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FCPX 10.0.6 - Slow render, slow export

Hi all 🙂


I downloaded the Final Cut Pro X 10.0.6 Trial last month and I've been enjoying using the program to edit some videos I've shot recently ... however it is painfully slow when importing and converting to optimised or proxy media (so I tend to use neither so at least I can get on with editing), slow when rendering clips in the timeline, and painfully slow when exporting.


My setup is:


MacBook Pro 15" 2.4GHz i5

8GB RAM

500GB 7200rpm HD

Mac OS 10.6.8

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M w/ 256MB graphics memory


The footage is on an external LaCie 250GB 7200rpm USB2 drive, and I'm using gfxCardStatus to force graphics to be rendered using the graphics card rather than the Intel processor.


My current project is a 55 minute 1080p 25fps AVCHD video from our Panasonic X900 camcorder, and I just added a single title with a cross dissolve at the beginning, and a cross dissolve to fade out at the end.


I left it encoding to 'Apple Devices 720p' last night around 10pm and by 7:30am it had only done 70%. When I tried to use the computer for browsing the web, the whole machine froze up and I had to force restart it. I then copied all the files onto my laptop hard drive so I could try rendering it again at work. I started it at 9:15am and now 3.5 hours later it's at 31% ...


Is this horribly sluggish performance normal? Is AVCHD such a pain to convert into any other format?


I have tried using optimised media but it seems to take just as long to convert the files into ProRes to start with ... If I did use optimised media and I wanted to compress the output to 720p at a sensible bit-rate (so the whole file is around 2-3GB), should I export the 'Master' file first (~53GB) and then re-compress it afterwards? It just seems a complicated and hard-drive-space hungry way of exporting, when I would ideally like to export straight from the ~10GB source files (AVCHD) into the completed file (2-3GB).


Any input is much appreciated!


All the best,


David


PS. Would 10.0.7 offer any kind of speed improvement?

Posted on Feb 14, 2013 4:52 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Feb 14, 2013 5:52 AM

Left to its own, FCP will use the GPU extensively in exporting. So try disabling CardStatus to see whether there is a conflict.


The export may have exhausted your free RAM. Run Activity Monitor to see what's going on with free memory.


Your USB2 drive is not an ideal solution as a media drive. Although there are folks here who use them without issues, my preference would be Firewire at a minimum. How much available space is on that drive? Less than say 20%, that might be a contributing factor.


You should be able able to edit AVCHD and go directly to Share. I tend to optimize when I have that option, but it's mainly force of habit.


Updating is to the latest version is usually a good idea, but if you're in the midst of a project, follow Apple's update best practices and back up both 10.0.6 and your project.


Good luck.


Russ

31 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Feb 14, 2013 5:52 AM in response to Hogster86

Left to its own, FCP will use the GPU extensively in exporting. So try disabling CardStatus to see whether there is a conflict.


The export may have exhausted your free RAM. Run Activity Monitor to see what's going on with free memory.


Your USB2 drive is not an ideal solution as a media drive. Although there are folks here who use them without issues, my preference would be Firewire at a minimum. How much available space is on that drive? Less than say 20%, that might be a contributing factor.


You should be able able to edit AVCHD and go directly to Share. I tend to optimize when I have that option, but it's mainly force of habit.


Updating is to the latest version is usually a good idea, but if you're in the midst of a project, follow Apple's update best practices and back up both 10.0.6 and your project.


Good luck.


Russ

Feb 14, 2013 6:43 AM in response to Russ H

Hi Russ,


Many thanks for your prompt reply!


I shall try disabling the CardStatus thing to see if that helps. I believe there is a good few GB of free RAM, the external drive is 90% empty, but my laptop HD is 95% full ... I've put my ear up to the drive whilst its rendering though and it's not grinding by any means ...


When you say the GPU is used for exporting, do you think I don't have enough VRAM perhaps?


Unfortunately I can't update the trial version to 10.0.7 and Apple haven't updated their trial download file to .7 yet ...


Many thanks :)



David

Feb 14, 2013 7:04 AM in response to Hogster86

Hogster86 wrote:


. I believe there is a good few GB of free RAM, the external drive is 90% empty, but my laptop HD is 95% full ... I've put my ear up to the drive whilst its rendering though and it's not grinding by any means ...


This could be the problem.Your boot drive needs to have much more free space available than 5%. Copy enough files to a back-up drive to free up an additional 20%; after you verify that the files were correctly copied to the external drive, then you can delete them from your boot drive.




When you say the GPU is used for exporting, do you think I don't have enough VRAM perhaps?


It's not the latest/greatest card, but it does meet Apple's requirements. It should work better than your experience.


Unfortunately I can't update the trial version to 10.0.7 and Apple haven't updated their trial download file to .7 yet ...


That's interesting…add that to the list of things I didn't know. But it's no big deal and not really a factor in your

issue.


Hopefully, freeing up the boot drive space will be enough of an improvement to let you evaluate the software.


Russ

Mar 4, 2013 2:35 PM in response to Russ H

Hi Russ,


Well I've since bought 10.0.7, cleared space on my hard drive (it's now only 3/4 full), created optimised versions of all my media, put it on an external Firewire 800 7200rpm drive, and disabled CardStatus.


Unfortunately FCPX is still painfully slow 😟 For example, the following is a JPG image which I've applied a Ken Burns effect to (in the part on the left), and I've then added 4 simple black text titles (with drop shadows) which fade in one after each other. After 15 minutes of rendering, it's rendered 38% of that orange unrendered bar! 😮


User uploaded file


The fans are running at full speed, FCPX is using (on average) 100% processor power, and there's still 1.5GB of RAM free ... The project space is 1080p HD 50p Stereo.


What can possibly be making this process take so long?


Many thanks for any advice you can give.



David

Mar 4, 2013 3:04 PM in response to Hogster86

In the end that tiny section took about 40 minutes to render ... there must be something dramatically wrong in the program / OS for it to take that long to render a few titles and fades?!


I should have mentioned that I made a freeze-frame of the JPG, and then the titles are superimposed on top of that. Even when that freeze frame wasn't there (I'd accidentally deleted it), rendering the titles on their own took just as long!


Many thanks for any help,



David

Mar 5, 2013 9:58 AM in response to Russ H

Hi Russ,


I've just tried sharing a 15 second clip with a Ken Burns photo, and three titles and it's still taking an age, maybe 10 minutes 😟 The 'sharing' seems to really slow down when it gets to the layers of titles .... are you also sharing to a Master File (when you said 'the export was rendered with Pro Res LT')?


Project settings are 1080p HD 50p Stereo, there's a stereo MP3 track behind the clip ...


Many thanks for your help!



David


PS. Even deleting the titles it's still taking 5 minutes or so to share just the Ken Burns transition and the MP3 track!

FCPX 10.0.6 - Slow render, slow export

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