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Do more projects within an event slow FCPX down?
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[Mike Warmels] “So what you suggest is to make a Media Library and then a Library per episode? In case of a six part series, I’d have seven Library files.”
Well that’s one way of doing it. However, personally I would create one library for each episode (6 total) and import the media into each (media files externally stored). Possibly at the end, I might create one “output” library (the 7th) to consolidate all episodes and simply copy the final sequence for each episode into that single library.
[Mike Warmels] “How does working in multiple Libraries affect FCPX performance? The couple of times I had several Libraries open for copying Library files or projects, it seemed to slow down.”
I haven’t personally experienced that, however the more things that are open, the more indexing is going on, so initial launch takes more time. I would turn off waveforms in the browser to improve performance. Or at least see if that affects performance. Also see if there’s a difference in list versus filmstrip view.
Generally I have several projects open all the time, simply because I forget to specifically close them. FCPX makes you get lazy that way 🙂
[Mike Warmels] “And personally I don’t find Library files so small. Otften they get into the range of 30MB-800MB.”
If your render cache is in the library it can get large. I almost never render unless it is an effect that I have to render. Most of my libraries are under 100MB but I also have larger ones that are several hundred and even one that’s about 8GB (I guess it has media in it). Performance seems about the same. The longer you work in X in a sitting, the slower it gets due to RAM leakage. I periodically (every couple of hours) close and relaunch X.
[Mike Warmels] “Plus consolidating is something I don’t like to do, since FCPX doesn’t use handle lengths ( as far as I know). If I use a few quotes from a 20 minute interview, the entire 20-minute clip is included in the ‘consolidation'”
I’m not talking about consolidation in the sense of trimmed media files, as in Avid. I simply mean a single library where you place the final version of the edited sequence of each episode.
[Mike Warmels] “So, working in multiple Libraries simultaneously. That’s the preferred work around? Because FCPX doesn’t seem to be designed that way. It always warns me if I edit between Libraries.”
It’s simply one way of working. Others may have other opinions. The warnings are because you are breaking dependencies when you go between libraries. But it seems to me that’s exactly what you want it to do in your case.
Right now, my best experiences with large, complex projects have been Media Composer and to some extent FCP “legacy”. Less so with FCPX or Premiere Pro.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Mike Warmels] “Would you recommend only using Duplicate as Snapshot?”
Yes, unless you specifically want to maintain a link between projects/sequences. When you “Duplicate Project as Snapshot” you can simply save it as a version in time and continue working on the same project that’s loaded in the timeline window. Or you can Snapshot it and rename the snapshot as version 2, version 3, etc. and then work on those as the next newest version. Either process effectively gives you the same result.
If you simply Snapshot it as the old version, then you skip the need to rename, load, etc. It’s a simply keystroke combo and you can set up smart collections to store these, so using it as designed is a bit faster, but not mandatory.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Okay, well… I’ll start working with these work arounds then.
And your experience in working with larger projects kinda supports my feeling that FCPX seems to suit smaller projects a lot better. Although some say that’s not true. Ah well…
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Well, I never works with compounds so I don’t need any link. I didn’t even know they were linked.
So snapshot it is. And indeed, it’s easier to make a snapshot and make that one the previous version and continue to work on the same project.
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[Mike Warmels] “Now, I tried doing this: moving the older projects to a new event. And with each move (which often takes a bit of time: beach balls, the project loading even though I am not using it, just moving it) FCPX speeds up again.
Is there some limit to the number of projects recommended within one event?”
I am working on a doc project and have 2.2 terabytes of camera-native material in a single FCPX event, comprised of 5,667 clips — 117 hours of mixed 1080p and 4k material. This was with “leave files in place” and no transcoding. I am still developing what keywording and organizational system to use.
I created 10 different projects (not snapshots) in this one event and inserted material into each one. It mostly seems to run OK with no performance problems. The 5000+ clips in the Event Browser are periodically a little sluggish to redraw when scrolling, but it’s not bad.
This is on FCPX 10.2.3, OS X 10.11.3, 2015 top-spec iMac 27, with the material on an 8TB Thunderbolt Promise RAID-5 array.
I can’t explain the performance problems you are seeing. On earlier versions of FCPX I have seen periodic unexplained slowdowns which went away when I restarted FCPX which could imply a memory leak. Other times I have tracked problems to specific plugins. It seems relatively stable on the latest version, at least on my hardware and workflow.
Larry Jordan says don’t go over about 3,000 clips per library, but I am well above that with no problems. I have heard of other users with 7,000 clips per library on a Mac Pro without problems.
Re events, now that FCPX supports library-wide searching and smart collections, this allows putting material in different events but still being able to search it in one step. However I don’t know what (if any) performance implications are for many events vs fewer events.
Since you can’t search across libraries it would seem problematic to split closely-related material between different libraries.
