How to get FCPX to use all my RAM?

Have you done the test Russ has suggested?

A 3 minute project should export in just a few minutes.

If you haven't already done it, humour me by trashing the preferences.

Many weird things happen as a result of corrupt preferences which can create a vast range of different symptoms, so whenever FCP X stops working properly in any way, trashing the preferences should be the first thing you do using this free app.

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/

Shut down FCP X, open PreferenceManager and in the window that appears:-

1. Ensure that only FCP X is selected.

2. Click Trash

The job is done instantly and you can re-open FCP X.

If you get no joy with that, take a look at these 3 troubleshooting articles:-

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3893

http://fcpx.tv/troubleshooting.html

http://www.lafcpug.org/Tutorials/basic_fcpx_troubleshooting.html

Is your external drive a USB drive? You could be running a slow USB drive.

I have roughly 20 projects ranging from 30 seconds to 25minutes on three different external drives. After opening a 20minute project FCPx shows it is using 2.25GB of Real Memory. I've never seen FCPx use anything like 10GB, let alone 32. I have 24.

I strongly suspect your hard drive or a bad cable but it might also be that you have some nasty program like Norton Utilities or MacKeeper running.

If you have room on your internal drive, use FCP to move a project and event to your internal drive. Disconnect the external drive and reboot. Is it dramatically different?

It's possible the problem is some whacky format, but your iMac should play normal AVCHD without optimizing. Mine does without a hiccup.

If your hard drive is full that could also be a problem. There are so many possibilities. By transferring some footage to your internal drive you can get an idea if it's possibly due to the external drive. If you still have problems, it's probably software based (but not for sure).

These are the tech spec minimum requirements

• Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better.
• 2GB of RAM (4GB of RAM recommended).
• OpenCL-capable graphics card or
  Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later.
• 256MB of VRAM (512MB of VRAM recommended).
• Display with 1280-by-768 resolution or higher.
• OS X v10.6.8 or OS X v10.7.5 or OS X v10.8.3 or later.
• 2.4GB of disk space.

Really 8G should be recommended.

Just to say, you have plenty of computer for FCP. I wouldn't be concerned about stuff like Grand Central Dispatch and GPU-acceleration. It's all good and your iMac is perfect for it.

Russ

still unanswered .... :

• what is your source formats?
• is your Project set to these format?
• are you using original, optimized, proxy?

!. Can you answer Karsten's questions as they are very high contenders for being the cause of your problems.

Around 8 years ago on the old FCE forum we spent ages trying to sort out a problem only to discover eventually that the person involved was trying to import and edit a format totally unsuitable for editing.

If they had mentioned it initially, we could have saved a week or so of headbanging.

2. Have you trashed the preferences?

If not, do it immediately.

sbell1 wrote:

If you look above you will see that I have answered his question. …

you have written 'h.264' - this could be AVCHD, could be .ts, could be 120fps, could be .r3d, could be anything!

I am unsure if my project is set to this

you're using a highly professional software - you should know at last, what you have choosen on 'New Project'.

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not using 'optimised' plus using non-standard 'video' (=I assume) could be the cause for your problems. FCPX is meant for camcorders as source. It allows. although, to use it for 'any' sort of video/files. but, on final export, that stuff has to undergo heavy processing = time.

being myself no good psychic (my crystal ball's broken lately), hard to tell from remote WHAT are you trying to acccomplish … if you don't know.

'pimping' the hardware will not solve this riddle. if you would tell us, what exactly is your source (format, codec, res, fps, audio, 'source' like camera, sat-recorder, 'internet', converter/which one) , plus your settings in FCPX (project, export) we probably can improve performance.

.....