2011 iMac FCPX performance issues

Question

2011 iMac FCPX performance issues

Hello,

I have an issue that has been really causing a lot of problems with FCPX and my mid-2011 iMac. First, the specs.

Yosemite 10.10.3

Processor: 2.7 GHz intel Core i5

Memory: 16GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB

FCPX 10.1.4

I have been having some sluggish behavior out of this iMac that seems to be a real issue when running FCPX. It's not all the time but when it hits, it's bad. Sometimes, I can be editing video and have little issue. Then other times, it really gets bad. When it happens, it is accompanied by some odd visual patters on all 3 of my monitors (see picture).
I have tried all sorts of performance enhancing measures over the past few months. I can't figure out what the problem is and it is steadily getting worse. Over the past few days, I have actually had complete system lock ups where I couldn't so anything but power the entire thing down and restart it. I would really appreciate any help.

iMac, iOS 8.3

Posted on Apr 25, 2015 7:42 PM

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Answer 1

babowa

Level 9

78,097 points

Apr 25, 2015 7:59 PM in response to Rev Chris Hall

FCPX is a strain on any processor/RAM/hard drive space. So, how much empty space do you have on your hard drive? I've been told that one needs - as a minimum - as much empty space as there are temp files in the project one is working on in order for it to be able to render without problems. I only use the older version of FCE and iMovie, but I can easily amass more than 100 GB of temp files while on a one hour HD project, so I keep an extraordinary amount of empty space on my hard drive.

Do you have any AV or so called "cleaning" utilities installed?

And what are the "performance enhancing" measures you've tried?

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