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FCPX UI instability- is it just me?
So it’s interesting. I’m doing an edit for a longstanding client on X – a system I suggested for her (2012 iMac i7, Radeon 6970 2 gig graphics, 20 gigs RAM. G-Raid 8TB thunderbolt media drive. Cutting non-optimised C300 footage with a little go pro thrown in the mix.
I’m getting, in no particular order –
* Cursor disappearing from the UI. Still works if you manage to hover over a menu but no mouse pointer
* Waveforms not refreshing
* Range tool utterly inaccurate when entering in and out points on the fly – for instance, I usually turn music tracks into secondaries so I can edit them and add dissolves – but try and mark a bar of a track using I & O in the range tool. Seemingly completely random placement. Same goes for clips in the browser.
* EQ’s instantly lost on re-opening the EQ panel to tweak, necessitating redoing the EQ from scratch
* Beachballing at almost every move or tweak after about 4 hours work needing a restart to cure.And a host of other REALLY frustrating UI ‘features’ that make day to day editing frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I love cutting in X when it’s good – I’ve had moments when it’s so quick, intuitive and easy I really can’t imagine going back to anything else – but then BOOM! it drops the ball big time with something so basic you wonder what the hell they’re doing in Cupertino.
Some of this may be setup – but I think not, having gone through the system with a fine tooth comb. But it just seems like some serious attention should be paid to some of the basic UI and usability and stability issues. I so want to use X for some of the broadcast edits I’m working on or have booked in for the future – some i think it would be ideal for – but these little niggles make it hard for me to suggest it to producers who are utterly wedded to Avid and will seize on any small problem to say ‘See? Told you it’s a mickey mouse system!’ – which would be the last thing I’d want.
I’d love to spend a month with the developers going through this and sorting out stuff from an editors perspective. I really hope the next release addresses some of this funkiness.
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes. -
36 Replies
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Yikes, that sounds like something wrong in the system or set-up? Or maybe it just gacks on the C300 footage?
I seen plenty of beach-balling when the CPU cannot handle lots of h.264 or 4K material, or layers/multi-cam of any non-optimized footage.
But I haven’t seen the other interface oddities like Range tool etc.
Doug D
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Not had any stability issues with FCP X but Motion seems to take its sweet time to open. Really love that beach ball, wondering if this has anything to do with Red Giant Universe, not sure. I have had plug-ins slow down X before. Anyone else experience this?
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Yeah it’s odd alright. I’ve checked and double checked the system, it’s a clean install – so unless it’s some kind of funkiness between Mavs and X that I can’t fathom…
Another thing. When skimming footage the actual sound and the position of the skimmer on the waveforms don’t always match. Makes audio editing a bit hit and miss sometimes. This is true on at least 3 systems I’ve used… again a little thing but they all seem to add to the ‘aarrgghh’ factor.
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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes. -
Just curious as to why you aren’t using the preferred workflow of Optimizing to ProRes (and/or proxy) doing all your editing with speed and ease in the mezzanine codec, then simply moving the pointers back to the original files when it’s time to export your high rez masters?
Is there a reason you’re making X do display transcoding for every frame it outputs? Seems like a very inefficient way to work. And likely why you’re having problems with the machine doing all the interface stuff while simultaneously having to calculate every screen and pixel that comes along.
Just curious.
The Canon MXF stuff while “readable” via X isn’t really a preferred editing format.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “The Canon MXF stuff while “readable” via X isn’t really a preferred editing format.”
I’m not sure this is correct. To work with the C300 footage you have to install their FCP camera plug-in. When you do that, X rewraps the XF codec (basically the same as XDCAM) from MXF to MOV. This rewrapped media is placed into the Library bundle. The codec itself is unchanged and you cannot force a transcode to ProRes. FCP X sees the XF codec as optimized, once it’s rewrapped.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “The codec itself is unchanged and you cannot force a transcode to ProRes. FCP X sees the XF codec as optimized, once it’s rewrapped.”
