FCP 7 workflow slowdown

Question

FCP 7 workflow slowdown

Working in FCP7 on an iMac, I'm almost finished a week's worth editing a 3 minute video in DVCPROHD 1080pA24. Suddenly, yesterday, everything slowed down. Examples: whenever I switched from viewing on the Canvas to fullscreen and back again, I get the spinning beachball for at least 25 seconds and the message, "Preparing Video for Display"; whenever I shift a video clip in the timeline, the same thing happens. Needless to say, this makes the workflow almost impossible. Luckily, I'm almost finished the project but there maybe revisions and I dread going through this again.

I've checked my other FCP projects and this isn't happening.

Does anyone know what could be causing this slowdown and what I could do to fix it? What opening another project and dragging my sequence and select take bins into it do that?

Phil

Posted on Feb 21, 2013 9:18 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 21, 2013 12:28 PM in response to Philip Snyder

without looking at your timeline, it's hard to tell. Could be your just pushing the limit of fcp, your processor and your hard drives. If everything's rendered do you have the same problem?

You might try playing with your playback settings on the left side of the timeline.

I see this behavior everyonceinawhile when I've got a very complex sequence, particularly if I'm moving large sections of the timeline at the same time.

Also, run diskutility and diskwarrior (if you've got it) on all your drives. Make sure you have a minimum of 10% free space on all drives (probably 20% on your startup drive).

Make sure your fcp project isn't much more than 100 mbs. If it is, duplicate your project and delete unnecessary sequences etc. You can always have multiple projects open at the same time if you need to access this material.

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Answer 2

Feb 21, 2013 1:55 PM in response to Michael Grenadier

It's not big project: 3.1 MB. I've had much bigger plus I've just started using an external 6 TB drive for media and only used 25 GB of it. I haven't rendered everything but I'll give that a try. I have run a "repair disk" and permissions from Disk Utlility. Don't have Disk Warrior. My iMac 1 TB HD has only used 76 GB. Also, trashed

FCP preferences.

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Answer 3

Feb 21, 2013 2:00 PM in response to Philip Snyder

ANy graphics bigger than 4000x4000 pixels? All graphics rgb?

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Answer 4

Feb 21, 2013 2:25 PM in response to Michael Grenadier

Graphics are just an animated Motion title and a 4 layer scene composite. Maybe I should nest it. Usually, it's not necessary.

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Answer 5

Feb 21, 2013 2:28 PM in response to Philip Snyder

anything with an alpha channel? If you want to send me the fcp project, I'll take a look and see if there's anything obvious.

My email is mgrenadier@gmail.com zip the project file before attaching to email.

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Answer 6

Feb 21, 2013 6:08 PM in response to Michael Grenadier

Nothing with the alpha channel.

The project is not complicated but I can send it to you. It's only 3.2 MB. Can you tell anything without the media?

I appreciate you taking a look.

Thanks so much,

Phil

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Answer 7

Feb 21, 2013 6:27 PM in response to Philip Snyder

well I'll take a look. You could also try copying the contents of the sequence in to a new sequence, and also copying the sequence into a new project. Sequences and projects can get corrupted.

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Answer 8

Feb 21, 2013 8:47 PM in response to Michael Grenadier

I dragged the sequence into a new project and got the same result. I didn't actually copy and paste it. I can try that.

The only other thing that I wonder about is that used the scene stabilizer CS Lock & Load on quite a few shots. Would that cause this to happen? Have you heard of a problem with it?

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Answer 9

Feb 22, 2013 5:16 AM in response to Philip Snyder

Have you tried removing the filter to see if that solves the problem? You might find using Motion to do the stabilize worthwhile. Works great for me. I had a client recently who decided they didn't like the handheld material in a 2 camera shoot. I was able to make the material look like it was shot on a tripod.

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Answer 10

Feb 22, 2013 5:23 AM in response to Michael Grenadier

Don't see anything obvious wrong. First step, duplicate the sequence, then load the duplicate sequence, and close the original sequence in the timeline. Make the timeline active, select all, control click on any clip and choose remove attributes and make sure only filters is checked and hit ok. Does that improve performance. If so, I'd guess that the 3rd party filter is the problem.

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Answer 11

Feb 22, 2013 5:33 AM in response to Michael Grenadier

Well, the job is basically done and looks good. I did a preliminary test cutting of a few of the same scenes together without applying the filter. There was no problem at all. So I'm assuming that L & L is the culprit. I used L & L previously to a lesser extent on a previous project, a 20 minute film, and did notice a slight slowdown but not enough to worry about. Now in a 3 minute film where I used it on almost half the scenes, there's a major slowdown. I had tried Motion on the previous project where I was under the gun on a deadline and had trouble with the size of the blowups and repos it was doing to compensate. Someone recommended L&L. I tested and it worked perfectly so I went with it. It's very weird because many editors have recommended L&L and never had this complaint.

I'm going to test a bit more today and write to Coremelt about it. I'll let you know.

Thanks again for the support.

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Answer 12

Feb 22, 2013 8:22 AM in response to Philip Snyder

So I copied the sequence into a new project, removed all the Lock & Load effects. Still had the problem. Then, I took a bunch of the same scenes, made a quick random assembly from scratch, applied L & L to about half of them and nothing bad happened. It played beautifully without any hesitation. I'm flummoxed.

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Answer 13

Feb 22, 2013 9:46 AM in response to Philip Snyder

Did you try creating a new sequence (with the same settings) making the old sequence active, select all, copy, make the new sequence active, and paste?

Sometimes a sequence does get corrupt and this is usually the solution.

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Answer 14

Feb 22, 2013 10:13 AM in response to Michael Grenadier

Yup, same problem. Then I took all filters out. Same problem. Then, like I said above, I took a bunch of the same scenes from my select bin, made a quick random assembly from scratch, applied L & L to about half of them and nothing bad happened. It played beautifully without any hesitation. Is this something random? Maybe L&L is putting too much strain on my processor (3/4 Ghz on an Intel Core i7 iMac) when it's on a lot of scenes. Anyway, I wrote to Coremelt. We'll see what they say.

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Answer 15

Feb 22, 2013 10:31 AM in response to Philip Snyder

does it happen if the sequence is fully rendered?

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