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?