FCP X creating 40GB of swap while rendering 15 mins of HD video!

Well I'm happy it works for you 🙂

For sure there's something between FCP X and my system (not IN my system). The problem is that is not only on my system because if you go online you'll see far more people with problems than people saying they're happy. On one side is normal that more often problems are reported, on the other if you see how many (and on different systems) have problems, it's a bug (and a big one) of FCP X that was never addressed. FIxing bugs does not attract new customers (money), adding new features it potentially does.

With FCP Pro 7 and Adobe I can do all that you do and in the meantime browse with 20 tabs on Chrome and all other amenities without a problem, even before I upgraded to 16gb of RAM, so the difference is in FCP X. Most users will say that FCP X is buggy: t's a nice idea and concept, to make video editing simple (I have nothing against it), but making a Pro software simple at the cost of stability and powerful control is just wrong unless you take out Pro and you call it Final Cut X.

And it's not casual that Apple bought all its Pro line from others and tried then to mantain it as much as they can (Logic) or rewrite it completely (Final Cut Pro X), they do it with everything and it's ok, but then you have to invest knowing that it will never produce the same easy&big money of any iDevice or iApp...it just gives back a market willing to spend and faithful with time to the same platform.

Any other company I deal with would be already here, replying and trying to understand what's the problem (I offered my free support and testing), trying to look good on a public forum, instead of hoping in some of the Apple fans defending always and everything Apple. Because this is nothing compared to their billions of dollars elsewhere 🙂 I would never buy anything not Apple for my job, but when they are to be criticized I'm the first one because they always sold me things 'promising' it was going to be a good investment for my own business, and if they turn they back for more easy money then other people should be aware of this.

Like everything also all this iApple stuff will come to an end, and then maybe they'll remember about all the pros in the world who supported them when they were going to fall and that now are left behind.

Hi HUSoft,

thanks for your suggestion, I'll for sure try it.

Just a question: what do you mean duplicate the media? My media is a 45 minutes long HD video (about 65gb), would be good to know I don't need to duplicate that file...anyway I'll try. Would be also good if FCP X could have some system to check if a media file is not good or 'damaged'. As a quick test I extracted the same 15 minutes in FCP Pro 7 and it's perfectly fine and rendering blazing fast with it.

For now I solved the problem in FCP X sending the rendering to Compressor and waiting 6 hours to render an HD video of 15 minutes, but the problem rendering from within FCP X remains, because it means also rendering of clips (for that project(s)) is not working.

Taphabit I'm happy it works for you, I'm sure it works for many others, but it doesn't for many others as well. No one would ever want to spend £200 and not be sure (luckily there's a demo version available!!), so I was warning about the problem and trying to figure out a solution.

What I realised is that it shows FCP X is very buggy and much less 'robust' than FCP 7 and Premiere. As I said the idea is maybe good, GUI is nice and editing is fast, but I think FCP Pro 7 and Premiere are much better because I feel more in control of all details and functions. It's enough to check all comments about Apple trying to do all they can to win back the Pros they lost.

I'm the first one I'd love a better FCP X (and a hopefully much better Logic X), I just realise that sadly the company seems always less committed to the Pros world because money are elsewhere..but I think it's something we all know and we all hope it will change 🙂

Hi Christian,

I already tried duplicating the project (only project without media file), changing also some settings of it, taking out effects, making it longer/shorter, and deleting all render files, nothing worked.

I'll try duplicating the project and media files, but if it solves the problem (and/or the problem is big files) it's anyway quite a big bug that is going on since early versions and never solved.

Obviously no reply to my feedback to Apple and they already say they'll never reply but they'll take it in consideration..something so big and important (and so common) cannot be ignored like this, and several of the users reporting this already reported to Apple...

Thanks Russ, you give me some hope...all my previous ones (for Logic Studio suite) never replied, not one time, and the bugs still there...

Let's hope this time sending feedback will be more useful..I sent detailed list of the actions I took, analysis of the RAM behaviours, swap etc etc

I suppose they should make better a couple of passages: the handling of 'extreme' situations like files damaged (or supposed to be) or too big or whatever, and then better handling even if any of the extreme situations slip through anyway...if in front of something problematic (also Compressors is super slow) we should know what's wrong (file, project, media etc.) and fix it, and the software should anyway 'graciously fall' as programmers usually say (and supposedly do).

Let's hope this is not another of those similar threads around the net with some solutions working for someone and not for others, and so without a definitive reply or action from Apple.

That's another interesting suggestion...something else to try for sure, I'll report if any success.

I tried duplicating main project (45 minutes) three times and cutting every time parts of it to divide it in three parts, but I'll try copying/paste to another one.

G

Hi Luis,

after lots of talk, I'm happy to report that of all the solutions I tried (and listed), your one is the only one that worked.

Copying with 'Select All' (all audio and video clips), creating a new empty project with default settings and 'first clip' settings. New project inherited the same settings of the old one (saved when copying the clips), started Share 'Master File' and while the old project crashes everything, new project is rendering without problems.

So for everyone with same problem, solution for me was to Select All/Copy all in a new project.

For Apple: I hope you'll read my detailed feedback and you'll figure out a way to fix this bug...maybe something like 'Check project integrity' or 'Refresh Project' or something like that?

Sadly, the problem is not solved, or better it does not solve it always!

Out of three projects (a long interview split in three parts), the first one worked after copying and pasting the clips into a new empty one.

For the second one I tried the same and no luck (tried also more than once and after fresh reboot).

This is to report that you CAN try copying/pasting into new project, it may or may not work, it's a casual thing that probably does not address the real problem but only accidentally solves it sometimes.

Obviously no response whatsoever to my feedback from Apple...they're all too busy for the new iOS ?? 🙂

Before deciding to move to FCP X, buy it and try doing an edit on it spending a few days....if it works hope it will work next time, if it doesn't try asking Apple your money back for the time lost and the cost of the software, or try sending a feedback...or just avoid it.

Hi Luis,

thanks for your response. I posted it before but no problem it became a long thread! I have an SSD of 500gb, and free space varies from 20 to 50gb depending where I move one of my VMs.

For this last project not working (even after copy/paste) I had almost 50gb free, but that's not the trigger because when I successfully rendered the other project (that worked again after copy/paste) I had just 15gb free, and it worked perfectly, and all other software (including really really heavy Logic projects) work perfectly even with 5gb free because I never go beyond my 16GB of physical RAM and all data are always stored on external discs so internal one is only used for Apps and OS(es).

If someone from Apple was reading this thread they would know what's the problem! I describied in detail the behaviour: when rendering FCP X seems to work on chunks of about 1gb of RAM to cache. What happens is that I can see it starts eating GB after GB, one chunk every 3 to 5 seconds, and soon it arrives filling up the previously available 10gb of free RAM. At that point 8GB suddenly are 'half-released' (by the system probably) but they go to be INACTIVE ram so cannot be utilized. No way of purging them, even manually, only way is stopping the rendering and quitting FCP X. The problem here is a MEMORY LEAK, because looking at the total RAM used by FCP X process this is always around 1GB, it does not accumulate, but for some reason FCP X does not properly release it after using it, so it starts eating GB after GB till all RAM and SWAP/hard drive are full and beyond, never stopping till everything crashes.

With the only project that worked well (after copy/paste to a new one), I saw the first GB of RAM taken, and then regularly released and re-used by FCP X, what should normally happen and what happens as well when rendering those in Compressor.

I still can't understand if there's anyone of the FCP X team able to come here and try to understand what's happening..I'm sure they would like as well to fix this problem and see a message on all similar posts on the internet where we can finally say this bug is solved.