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Apple – please focus on FCP X stability!
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If X is being run on a machine that has the system requirements posted by apple, that should be all you need.
If a machine fits the requirements and is still crashing on the program, that is on apple.
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[tony west] “If X is being run on a machine that has the system requirements posted by apple, that should be all you need.”
Well….. Every manufacturer’s published “qualified specs” are based on very limited testing criteria. These are based on what their QA folks have tested. Usually no third-party items of any sort – i.e. no other apps, filters, hardware, etc. So the combination of things that WILL work is at least an order of magnitude larger than those of a “qualified system”. All these specs mean is that it’s a known configuration that has been tested.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “2 chassis with 16x2TB drives in each.”
That should still be quicker than a Pegasus for small I/O since it has more spindles. Did you say you do not see these issues when working off a Pegasus?
Best,
Andy -
[Bernhard Grininger] “Disadvatages:”
Another one:
Working from Disk Images carries a non-trivial overhead for the system that will reduce your performance ceiling in FCPX to the tune of fewer streams or grater UI lag on larger projects.
Best,
Andy -
[Bill Davis] “One user with one configuration can get excellent results and few if any crashes – and another user can try the same or even less taxing work and run into an ugly crash-fest. I try to remember that as a high-traffic site, whenever I say something “definitive” about either the software or a workflow, I have to be sure it actually is a universal constant – or I could well be misleading folks. “
It would be helpful if everyone posted their configurations when they run into trouble. Detailed information about the system is the first thing we ask for when helping folks troubleshoot problems on the AE forum.
If we can see patterns behind poor performance, that’d be great information to know.
If there’s no rhyme or reason to which systems fly and which systems crash, that’s important to know, too.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
HI Bill,
I understand your point, but I assume that people will understand I’m talking about my experiences, and not everyone’s. It’s just easier and quicker if everyone assumes that the speaker speaks for themselves, rather than the speaker having to make qualifying comments about “this is only my experience or my opinion” every time they want to join in a conversation. And I’m all about quick and easy. 😉
Anyway, I’m surprised and jealous that you’ve had such an easy time with photos, because I have noticed a slow down in Timeline playback, and in general UI responsiveness (in the Event browser for instance) when I start importing photos appreciably larger than 1080. FCP 7 seemed more adept to me. And wiping my hard drive and doing a clean install of Lion and FCP X didn’t help recently. Also, my hardware is a Mac Pro 8 core 2.93GHz 2009 model with 32GB of ram and an 8 drive raid connected via miniSAS, so I feel like it shouldn’t be a hardware limitation.
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Los Angeles Cameraman
Canon C300 (x2), Zeiss CP.2 lenses, P2 Varicam, etc.
http://www.lacameraman.com -
Helmut – What graphics card do you have? In my experience the GPU is almost everything with FCP X.
I have a 2006 MacPro, only 13GB of RAM, with Radeon 5770 (1 GB of VRAM) and I too have a fine time will large stills. In fact I have been shooting camera Raw on my 7D and importing straight into FCP X. I just did a timeline without 50 of these shots:
On my older MacBook Pro (now dead may it rest in peace) with a lower end GPU it could barely handle any large stills.
But like you said there is a lot of inconsistency between systems with FCP X.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
I’ve also didn’t have problems with FCPX and large stills on a 2010 i7 iMac.
In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I re-tried FCP X after bashing it with the 10.0.0 release.
10.0.3 was just released, and I had a project FULL of Ken Burns zooms and stills, large to small.
Knowing that FCP X had the automated Ken Burns effect that would save me a LOT of time vs key framing in FCP7 (and the way the Ken Burns effect works ‘intelligently’ was also great – read: if you make the clip longer, it would make the zoom/move slower, but keep the same begin and end position), and FCP 7 had a 4K graphic limitation which FCP X doesn’t have.
So I decided to give the program another chance then. Have been cursing and intrigued since then at the same time. Lots of potential in the program, but also a long way to go. -
Tony,
It’s running fine on both my ancient desktop Mac…
(2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon/6 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM/ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB/OS X Lion 10.7.4 (11E53)
And even faster on my laptop…
2.8Ghz Intel core i7/8GB 1067 Mhz DDR3/Intel HD Graphics 288 MB/OSX Lion 10.7.3
Everything is very stable running X here. I haven’t had a crash in weeks. I get few to no “beach balls” and the only time things really slow down is at the end of my day when I do Renders before outputting files or let the machine crank away on complex titling composites.
The key for me was keeping X on my machine, but my projects and ALL their files on attached Firewire drives – since that lets me “unmount” a project drive from the laptop – and move it over to the desktop machine where it re-mounts and is available for work in seconds.
But none of my projects have any issues on either machine since 10.0.4
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Helmut Kobler] “Anyway, I’m surprised and jealous that you’ve had such an easy time with photos, because I have noticed a slow down in Timeline playback, and in general UI responsiveness (in the Event browser for instance) when I start importing photos appreciably larger than 1080.”
Helmut,
I wonder if you’re dropping those large files into X and starting to work with them while X is still doing it’s background transcoding?
Depending on the size and density of the still, X will be happy to bring it in and work in low res, but it’s also processing the file for whatever resolution you’ve specified for your timeline at the same time. Until that process is complete for ALL the photos you’ve imported to the event browser, X has a lot of calculating to do.
I’ve helped people who imported massive collections of stills, worked away – thus disabling background rendering and calculation time – then shut down their machines immediately – never giving X time to do it’s background file processing and they never achieve decent speed and responsiveness.
My thinking is after any large content ingest – work away if you need to – but then don’t shut down your machine unless it’s necessary for a good long stretch, in case X has background housekeeping to do.
That’s worked well for me.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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