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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro X Beachballs and hiccups in FCPX 11 on Sonoma 14.7.2 M1 Max

  • Beachballs and hiccups in FCPX 11 on Sonoma 14.7.2 M1 Max

    Posted by Viktor Kamenický on January 27, 2025 at 4:38 pm

    Hi there!

    Experiencing a lot of small and sudden beach balling and freezing during regular task (switching tools making easy edits and so on). Running it on M1 Max 64GB. Project and media on external drive. USB4 SSD enclosure with Samsung NVMe 4TB. The whole library is over 1TB, timeline is set to better performance (Media is mainly XVAC-I UHD 10 bit S-slog and Cinetone). Already tried to reinstall everything (also the whole OS). After Digital rebellion cleaning app it got a bit better but it its still annoying and slowing me down, during the simplest tasks. Any help?

    Should I delete all plugins and trash pref? Haven’t experienced this kind of behavior ever.

    Thank you!

    Doug Metz
    replied 2 weeks, 6 days ago
    5 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • Kirk Pitts

    January 27, 2025 at 5:07 pm

    Just have one question. How is the ssd formatted?

  • Devrim Akteke

    January 27, 2025 at 5:15 pm

    Hi,

    You may try using the disk utility First Aid to check the drives and the system. As Kirk asked the external drive may be formatted wrong. Of course, you can work even if it is formatted as EX-FAT but it is better to format it in a Mac-compliant format like Mac Os Extended or APFS. Also, could there be a problem with the hardware of the external drive case?

  • Mads Nybo jørgensen

    January 27, 2025 at 9:09 pm

    Hey Viktor,

    I’m with Kirk and Devrim on this.

    But want to add that the “enclosure” for Samsung SSDs are not always as good as forexample a Samsung T9 drive.
    The other thing to check is what Samsung SSD deive you have inside the enclosure, and if the connection to the Mac is USB-C or Thunderbolt 4 (or higher).

    I Have used Samsung 990 Pro SSD’s, and been happy with those. (That was until my HP Fury 16 G10 stopped working, which in my opinion was due to HP “forgetting” to install the right cooling system)

    If you haven’t already got it, it is also worth installing Samsung Magician.
    This will help with keeping the firmware on your drive up to the latest version, and detect problems.
    Although, I would advice to that you make sure to have a seperate copy before messing with any kind of drive…
    https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/magician/

    Hope that this helps.

    Atb
    Mads

  • Viktor Kamenický

    January 28, 2025 at 11:48 am

    Thank you all for the replies.

    SSD is exFAT. On previous OSs I haven’t noticed that amount of beach balling, only after updating to Sonoma a month ago it started. I was stuck on Monterey because everything was flawless.

    So one of the suggestions is reformat the SSD to HFS+ (or AFPS)?

  • Devrim Akteke

    January 28, 2025 at 12:37 pm

    As you are on Sonoma you can use AFPS, the latest option. HFS+ is ok too.

  • Doug Metz

    January 28, 2025 at 11:56 pm

    As a general rule, always reformat new drives before use.

    Start with GUID partition map. If you’re using an SSD, format APFS. If it’s a mechanical drive, use HFS+.

    macOS and FCP utilize many of the features of APFS, and that file system was designed to take advantage of SSDs. While Apple says you can use APFS on a mechanical drive, my experience says don’t do it. Things will be measurably slower, constant seeking/thrashing, it’s just a bad deal (even if it does technically work).

    It should also be noted that FCP can behave unpredictably if you’re working off an ExFAT drive, due primarily to the lack of certain file system features/journaling. Again, do not work off an ExFAT drive with FCP. You will lose work at some point.

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