer or referenced at all.

I'm excited by this new discovery but I'm not getting my hopes up. Aside from being a location camera person for years I also do photography. I was lucky I owned a copy of PS CS 6 extended as they decided if you had a CS6 point product you were offered Creative Cloud half price for a year, which is basically Master Collection at your fingertips. So if you do more than video don't just buy Premiere Pro, check out everything they have to offer. Adobe can be a right royal pain in the butt at times (support is BEYOND WOEFUL, literally non existant), I've found you actually get MUCH better service with AppleCare (in Australia they're fantastic) but everyone has different experiences. As I can do what I need at the moment I haven't taken FCPX up with support yet as I've been much busier with photography. If I get it sorted out I post back here at a later date. Thanks for your reply. It's just one bizarre and extremely painful problem that I had to sidestep for now but will deal with it very soon.

Apple PLEASE fix this problem, I think we are the tip of the iceberg and Tom Wolsky if you're reading this, did I supply you with enough information re my spec's and sofware. I want to use this product, but it won't let me. Can you see any flaws from my specs alone?

Cactus

I am now having a similar re-rendering problem. It began with my installing the 10.0.6 update. It is affecting all of my projects that needed rendering in the first place. This includes seven projects over 1.5 hours, which have a logo overlay (bug) from start to finish. I'm using a mid-2011 MBP. Rendering these long projects takes a couple of hours on this computer. So I am looking at ~20 hours of re-rendering time for these projects.

After installing the update, I was shown a warning message, that something about the project format would need to be updated, and that I wouldn't be able to go back and edit these projects using older versions of FCP. I've seen this warning with some other FCP X updates, and I wasn't worried about it. Perhaps this is related to the re-redering.

I usually edit on OS 10.6.8, but I have an OS 10.7.5 install on the same computer. When I run Final Cut Pro X from this partition, having updated it to FCP 10.0.6 as well, I see the same need for re-rendering of these projects.

I am having a similar issue. Proxy is not selected, and the whole program moves at a snail's pace. I will try copying the render files over, but I feel I just need to switch back to 7 if this continues. I've got a ton of projects to work on, and no time, so it's a little frustrating. All other programs work great on my system. I did find that this problem began sometime last year, and although I've updated my system several times and have dumped all my music files and other files into an external drive, it still didn't fix the issue. I was thinking of going SSD, because that is the best speed booster out there (aside from increasing RAMM), but it seems this is just a Final Cut issue.

I do have another question, though. What operating system are you guys running? I'm still on OS X, but I was told that Lion was supposed to be better for FCP X. If upgrading my operating system will fix the issue, let me know. I would gladly fork over the money to get back into editing full force. For now, I just go Hulk mode every time I turn on the program... I take it out on the guys at the MMA gym... maybe I should do that professionally and just try to use the re-rendering FCP X every time before I fight someone---I'll be the next UFC star 😝

On a side note, this issue became very obvious when I created a rain effect in motion to overlap a video I made. The video turned out sweet, but sometimes I try to use that video for an example of a project I can create for a future client, and every time I open it, it re-renders for about one or two hours. If I try to work within that project, the color wheel comes up and laughs at me...

Even switching between other projects takes about a minute. This makes editing quickly impossible.

Anyway, thanks goes to all you guys for trying to help. Special thanks goes to the creator of this post, because it made me feel less helpless/grumpy when I saw that someone else was having this issue. Too bad it wasn't my proxy setting :/

Any other suggestions are welcomed guys. If you have some awesome tricks to increase the performance, they will be welcomed---and my wife will appreciate it if you help me so I don't join the UFC to get out my anger...

Thanks again,

-HJ

HJ I'm in the same boat as you, working on a 60 minute vieo, on a macbook air (2x2 core 4GB ram, normally a fast machine), using lock and load and Neat video.

Have rendered dozens of times and everytime i open the app i need to render again.

I am also thinking i could take my anger out in the UFC!

I haven't found any solutions.

Duplcating projects, events, copy/paste into new timelines etc.... nothing is working.

I was using compound clips with clips inside them that had effects like lock n load and neat - am now expanding all those clips into one timeline with hopes that the render will complete and not disappear.

SO ANGRY

Will let you know if i have any luck

Adam

Hey Adam, I don't know if it was a software upgrade or getting a new MBP Retina with 16GB RAM, 2.6GHz i7 and 768 SSD, LOL, (sorry man) but boy do I feel your pain, I did what you're doing for 20 years and I was using FCP7 with no problems, I did notice though that I was having fewer problems with the upgrade from FCPX 10.0.5 to .6 but nothing substancial. I did notice an improvement with 10.0.6 on my old MBP but when I was using an early '11 17" MacBook Pro, i7 quad, 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM and had the exact same problem. I was running OS x 10.8.1 and FCPX 10.0.5 and now I'm using FCPX 10.0.8 on my new machine any it's flying along quite nicely, I still have rendering issues but absolutely nothing like I was. Nothing re-renders when I open it anymore and I'm also using OS X 10.8.3 in conjunction with FCPX 10.0.8 and a new computer.