I believe the FCPX search scope behavior is:
– If event is selected, search will be within that event
– If library is selected, search will be across all events in the library
– Keyword collections are within a single event
– Library-wide smart collections can be created at the library root level
– To create a library-wide keyword collection, create a Library Smart Collection using one or more keywords as the search criteria -
Did you make ten DIFFERENT projects? Or nine DUPLICATES?
Because it seems the duplicates are what’s causing the delays. When I move them to different events, the sluggishness disappears.
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[Joe Marler] “I created 10 different projects (not snapshots) in this one event and inserted material into each one. It mostly seems to run OK with no performance problems. The 5000+ clips in the Event Browser are periodically a little sluggish to redraw when scrolling, but it’s not bad.”
For clarification and to help Mike, these are new, original sequences created in one event, not duplicates or copies of each other. Correct?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “For clarification and to help Mike, these are new, original sequences created in one event, not duplicates or copies of each other. Correct?
“I created 10 projects, and five duplicates of each project for a total of 50 projects. All 50 projects, 5,000+ clips and 2.2 terabytes are in the event of one library. Performance remains good.
However I have definitely seen random, unexplainable slowdowns happen, just not recently and not on ver. 10.2.3.
In the past I’ve tracked several issues to plugins. I wish FCPX had a global “disable all plugins” setting for diagnosing problems like this. Likewise there is no uniform method to ensure all plugins are updated, or to even inspect the version of a plugin. This leads to old plugins which in turn leads to problems.
There is some good troubleshooting advice on this page: https://fcpx.tv/Pages/top10troublesthoot2.html
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Oh okay. Well, I’m still on 10.2.2 since my client is still on that, and they can’t upgrade yet because they have to upgrade the SAN first and run all the tests. I am on El Capitan though. Just waiting to upgrade. Maybe all the slowdowns and stutters are somehow finally solved 10.2.3…
But I had these complaints when I was still on 10.1.4 and everyone said: it all goes away when you’re on 10.2. Well, there was a marginal improvement. Maybe they finally solved it in 10.2.3… but I am a little sceptical.
Thanks for the trouble shooting page. But if I have to take this seriously, I really don’t get the ‘Pro’ part of FCPX. Because basically it says: shut down everything but FCPX, and don’t use all the features. And yes, that’s why you bought a $6000 computer from us, with 6 cores we hardly use. Personally, I think that is insane.
But again, for xillionth time I will check out these things. What else do I have to do while waiting for the beach ball.
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[Mike Warmels] “Thanks for the trouble shooting page. But if I have to take this seriously, I really don’t get the ‘Pro’ part of FCPX. Because basically it says: shut down everything but FCPX, and don’t use all the features. And yes, that’s why you bought a $6000 computer from us, with 6 cores we hardly use. Personally, I think that is insane.”
That page is not saying don’t use all the FCPX features — these are simply temporary troubleshooting procedures. I have had to do things like this with Premiere, FCPX, high-end “Pro” server software costing $20k, etc.
I greatly empathize with your difficulties. It is extremely frustrating to try and get production work done when the software/hardware platform is unstable. I think most of us have been there. When anyone says they’ve never had a problem or a crash with product xyz, I am suspicious.
FCPX can obviously work in used in high-end professional environments: https://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/1781-how-swiss-tv-went-fcpx-final-cut-pro-x-in-national-network-operations
That doesn’t solve your problem but it shows there is no generic limitation. Rather the software/hardware is very complex. While generally reliable and stable, within the multi-dimensional configuration and usage space, there are zones of instability. All software is like that — you unwittingly encroach on those and things go downhill. Unfortunately these zones are not well defined and fluctuate based on many factors.
The best approach is generally to (1) Upgrade to the latest version, then if not resolved (2) Work step-by-step to define and narrow the replication scenario. E.g, remove plugins and re-test, discard and rebuild all generated library files, if the scenario can be narrowed to a smaller data set, move it to another storage device, etc.
The reason for trying the latest version is not high confidence that will fix the problem, but it’s an easy step to take. Major time/effort can be wasted troubleshooting a problem on an old version only to find the problem is fixed in later versions.
For problems which have a gradual onset with no clear demarcation, that is more difficult. However with further inspection and testing, what first appears to be a totally amorphous problem will often come into sharper focus with more distinct characteristics. This can allow an easier workaround and certainly expedites getting a fix from the manufacturer.
There is a good case for “I shouldn’t have to do this — it should just work”. Unfortunately all complex software can manifest problems like this, even if only 5% of users experience it. Thus the good or bad experience of a single user is often not revealing. The ideal situation is to have professional enterprise-level support, where they have visibility to thousands of sites and symptom tracking databases. However this is expensive and there’s no guarantee even in that case you wouldn’t have to do troubleshooting.
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