Yes My bad for forgetting that issue from the two C-300 projects I shot and eddied last month. What solved the occasional “choppiness” of working with the “not really native re-wrapped MXF files” was working in X’s superb Proxy mode.
I can seldom tell the difference between working in Proxy and Optimized when i’m making editing decisions – I can still do “frame parking” to look at a full rez of the underlying pictures – while the proxy files allows a VERY fast and fluid editing experience – even when editing on less than ideal hardware. It’s so simple when the cut and all the processing decisions are done to swap out to Original Media and let X calculate the final Color Grading and compositing with the full rez files.
But you’re right, I suspect Apple is counting on their continuing push for hardware acceleration to make it easier and easier to work with the slew of new larger file formats coming down the pike.
i bet the early CION and URSA adopters will have a bit of a rocky path in the early days as the engineers figure out how to unwrap, edit, grade and rewrap the coming variants of the newest 3.5, 4, and 5k streams.
The new chicken and egg issue. Hardware leading software until software jumps ahead of hardware – step and repute forever.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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I’ve had issues when selecting a clip and deleting it I find that it actually selects random clips on the timeline and deletes them as well.
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[Bill Davis] “i bet the early CION and URSA adopters will have a bit of a rocky path in the early days as the engineers figure out how to unwrap, edit, grade and rewrap the coming variants of the newest 3.5, 4, and 5k streams. “
Huh? Aren’t these going to be ProRes .MOV files? Therefore optimized. Any raw files will be image sequences requiring conversion. At least that’s how I understand it.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Jason Porthouse] “Cursor disappearing from the UI. Still works if you manage to hover over a menu but no mouse pointer”
Try selecting the arrow tool if this happens. Sometimes I find I am still stuck on the crop tool after making an adjustment and forget to hit “done” and move on to other clips.
[Jason Porthouse] “* Waveforms not refreshing”
Yes, I have had this happen. I find toggling the view will sometimes help them refresh (it’s like FCP7 in that way). Control-option-up and down arrow will help to toggle.
[Jason Porthouse] “Range tool utterly inaccurate when entering in and out points on the fly – for instance, I usually turn music tracks into secondaries so I can edit them and add dissolves – but try and mark a bar of a track using I & O in the range tool. Seemingly completely random placement. Same goes for clips in the browser.”
I haven’t seen this at all. With the range tool, the in/out point will be set at the cursor, so there’s that. It could be better.
[Jason Porthouse] “EQ’s instantly lost on re-opening the EQ panel to tweak, necessitating redoing the EQ from scratch”
Yes, this has been a bug for a few versions now. It’s annoying, please report it.
[Jason Porthouse] ” Beachballing at almost every move or tweak after about 4 hours work needing a restart to cure.”
I do get a beach ball every now and then. It seems to be related to autosaving, and thumbnail waveform caching. I haven’t found a way to completely control it, but this did help: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/344/28466
I know it takes some time, but I would report anything you see to Apple that is buggy. Give step by step instructions if possible, and bonus points if you can recreate it.
And now it’s time for an anecdote:
I just got through more than a week of attended editing with FCPX. It was the first time I had worked with these particular clients, and I chose to use X due to the nature of the footage supplied.
Everything went really really well. No one commented on how slow everything was going or how mickey mouse the system was, because no one really noticed any difference. Audio post asked why there was 42 tracks of audio in my test AAF, and it was because 2 1.5 second clip had 16 channels of blank audio on it that I forgot to disable. I disabled it before the final of two AAFs, and all was well.
Some asked what I was editing on because it looked different from the Avid’s they were used to. I told them it was Windows Movie Maker. Laughs ensued, knees were slapped, good times were had by all. And then I told them with a straight face, no seriously, it’s iMovie, and kept working.
Cheers,
Jeremy
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Make sure your inspector is not open while editing. This can grind your system down terribly. go pro footage can slow it down as well. Best to transcode to proxy especially when using multicam. I can get away with 2 c100s native, maybe with an added go pro. But proxy workflow its so easy, you might as well.
Check the inspector first though. That’s the usual suspect of this problem.
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