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FCP X and Plug-ins
A lot of folks have posted complaints about FCP X getting sluggish on complex projects and this isn’t always fixed by a restart. I see this all the time on older Mac Pro towers, but I see posts about it even on new tubes and iMacs. Could this be an issue related to having too many plug-ins installed? For instance, does a “clean” machine work better with X than one with a bunch of third-party effects?
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
29 Replies
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I have a ton, and I often have many large libraries open. In my experience nothing slows down until you start caching stuff into RAM. IOW actually twirling open a library with waveforms on. Or scrubbing through multiple mObject templates. I don’t think having multiple libraries open or multitudes of templates/plugins installed does much until they’re actually loaded up or used. But other than watching RAM decrease and the sluggishness increase when it drops extremely low I don’t have any scientific evidence.
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[Bret Williams] “But other than watching RAM decrease and the sluggishness increase when it drops extremely low I don’t have any scientific evidence.”
Too bad. On recent projects on different MP towers, I’ve found FCP X to be completely unusable once I get into the job. OTOH, it works great on my new 15″ MBP.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Exactly. I get that too. Seems like if it were just having the plugs installed then it would be sluggish right away I’d think.i wish we had a RAM purge like AE. I use that a lot.
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Oliver,
I have experienced that lovely beach ball effect in Motion. It takes a few seconds then the ball disappears, noticed after installing Red Giant Universe, so this looks to be a plugin issue. could be that I have the old cheese grater tower. No issues when launching X, though.
Did try trashing the preferences, still same result. Occasional beach ball without Universe installed but for a second, not ten. Wondering if there is a memory setting that might cause this.
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I have a lot of plugins installed. But the main thing that sometimes makes things sluggish is having the inspector open on the audio tab. Closing the inspector immediately stops any sluggishness. It seems to be longer source video files that cause the sluggishness (like over an hour). Short video files are no problem.
This is true for a Mac Pro tube or a new rMBP.
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One other with Motion, is that if I am quickly trying to make too many changes it will go into panic mode with beach ball and not responding. Either will have to for e quit, wait or have the program crash. I would go with Adobe but rental only is a huge deal killer. Besides tracks are kind of annoying. 😉
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Motion is immensely more responsive in the same machine in my experience. I hardly ever have to RAM preview anything. And in AE, you have to RAM preview everything, especially if you want audio.
What I really miss about AE is two things. The render que, and project/media management. In AE I use the render que as a history of all the outputs I’ve done. I also do all my AE stuff for a job inside one AE project. Different versions of assets and everything. With motion this all has to be done in the finder. And when you’re done you can only consolidate the completed stuff on a project by project basis, leaving duplicates of assets all over the place.
Oh yeah, I miss parenting. Having to group or use the link behavior isn’t quite the same thing. But grouping is so much nicer than pre-comps. In AE I wish I could twirl open a precomp. But in Motion I do often wish I could open a group as its own sequence.
Either app has its pluses. But I’ll take the one that’s $50 for life and more responsive myself. And I’ve been using AE since 1996.
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Agree with you on project management and parenting. Expressions are something that can be useful. On the flip side of the coin, the UI in Motion is much more elegant, not having to preview everything is a bonus and groups are so much better. Something else that is nice is the replicators and rigs. Both are huge time savers. The price of admission is perfect.
Have been eying Fusion as a Photoshop alternative for touching up still images. Motion is nice but better color correction tools in Fusion, not to mention the patricle emitter, included in the free version. Hoping that Apple develops Motion much further and wishing for a nice update to X, getting a bit crazy waiting.
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I work mostly on 26′ timelines on a maxed out MBPr, no plug ins but for a couple of effects, doc style editing. I need to quit and relaunch after one up to three hours of editing. I have the feeling it the sluggishness that grows has something to do with waveforms.
Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
early 2008 MacPro, BM Intensity Pro, early 2008 iMac, 2014 MacBook Pro Retina, Blackmagic UltraStudio Mini Monitor, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.9.4 -
Desperately hoping the next FCPX update will fix this. I tried an edit in the new version of iMovie the other day and it had none of these issues. Might be a good sign!
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