FCPX uses all my RAM on import

Question

FCPX uses all my RAM on import

My system:

Mac Pro Quad Core

OSX 10.7.5

16GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 5770

FCPX 10.0.9

I'm experiencing my computer almost come to a hault whenever I try to import media into FCPX. This just started in the last couple days. It doesn't matter if its a a lot of meida or just a single jpeg or mp3 file. Once I click import, I can see on my Activity Monitor that my system memory usage goes to maximum. I see that nearly all my 16GB of RAM is being used when I"m importing just a small amount of media. And I guess since my memory usage gets maxed out, my computer just runs extremely slow. I get the spinning wheel for everything. And somtimes, FCPX just gets hung up and stops responding and I have to force quit FCPX in order to get unstuck.

The OS drive is 1TB and I have 280GB free. I always work with media on a secondary drive and in this case, my media drive is a 2TB with over 500GB free. I used disk utility to see if anything was wrong with either drive and they both showed to be fine.

Any ideas what could be causing this? Its making it almost impossible to work.

Posted on Jan 8, 2014 4:40 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 8, 2014 10:21 PM in response to macambassador

a) update to FCPX10.1

if you don't like (never update in the midst of a project…):

b) for users of MacOS≤10.8, an option was:

while importing, launch from your Utilities Folder the Terminal.app and the Activitiy.app

In the Activitiy.app you'll notice, that 'unused Ram' (the blue pie) grows fast

switch to Terminal.app

type

purge

and hit enter ...

… after a second (or two…) the Ram gets 'freed'

repeat, when 'unused' gets too big...

_______

as mentioned: this advice does NOT work with Mavericks, nor is it neccessary with FCPX10.1 - this memory-issue (I had too!) was fixed…

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Answer 2

Jan 9, 2014 6:18 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

I assume that its because I"m not running OS 10.8 that your suggestion did not work.

I would love to upgrade to FCPX 10.1 however my Mac Pro is apparently too old to install Mavericks

and therefore I cannot upgrade FCPX to 10.1.

Such is the ripple effect of obsoletion.

What I don't understand is what could have changed between now and just a week ago as I was able to import and edit with no problem.

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Answer 3

Jan 10, 2014 10:01 AM in response to macambassador

macambassador wrote:

I assume that its because I"m not running OS 10.8 that your suggestion did not work. …

as I wrote: MacOS ≤ 10.8.

≤ means 'as or smaller' ...

Math wasn't your first choice, right? 😉

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