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!