Final Cut Pro X 10.3.4 BEYOND SLOW

Question

Final Cut Pro X 10.3.4 BEYOND SLOW

Hi guys, I’m fairly new to FCPX (still running the trial version) but I am getting unbelievably poor performance on the app. I’m running a 2012 15” Retina MBP 16gb ram with 1gb NVIDIA gtx 650 graphics card. I am running the latest version of High Sierra. My image sequence and project library are all on the internal ssd(AFPS formatted) The hard drive has plenty of free space. I know this is not ideal but it is my setup for now.

I am trying to put together a Time-Lapse (1800 jpg image sequence) in 4K. I can create the sequence, but once I put the images into a compound clip (1min 4 seconds), basically doing anything is extremely slow and causes FCPX not to respond (as per activity monitor). All I really want to do is do some simple time remapping (no effects, Color grading etc) but it just slows to a halt and the beach ball of death.

Here is what I’ve tried:

Delete and reinstall FCPX

Delete preferences

Disk Utility=passed

Create new admin user=no difference

Create optimized/proxy media=no difference

Delete entire library and events =no difference

Try a completely different 720p video=no difference

If someone could shed some light on this that would be great! Is it just because I am running a trial version? Is AFPS not good for FCPX? Really want to know what is the deal before I purchase FCPX.

Thanks!

Posted on Nov 12, 2017 3:02 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,998 points

Nov 12, 2017 11:18 PM in response to davidfromsomewhereoverthere

The files are twice as large as they need to be. You don't have the graphics power to support that many images of that size.

No many a compound does not create a video file, though rendering it should do that. Of course you're creating high resolution 4K files. How is the external SSD drive connected to the computer. It needs to be USB3 at least.

Reply

Answer 2

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

150,998 points

Nov 12, 2017 4:17 PM in response to davidfromsomewhereoverthere

How big are the graphics? 4K is guess. That’s a lot of really big still images for your graphics card to process in real time. I would suggest converting the image sequence to video using ProRes. You can do that with Compressor or MPEG Streamclip.

Reply

Answer 3

Nov 12, 2017 4:37 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Thanks Tom, not sure of your question how big are the graphics? My GC is 1gb GT 650m. I thought making a compound clip to combine the stills solves this issue? It creates a clip with my chosen settings (4K 30fps etc).

Reply

Answer 4

Nov 12, 2017 6:59 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

I have tried both editing right away, and waiting for the entire clip to render.

I have also just tried moving the library and events to an external SSD and that did not help either.

I really hope this is just because it is a trial because I have ran out of ideas lol. Still getting the beach ball not responding while my cpu is only using 10% of its capabilities...

Reply

Answer 5

Nov 12, 2017 7:28 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Ok good to know there is no difference in the trial. They are large images (from a Sony A7RII) 7952 × 5304 is the resolution. Again, all edits were applied to a compound video clip of these images, not the images themselves. Does the compound clip not make them into a video file? Is there something I am missing about how/what a compound clip does?

Reply