Final Cut Pro X has gotten incredibly slower

Question

Final Cut Pro X has gotten incredibly slower

Recently, my FCPX application has been acting really slowly. Whenever I try to start a new project or a event, it would just put me up with the bouncing beach ball of death, and would take a very long time before it even responds.

Also, even after all this madness, it's not over. FCPX would never allow me to actually even start editing. It won't even let me drag a clip in the timeline.

I really don't know what's wrong. I tried reinstalling, and even just restarting the computer, but nothing has resolved the problem yet. FCPX had always worked with me in the past, but suddenly, it's like this.

Anybody knows like a solution or at least anything that would help out? I really need to start a new project, and fast, but this is really getting me into now... 😠

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Mar 30, 2013 3:20 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,986 points

Mar 30, 2013 6:17 AM in response to Horace from seoul

What version? What OS? What computer specs? What media specs? What project properties? What drives? How much space on the media drive, on the system drive?

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Answer 2

Mar 30, 2013 6:32 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Version: FCPX 10.0.7

OS: Mac OS X Mountian Lion

Computer Specs: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP583

Media Specs: 720x480, 30 frames per second

Drives: On a LG USB 2.0 Hard Disk (I know, USB 2.0), 320GB, about 270 GB left

I do think that a corrupt video file can be the problem, as I am checking all the video footage on the project.

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Answer 3

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,986 points

Mar 30, 2013 6:42 AM in response to Horace from seoul

DV video shouldn't be 30fps. Something's wrong here. It should be 29.97fps. USB2 drives should not be used with video applications (sorry Ian).

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2013 9:39 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

How did you know I was watching? 😉

I've now got a couple of USB 3.0 HDs but they don't deliver their full potential on my 2008 iMac.

I could use them at full speed on my Toshiba Laptop . . . . . but what's the point. 😟

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Answer 5

Mar 30, 2013 6:24 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

I checked again with the videos and here's the actual details of all the footage:

And I know that my USB2 *****... Need to get a upgrade soon

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Answer 6

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,986 points

Mar 30, 2013 6:32 PM in response to Horace from seoul

Did you try optimizing this video? Where did this come from? Is it QuickTime?

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Answer 7

Mar 31, 2013 4:17 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

This info actually came from QuickTime.

And what do you mean by optimizing my video? Can you elaborate?

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Answer 8

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,986 points

Mar 31, 2013 6:02 AM in response to Horace from seoul

Just because the information came from QuickTime doesn't mean it's a QuickTime file. The QT player can open a number of different frameworks including AVI, which is basically a Windows format.

You can optimize when you import media. You have that option in the import dialog or you can optimize by selecting the files in the browser, right-clicking and selecting Transcode Media. This will convert the files to QuickTime using the ProRes codec.

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Answer 9

Mar 31, 2013 6:06 AM in response to Horace from seoul

OOPS! . . . . . SORRY TOM!

I think Tom means where did you get the video?

Did you shoot it in a camera or get it from somewhere else. Exactly where, details of camera etc.

Whenever you import footage you can either optimize it during import or later on.

During import you see this window.

If you select the Transcoding/optimizing box, your video will be converted to ProRes 422 files which are much bigger but which play and edit more easily in FCP X.

Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

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Answer 10

Apr 1, 2013 4:30 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Ah yes, I did try doing that 'Create optimized media' before, but to no avail.

Also, my video came from a Canon PowerShot SD880 IS. Not the best, but an okay camera for me.

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Answer 11

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,986 points

Apr 1, 2013 4:41 AM in response to Horace from seoul

Two things you can try, one is to create a new user and see if that behaves the same way. The other is much more radical, which is to do a clean erase and reinstall of the OS and the apps (without Migration Assistant.)

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Answer 12

Apr 3, 2013 5:30 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

I already tried the new user thing. I had a 'Troubleshooting' account in handy, but this really doesn't work.

I think that it's time to go to the second option. This is just great.

Before I go formatting my computer and reinstalling OS X, could this slowness be because I have a lot of movies that are transcoding and doing other stuff like finding errors? I acutally have more then that 1 clip, I got like 10~20 minutes of raw footage. But I really don't think so, as I waited about 30 minutes after importing all my clips, but the progress bar is still at 7% for transcoding, and nothing has really changed.

Also, could it be because of a corrupted video? Some of my clips don't even play well in VLC, and these could be a problem for FCPX to transcode and find problems.

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Answer 13

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,986 points

Apr 3, 2013 5:35 AM in response to Horace from seoul

All of those can be signficant factors, especially the corrupted media. It sounds like the app can't transcode them. You might see if you can fix the videos in MPEG Streamclip by converting them to a better format.

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Answer 14

Apr 5, 2013 6:06 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Thanks. I will try that as soon as I can.

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Answer 15

Apr 22, 2013 5:02 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Well, that didn't work. I found the files that won't play, and used MPEG Streamclip, but still is slow.

I'll first then put all the video clips in MPEG Streamclip.

If that doesn't work, time to go to the 'I-didn't-want-to-do-that' plan. Formatting time!

If that doesn't work, I just don't know what is wrong. 😢

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