FCPX Dropping Frames During Playback w/New HW

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Level 1

8 points

FCPX Dropping Frames During Playback w/New HW

Due to increasing FCP performance problems (lost frames on playback, FCPX freezing) on my 2010-iMAC I purchased a whole new system including storage in late 2015. But I am still have issues with FCPX dropping frames during playback that I would appreciate some advice on.

The old system was an iMac w/8 GB RAM Core i5 connected to a DroboPro disk array with FW800.

The new iMAC is the top of line Retina 5K 27" (core i7, 4 GHz, AMD Radeon R9 M395 2048 MB, 3 TB Fusion Drive connected to a ThunderBay 4, four-drive HDD with dual Thunderbolt 20Gb/s ports configured with RAID 5).

I am still having some dropped frames on playback. The first frame I play runs fine for a few seconds if it short. But the next clip does drop frames. Sometimes the clip takes a few seconds to display in the browser. The clips I am playing back do not have any effects applied to them.

My capture files are stored on the Thunderbolt. The FCPX Library files are stored on the Mac HD.

My current library has about 12 events. Media and cache are stored in the library. Backups are stored on the Thunderbolt. The library file size is 247 GB.

Any assistance in solving my performance issues is greatly appreciated as I am starting a large editing project with 700 clips to sort through.

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), i7, 4 GHz

Posted on Feb 6, 2016 3:58 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 7, 2016 6:59 AM in response to RAOtto

TRy putting the libraries in the thunderbolt array.

It appears to me that you are running most everything out of your internal drive - you say the library and media are there. That is not what you'd want.

I'd simply quit Fcp x, drag the library to the raid and try again.

Edit: make sure that you open the library in the RAID, and tbat all is working, and then you can delete the old one from the internal drive.

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Answer 2

RAOtto Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 8, 2016 12:08 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I moved the library to the RAID as you suggested. The performance improved somewhat. But I still notice hesitation when I skim a clip in the browser. The first part of skim has expected performance but the last half/third is jerky. Also, at times, it takes a few seconds for the a new clip to load in the browser. Any further thoughts?

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Answer 3

Feb 8, 2016 12:54 AM in response to RAOtto

One important detail you omitted is the type of video files you are shooting?

We tend to assume that they are conventional 1920x1080 AVCHD files but they could be something non-standard and far less easy to process.

What do you mean about "loading" clips in the browser . . . they should be in there already?

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Answer 4

fox_m

Level 6

12,208 points

Feb 8, 2016 2:07 AM in response to RAOtto

There isn't a computer made that won't eventually get "snagged" editing video. Start adding effects and layering on titles or generators and you're going to drop frames.

In FCPX, you have several choices:

1) Don't edit native codecs - transcode to ProRes

2) Switch to Better Performance (View menu > Quality > Better Performance -- top right corner of the viewer.)

3) Render your clips before playback (Control R on selected clips, Control Shift R to render everything that needs rendering)

I dare say, "most of us" turn off Background Rendering in Preferences, create Projects based on ProRes (typically and by default ProRes 422, although this can be changed to LT or 422 Proxy [NOT to be confused with Proxy Media!!]), transcode all ingested media; we Render as we go along as needed, and toggle between Better Quality and Better Performance (I've even created a keyboard shortcut to handle it!)

Oh - and by all means -- turn OFF those pesky Warn on skipped frames options (especially the one that stops playback.) You won't notice most of the skipped frames when playing back unless you've really bogged down the storyline and *need* to render.

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Answer 5

RAOtto Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 8, 2016 10:54 PM in response to Ian R. Brown

My clips are MP4 (1980 x 1080 at 59.94p); audio is AAC at 48 kHz.

By "loading" clips I mean that my browser is setup with a list of clips. When I select a click the click appears at the top of browser as a filmstrip. Then I can skim the clip or select which section of the clip I wish to add to my timeline.

I'm not yet familiar with ProRes. When I select a clip I see an option to transcode when I right click. I performed this for a click but nothing changed in the inspector for codecs after running transcode. Is this what you meant? I assume I should uncheck "create proxy media". Please confirm. Should I do this for all my media? Can you be done en masse when I import the clips into FCPx?

Thanks for your assistance.

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Answer 6

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Feb 9, 2016 4:59 AM in response to RAOtto

RAOtto wrote:

When I select a clip I see an option to transcode when I right click. I performed this for a click but nothing changed in the inspector for codecs after running transcode.

To verify that the Pro Res copies were created select the clip and in the Inspector > Info, and in Available Media Representations, you should see a green dot next to "Optimized". If the optimized versions are available, FCP will use them automatically – even though it will continue to report info on the original media.

Russ

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