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Editing from Boot Drive?? Apple says yes.

In dealing with Final Cut Pro X's Pro Apps team I was told something by TWO different Pro Apps people I find troubling. They each stated that you should ALWAYS edit fotage (meaning keep your projects and events) on the INTERNAL BOOT DRIVE. This would provide the best performance and is how FCP X is designed to work. I am not kidding or misunderstanding. I even clarified this to make sure we are clear between a second internal drive and the actual boot drive handling the OS. I was told "in the new 64 bit architecture, FCP X is designed to edit from the same drive the OS is on, the only issue is storage space". It was then reiterated that this is the best way to use FCP X. I even explained that if I was using some kind of consumer level format, I could see doing this, and explained I shoot in AVCCAM 1080p. Apparently what format you use does not matter either, it is designed to handle anything I was assured. So, my 3 year old MacBook Pro will edit RAW 4K footage from the boot drive? I am amazed!

Sadly, the solution provided to my FCP X issue is "wipe the hard drive completely and start over." This after paying $99.00 for the Pro Apps support and talking to no less than 8 people. I am certain none of the Pro Apps folks I talked to really understood what I am even dealing with.

Their Pro Care is not what it used to be, although the person who told me this said he has been doing this for 7 years. Unbelievable.

Comments?

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), G Drive for editing, 1TB, 7200rpm.

Posted on Jan 26, 2013 3:44 PM

22 replies

Jan 27, 2013 11:59 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Ah, I thought having two bussed chips might be part of the inherit issue. I am backing up all my data files and pics now, readying for the total wipe.

Jan 27, 2013 12:23 PM in response to rich montgomery

Just a quick tohought as I have been following this thread.

Are you abe to manually choose a graphics card or is yours selected by the software only?

There is some software out there to allow you to choose which graphics card the program uses.

Might help woth problem solving the issue by isolationg a graphics card.

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Jan 27, 2013 3:02 PM in response to rich montgomery

FWIW, after you reinstall your OS, don't install anything else other than FCP so you can test it without the potential conflicts that plug-ins, etc can cause. Hopefully it works fine with your FW HD after the clean install.

I have the same MBP, with the two Nvidia cards, and over 3 years have had no problems using the FCS apps or FCPX with various FW drives as my media drives.

Russ

Jan 27, 2013 4:09 PM in response to Russ H

Trying that now. I now have a Pro Apps team manager calling me to help. Suggested that I go into the Apple store with my external drive and try editing on one of their iMacs, and see if the problem could be duplicated. When I said that I doubted they would let me plug it in, he assured me they would, so I tried. Of course they would not, some kid told me it was not possible, when I asked him to ask his manager and let him know this was suggested by a Pro Apps manager, he went away and came back to tell me "no how, no way are you plugging in your personal drive into our machine" and "if you are having trouble with Final Cut, bring your laptop into the store" I informed him I had been in the day before, and I am deep into an issue, this was suggested as a troubleshooting step, but he said his boss told him no. Maybe I should have asked for the young man they presented to me the day before as a "Apple Certified Final Cut Pro" expert, who asked if I was using Final Cut 9 or 10. I am not kidding. When I informed him the previous version was actually 7, there was no 9, he said "9 is what I have". Ok. Then he said "oh, oh, I thought you meant the old one". He did not seem to know how to navigate in FCP X at all, and told me "All 10 is is iMovie with a few plug-ins, that's why I am not used to it". I think this speaks for itself. This is like my experiences over the phone with pro apps, so all that was time wasted. I have currently a spinning disk I am waiting to go away as I write this. I have only installed Mountain Lion and FCP X on a separate drive and booted from that drive. I should have just wiped the internal boot drive and started over, this whole day was wasted. Like the 8 previous days before it. It's amazing how far down Apple has gone in a very short time.

Jan 27, 2013 4:10 PM in response to Russ H

Russ, I never had any issues until about 2 weeks ago. I spent all last weekend and this weekend on this. 🙂

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Jan 27, 2013 4:30 PM in response to rich montgomery

Well, there seem to be two threads here…one about your FCP-FW HD issues (which must be incredibly frustrating) and one about Apple support (which also are…).

Troubleshooting something as unusual as this is really difficult (especially for a non geek like me). But I'm confident you'll get it sorted out after the clean install. (If it doesn't work right away, with nothing but Apple apps, then either the GPU or theor drivers have got to be the problem.)

As for Apple support of their pro products, it's clearly a mixed bag. I never have tried to get a pro problem solved on the phone, but in the retail stores, some understand and others don't. lucky that in the Boston Providence area there are many creatives who work in the Apple Stores part time and are really good. I've had many One-to-One sessions with some (not all) who were incredibly helpful – both technically and creatively. Obviously your in-store experience was very different.

Good luck.

Russ

Jan 28, 2013 6:46 AM in response to rich montgomery

rich montgomery wrote:

Russ, I never had any issues until about 2 weeks ago. I spent all last weekend and this weekend on this. 🙂

I am sorry that you're having so much trouble, but this begs the question: was there any significant change to your working environment two weeks ago (such as an upgrade of software)?

Regarding the two GPU thing: I think that the mere fact of starting up FCP X should cause your mac to use the discrete GPU; if it somehow isn't, this may be causing the render fail. You could perhaps try running a utility like GfxCardStatus (I am not exactly sure this is the name) that sits in your menu bar and can show which GPU is being used.

Another thing to consider is RAM: as you are working with only 4GB I wonder if some low memory situation isn't contributing to your troubles.

Editing from Boot Drive?? Apple says yes.