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FCPX Memory Usage Debugging Suggestions Requested [Long]
Hi Folks,
I’m not looking for a solution, rather a few ideas to help debug an issue.I’m cutting an unscripted lifestyle show using FCPX (10.2.1 and OS X 10.10.5) – as a bit of an experiment. I’ve used it for short form, and corporate work, but nothing this big before. The metadata has been great. Many things haven’t, but thats a topic for a different thread.
Theres loads of footage (6TB) all within a single FCPX library. Separate events for shooting days (14), episodes (3) and others (GFX, MGFX, Audio, Deliverables) etc. There’s probably 20 projects in the library. Each episode is composed of three 7 minute-ish segments to get a broadcast 1/2hr.
I’d finished the edit and created 3 compound clips (one per segment), slammed a broadcast safe on the video and broadcast peak audio limiter on the audio, then exported a Master file (ProRes 422 HQ).
Then all hell broke loose. I got the dreaded Out of Application Memory about 50% through. A quick check of Activity Monitor showed FCPX was using > 24GB (my RAM is 24GB), and about 12GB of swap. My system drive was 75% full, so I moved swap over to another SSD with 300GB+ of spare space. This time the export got to 69% before keeling over again.
I then started to do some digging. I won’t bore you with the details of trashing preferences, render files, and all the other standard things we try. Nothing made a difference.
Booting FCPX (with this library loaded) and loading one project consumes 24GB+ just to a static state. Needless to say, no event has the little yellow warning label, so there is nothing obvious that seems wrong. Yes, there is a lot of footage in the library, and a lot of multi-cams and loads of other assets, but really, most of them aren’t used/referenced in any project, since we’re only on episode 1 at the moment.
I am finding it very difficult to believe that the library+projects itself requires 24GB.
So, finally to my question – how does one go about debugging this sort of issue? Are then any “under the hood” switches, dials or reports that can give me visibility into what’s using 24GB of RAM, and another 16GB of swap (when rendering or exporting). I’m motivated to fix this problem, because I’m going to be living with this library for another 3 or 4 months.
Any suggestions from FCPX gurus are gratefully appreciated.
May all your cuts be matching, unless of course you jump.
Best,
Scott -
7 Replies
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What are your system specs? I’d break it into 3 chunks and see if those will go out.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training -
Noah,
That’s what I ended up doing. 3 chunks, each exported as ProRes422 HQ, re-imported, concatenated and then re-exported.
The system is a mid-2010 MacPro (5,1). 6-core 3.33GHz, 24GB RAM, ATI HD 5870 graphics card. It should have enough beef to handle a 22 minute timeline.
The footage is all 1080p, 29.97, ProRes422 (it’s transcoded before I get it).
Cheers,
Scott -
Hmm- that particular machine is bit long in the tooth for large scale projects at least in FCPX. Especially with compound clips which tax things further.
Also graphics card is low on RAM compared to what’s available these days. But I get that not everyone is ready to blast into hyperspace with a new Mac Pro.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training -
Concur with Noah that the hardware Apple is selling today is in a whole different league than what they had back in 2010.
And if my experience on the AMAZING performance boost I got moving from a 2011 to a 2015 laptop – I suspect that when you replace the 5 year old machine, you may experience something similar.
Computer years are a bit like dog years IMO. It’s not a 1 to 1 progression at ALL.
Good luck with your project, regardless.
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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Those system specs are more than good enough to handle what he’s doing. I’ve exported several feature length projects, ProRes4444 from similar machines.
The only time I’ve run into the out-of-app-mem error was early on (10.0.6?) when I was trying to create proxy media within X from RED files. That turned out to be a bug between X and Red Rocket cards, which this machine had.
I suspect the compound clips are the culprit. As a test, you should do the same thing but without the compounds. Simply copy & paste the project clips to a new project timeline and export. See what happens.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Noah, I appreciate the perspective.
Maybe the machine is not bright and shiny and new, but it’s used week in and week out cutting episodic with Media Composer, also with terabytes of footage with no real performance issues – nothing like we’re seeing here. So I don’t believe everything we’re seeing can be chalked up to an old, slow machine.
We’ve thought about an upgrade, but have a large investment in PCI-e cards, and not a fan of the new Mac Pro architecture. Getting an external PCI cage connected by firewire, um sorry, USB, oopps, I meant USB3, oh gees, I mean Thunderbolts, seems a little inelegant and adds to the cost. I had a Mac Cube, not sure whether I’m ready to jump on in with a trashcan. Either way, there needs to be a business case made for an upgrade, and we’re not there yet.
And all this actually ignores the point that the problem we’re seeing a memory consumption issue, not a CPU/GPU performance, memory or IO *bandwidth* issue. With a memory leak a new machine would simply run out of memory faster!
So, my original question still stands, are there any tools available that allows me to profile the memory consumption of a library, event and/or project in FCPX? Are there any tools that would allow me to validate the internal consistency and/or validity of the library? I’d love to know where more than 40G+ is going in a 22 minute timeline.
Cheers,
Scott -
Here’s an update.
We’ve been looking at memory consumption by plug-ins. Some are clearly better behaved than others. Here is the breakdown. Draw your own conclusions.
Cheers,
ScottFCPX Plug-in Memory Analysis
———————————–Setup:
Mac Pro 5,1 (Mid-2010)
24GB DDR3 ECC SDRAM
ATI 5870 1GB
500GB SSD (System drive)FCPX 10.2.2
Library: 6.5TBPlug-in Used1 [1] Used2 [2] Memory Compressed Time [3]
GB GB min:sx
None NA NA 14.68 0 1:50
Basic 3rd [4] * * 14.75 0 2:00
PROStar * * 14.75 0 2:00
mLooks/mLooks2 * * 17.00 3.5 2:10
CoreMelt Free * * 17.02 3.55 2:10
CoreMelt TrackX 17.02 3.55 2:10
mFlare * 21.15 9.08 2:39
mGlitch * * 21.21 9.83 2:45
FxFactory [5] * * 21.36 10.46 2:59
BCC [6] * * 21.39 10.19 3:00
Notes:
[1]: Plug-in used in currently loaded project
[2]: Plug-in used in project in library
[3]: Time from application launch to scrubbing through footage
[4]: Basic 3rd party package includes:
– Alex4D
– neatVideo
– ColorFinale
– MyFCPEffects
– CineFlare Free
– XEffects Free
[5]: Includes 16 purchased plug-ins
[6]: Only Lights FxPlug package
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