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Trouble found with keeping large timelines in Compound Clips
Working on a low-budget independent movie, 1.25 hr timeline, 1800 clip project slowed to a crawl. I was getting a spinning beach ball, and a good 2 second delay with each keystroke.
I think I found the culprit, keeping versions of my edit as a compound clip in my main event.
The event file “CurrentVersion.fcpevent” had grown to 200MB. It contained all those clips and versions of timelines. And it looks as if FCP X saves to that file with each keystroke, and it doesn’t appear to be doing that very efficiently.
I tried to copy and paste into a project (it took 30 minutes to complete) and things are at least a bit faster.
So this is a warning for long format work in FCP X, especially in its current 10.0 stage.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
15 Replies
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FCP X simply isn’t suited for this. But some suggestions:
1. Create a single project for each scene or group of scenes.
2. Protect versions of the scene cuts by duplicating the project and working in the duplicate.
3. Hide all old versions of cuts (projects) by removing them from the Final Cut Projects folder and placing them in a Final Cut Projects – Inactive folder.
4. When it comes to assembling the full movie, turn each edited scene into a compound clip and string together the compound clips. Or export a self-contained QT movie and assemble these into your movie for viewing.
5. Throw it all out the window and return to FCP 7 😉– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Couple of questions:
1) How exactly are you keeping versions of your edit as compound clips in the event browser? Compound clips created inside a timeline can’t be dragged into the event browser. How do you get them there?
2) Instead of doing that, why not just create duplicate projects? Projects work just like Sequences. You can create folders in the Project Library to put old versions of your edit. For me, I create a folder for the event, and then inside there, I create an OLD projects folder where I store old edits. This way I only see one project at a time.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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If you are in the event library you can create a compound clip there and will be available like any regular clip. This was discussed in much detail in this forum.
Best,
Geoff -
BTW – how much RAM? I think this is a very important factor with FCP X.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Just to report back. Copying things to a new project did take a long time, but now FCP X is moving along just fine, a pleasure to use. My “currentversion” file is 86 megs and is of course in it’s own project. It looks like, at least for long format, sticking with what Apple designed is the best course of action. Keep project files and events separate. In fact, I would think that it would be best to keep events and projects on different drives because the project file is being written to constantly and will slow down the HD seeking as it plays back video or renders.
BTW. I did group all the scenes into compound clips, so I have about 20 compound clips and those are edited individually and then of course assembled into my my edit.
I wouldn’t say at all that this kind of project is not suited for FCP X. Actually I think it excels at it in a number of areas:
– Compound Clips – although nesting in FCP 7 works, it is and odd beast. In FCP X it is solid.
– Adjustment layers for applying color looks – unbelievable time saver when applying looks an entire scene
– Secondary Color Correction Vignettes right in the app. This project would have been a nightmare to round trip with Color.
– High quality audio filters with presets – another great time saver.
– Visual feedback when placing foley and sfx – a good feature brought from Soundtrack
– To do markers – Edits from the director are incredibly easy to keep track of
– Copying media to the event folder – this is a huge time savings. I was downloading stock footage, SFX and photos at a frantic pace. No need to take several steps to organize, just drag right from the dock download folder into FCP X, and all the files are copied to the event folder.
– Never having to wait for a render to playback an edit
– Magnetic Timeline – once you realize what is happening, this is unbelievable fantastic for long format.
So although it is clear that FCP X is not a tool that I can rely on yet (some times I want to chuck it out the window!), it seems to have many of the pieces in place. Of course if I was the project manager of FCP X I would be completely overwhelmed with bug fixes, not to mention the need of new features (perhaps this is why the updated promised “in a few weeks” back in June has not yet arrived. ) An editor like FCP X is a huge undertaking. It is unfortunately that Apple let it loose much to early in it’s development.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
Oh your asked for my machine specs:
MacPro 2.66 quadcore (from 2006 no less)
13GB Ram
Radeon 5770 1GB Card
OWC Raid 5 (about 120 MB/sec)An older computer, but still working very well.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
If you are in the event library you can create a compound clip there and will be available like any regular clip. This was discussed in much detail in this forum.
You didnt pay attention to what I asked. Of course you can make compound clips in the event browser…from existing clips. I was asking how he took his edit (performed in the timeline) and transferred it to the event browser. Thankfully I figured out a method by creating an event compound clip in the browser, deleting the contents, and then copying and pasting the contents of a project.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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[Timothy Payton] “- Never having to wait for a render to playback an edit”
Hmmm… I hardly do that in FCP 7, Premiere Pro or Media Composer either. In fact, FCP X’s background rendering (a misnomer, since it renders during idle cycles) so bogs down the system at times, that I’ve taken to turning it off most of the time.
Real time performance with unrendered effects is quite good, but that’s because all non-optimized effects have been removed from the system. Toss a few complex effects on a lot of clips and set the video playback to best quality and it quickly drops frames. Remember also that you are in a software-only mode. No lost performance trying to push high-quality video out through a BMD or AJA card.
In actual practice on my own system, when I apply optimized effects on SD and HD footage, I get the best responsiveness from Media Composer and it’s only 32-bit.
I’m glad you are having a good experience with this, but I think it depends on what you compare it to.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
You can make empty compound clip to event. Choose event, deselect all clips by clicking in empty area of browser then choose new compound clip. Then compound clips basically act like sequences in FCP7 with pros and cons still mostly unknown. Except that now we know we shouldn’t edit long-form projects as compound clips in events. I’ve been cutting all the time with compound clips in events without any problems but my projects are only 10-40 sec promos.
Best
Tapio HaajaOn-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/ -
Just to clarify on my findings, compound clips are great even for long form, the problem is when a bunch of them reside IN AN EVENT, which itself has alot of clips. Compound clips IN A PROJECT don’t seem to be a problem.
To illustration, check out the sizes of my project:
PROJECT: CurrentVersion.fcpproject : 87MB. That just stores the edits.
EVENT: CurrentVersion.fcpevent: 138 MB. That is a DB storing the edits and all the clips.
Therefore if I store the edits in the Event it will balloon into a 230MB file. And at this point of FCP X an event db file that big is a problem.
I’ve got a big project, with a good 2000 edits. So that is a little excessive to have an event. But if I was doing some :30 spots, or even a few 5-10 minute videos the event size really won’t be a problem. It is a combination of my large number of clips and large number of edits in compound clips stored in an event that seems to be an issue.
I’m sure Apple never envisioned those many edits living in an event and therefore needing to be constantly saved (that is why the slowdown with every keypress). I’m confident they will get alot of the plumbing fixed soon.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque
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