Look I haven't cut much lately but try and cut and butt as much as you can, I know that's not the 60 Minutes way but all transitions, dissolves and ANY effects and graphics will slow you down BIG TIME when this is happening.

I also remember alternating between optimised media and proxy media and if I remember correctly I actually think using proxy media on the run/road worked better than optimised medi, but I don't have problems with rerendering on optimised anymore, it's been quite a while, sorry. Hit www.fcp.co it you havent already, it's solely dedicated to FCP and FCPX and has an incredible knowledge base there full of editors/cammo's and friendly people. Just hit their forums for the fastest way to cut without rendering problems? Silly annoying question but is all your sofware up to date, yes it is I just looked at your questions you've posted, you're going to have to ditch online editing and just off-line it and jam it up the sat mate and make it someone elses problem. You need a faster computer which is always the way with TV. Demand they get you a MBP R, yes they're heavier to travel with but it's not much thicker than an air. GOOD LUCK, I have been stuck in hotel rooms around the world going through the same **** you are now but never with FCP7, then again I predominately did news. I really feel for you, it'll be OK as long as you get a rough cut back to base. When they finish their incomprehensible hysterical rant at you dowm the phone just calmly say get me new gear now and hand up. It worked a treat for me. What format cam are you cutting with too? It may just need a simple conversion before you begin cutting too!! Actually check that 1st now I think of it. 😕

Adam I just read some more and you have a 5D MII that records h264 MOV which you're converting to pro-res, so that's not the problem???? I thought my D800 h264 MOV was OK but NO, it needs to be converted to pro-res but you're doing that so I'm out of ideas, sorry

I've read three new tips lately that may have an impact on this re-rendering problem for some people/projects. They helped me. Although many people may already be aware of these items, perhaps some readers will benefit.

1) The options for File>Delete Event Render Files and File>Delete Project Render Files each offer a secondary selection of Delete Unused Render Files Only. Choosing this option for all my of my Events, which can be done together, and each of my projects, which must be done one at a time, freed up more than a terabyte of disk space, and ended the eternal re-render problem on some of my projects.

2) Many sites and articles say you should never move FCP projects and events at the Finder level- that you should only manipulate files from within FCP. I followed that advice until recently. However, I have found other sites and courses that advocate some file maintenance using the Finder (when FCP isn't running). I've tried it, and it works for me. Especially if you have a project that immediately opens when you launch FCP, and either crashes the program or requires endless delays, consider quitting FCP, moving that project and event out of their respective folders, and into different folders, called something like Disabled FCP Events and Disabled FCP Projects. You will then be able to launch FCP without any interaction betweent the program and these events and projects. They will be inaccessible until you move them back into the standard Events and Projects folders, but moving them can let you work on other FCP projects, when one is blocking proper functionality.

3) Sometimes, simply having a large number of Events and/or Projects on the same drive seems to cause problems or make FCP slow. However, I prefer to keep all my video projects on my mirrored RAID drive, so that I am sure to have a backup. Using Disk Utility to create Sparse Disk Images on my RAID drive allowed me to sub-divide and manage my events and projects in smaller and more logical batches. The Sparse Disk Images don't waste any significant space on my drive, and they let me mount only the projects needed, so that FCP is running with fewer events and projects "open". Dividing my projects and events into four groups, and putting each of them onto a different sparse disk image, solved the re-rendering problem for several projects. It also makes FCP snappier.

Unlike option 2 above, this approach maintains fairly easy access to your projects. At any time while you are editing in FCP, you can double click on a disk image to mount it, and FCP will see it. You don't have to quit FCP first, although you can also mount the disk images before you launch FCP.

I had about twenty projects with the repeated re-rendering problem, and I think I am now down to three.

This is still an issue with FCPX - it re-renders randomly when it absolutely dont need to render ANYTHING.

It's a bug - and though FCPX is an avesome app this bug is serious and I must say: embarrising for the developers at Apple.

Have you used feedback?

I think Koninda's short list of best practices (even though it's not called that) is good advice.

As I recall, I would occasionally run into this "random re-rendering" in the very early versions of FCPX, but it's been a long time and lots of work since without that sort of problem. Whether it was because the engineers got rid of some bugs or evolving workflow I don't know.

I assume you've done the basic troubleshooting like trashing preferences and repairing permissions.

Good luck,

Russ

have you tried disableing background rendering? Try this, minimize events view so that you dont see all your events when you open. this way FC wont load them and you can start up final cut faster.

I Am experiencing this problem too.

whatever the codecs I import FCPX loses all renders on shutdown and then on start up goes through the whole render process again which wit's long projects can take an long time before one can sit down and carry on working on the project. it seems as if the render files are discarded on shutdown.

im using a Mac Pro late 2013 all updates installed - 32 gb of ram. Pegasus thunderbolt raid.

Regardless, if the media is already rendered, it is ridiculous to have to wait to render it again every time you open the timeline anew.