Compositing in CCPX

[Steve Connor]

It may not be the problem but a lot of people seem to keep this off by default

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum

[Nick Toth]

Crashing as you describe it is not normal and most likely points to an issue with your system. I have been using FCP X since it was released and it doesn’t crash any more than FCP legacy did for me which wasn’t all that often.

anickt

[Lawrence Diggs]

Anything is possible, but it didn’t start until after I installed FCPX. I hope this is not going to start one of those “system reinstall” wild goose chases where you spend days trying to find which two of your many applications are conflicting with the new kid in town :-).

[Bill Davis]

Since you’re new to the process, here are a couple of things to keep in mind.

Since X is database driven, when you load your initial assets, X sometimes has a lot of background work to accomplish to “get ready” to work efficiently. At the same time, the creators knew that editors wanted to get to work FAST, so it works on two levels. It uses rapidly created thumbnails and proxy files to get going FAST, while it processes stuff in the background. (not just RENDERING, but transcoding and even, I suspect, some general houskeeping stuff like building it’s internal asset search system.

It’s VERY common for people to import stuff, blast around in the timeline and find that everything’s not working perfectly – perhaps files appearing “fuzzy” or access stuff happening with a delay – only to find that after a few hours of leaving it alone, X suddenly starts working faster and easier. This is ALL contextual in that you won’t have long transcoding waits if you don’t import footage types that NEED transcoding, so it’s not stuff that happens either always or regularly – it’s stuff that happens when it NEEDS to happen. So it’s hard to understand at first.

The big trap is just because you CAN work with something almost immediately – it’s really easy to get fooled into thinking that you’re working at X’s optimal process, when in fact, you’re working with a draft process.

So take a bit of time and don’t expect everything to be perfect two minutes after you import 100 clips. (even if they’re all in your event browser and it LOOKS like they’re ready to use!)

There’s a LOT going on under the hood with X. And patience is often rewarded.

FWIW.

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.

[Lawrence Diggs]

Thanks Bill for that important insight. This makes me think, with so much stuff moving around in the background, it would also be a good idea to clean up permission more often as well.