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FCPX and very occasional lag.
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Charlie,
You didn’t notice the OPs name?
What did you expect?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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I guess I’ll jump in since Aindreas mentioned my comments up front. My experience to date has been on beefy, reasonably new Mac Pros with fast storage. I also have some exposure to how FCP X performs on a new, loaded iMac. From what I can tell, the performance is generally better on the iMacs, but there’s no guarantee. It seems inconsistent from machine to machine and production to production. My general performance observations are these:
1. The user interaction with the UI is inherently slow by design. This is caused by the fact that every action is accompanied by a graphic animation, which takes a fraction of a second to perform.
2. When you open large events, projects or a fully loaded project library, it takes a long time to buffer all of that info into RAM. That’s because you are accessing waveform caches, filmstrips, etc.
3. As you go through organizing media in an event and adding a lot of keywords, the system takes a while to catch up. It seems like there’s a lot of background updating going on, even when no background tasks are specifically identified. This gets worse the more clips you have and the more these are cross-referenced across multiple collections. Sometimes this will settle done if you go through the process, let the machine sit for a while and come back to the project later, such as the next day.
4. Complex projects seem to suffer from RAM leaks. The more you do, the more sluggish it becomes. Close and relaunch and the performance is zippy again.
5. Complex plug-ins are slow to update with UI interaction. This means two things. First, you move a slider and the image is slow to update. My guess is that’s because there’s no resolution throttle like there is in After Effects. Quality is either full or half-res, but nothing below that, which kicks in when you actually make a change. Motion has always been hurt by this since its beginning. Second, real-time (un-rendered) playback performance is poor. I see this in most of the third-party filters, like BCC8, Sapphire Edge, etc. I also see it in complex Motion templates, where a lot of tasks are ganged into the same effect. The built-in FCP X effects seem to work the best, but they are also extremely simplistic. Compare DVShade to any of the built-in looks or stylize effects and you can see what I mean.
6. Playback through broadcast cards is not good when skimming or scrubbing – at least not with Decklinks. A/V output simply doesn’t keep up with the operator, though sync playback at normal speed is pretty good. I have seen much better performance with some of the Thunderbolt units, like AJA’s IoXT.
7. Playback though to the screen or via broadcast output often stutters. This is not dropping frames, but seems to be the way the screen is refreshed for vertical sync. That appears to also affect the broadcast output, which is handled by the OS now. The bottom line is that live playback through a card cannot be used for mastering under FCP X’s power. I guess that’s why they call it broadcast monitoring and not broadcast mastering. Again, there seems to be a consistency issue. I can see this problem one day and then open the same project the next and it’s fine.
8. Skimming often gets “stuck” when quickly going between events and projects. You often have to click and load an event clip to get the playhead/cursor to properly respond.
9. Often you will start to play a project timeline and video stays frozen or in black. Stopping and starting again at the head seems to “wakes up” X.
I have not done any extensive testing since the 10.0.8 update, so I’m not sure how some of this might have improved. To talk about modern machines and old Mac Pros is a complete cop-out, IMHO. These same machines are running Media Composer/Symphony, Premiere Pro, Smoke 2013, FCP 7, FCP X and Resolve. For the most part, none of these other applications display these symptoms. Or at least not as many of them.
Depending on the functions, a loaded 4-year-old Mac Pro will outperform a new iMac or Retina MBP – especially in tasks that use rendering, or take advantage of extra GPU power in the NVIDIA cards. What’s more likely is that Apple has simply been doing all of its development on iMacs, with total internal indifference to Mac Pros. Simply because iMacs are the newest company design and ProApps isn’t any more privy to unreleased hardware than the average users. So yes, maybe they’ve tweaked for i7 processors. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear consistent among all iMac users.
Aah… But the next version will be soooooooo much better 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “I guess I’ll jump in since Aindreas mentioned my comments up front. My experience to date has been on beefy, reasonably new Mac Pros with fast storage. I also have some exposure to how FCP X performs on a new, loaded iMac. From what I can tell, the performance is generally better on the iMacs, but there’s no guarantee. It seems inconsistent from machine to machine and production to production. My general performance observations are these:
1. The user interaction with the UI is inherently slow by design. This is caused by the fact that every action is accompanied by a graphic animation, which takes a fraction of a second to perform.
2. When you open large events, projects or a fully loaded project library, it takes a long time to buffer all of that info into RAM. That’s because you are accessing waveform caches, filmstrips, etc.
3. As you go through organizing media in an event and adding a lot of keywords, the system takes a while to catch up. It seems like there’s a lot of background updating going on, even when no background tasks are specifically identified. This gets worse the more clips you have and the more these are cross-referenced across multiple collections. Sometimes this will settle done if you go through the process, let the machine sit for a while and come back to the project later, such as the next day.
4. Complex projects seem to suffer from RAM leaks. The more you do, the more sluggish it becomes. Close and relaunch and the performance is zippy again.
5. Complex plug-ins are slow to update with UI interaction. This means two things. First, you move a slider and the image is slow to update. My guess is that’s because there’s no resolution throttle like there is in After Effects. Quality is either full or half-res, but nothing below that, which kicks in when you actually make a change. Motion has always been hurt by this since its beginning. Second, real-time (un-rendered) playback performance is poor. I see this in most of the third-party filters, like BCC8, Sapphire Edge, etc. I also see it in complex Motion templates, where a lot of tasks are ganged into the same effect. The built-in FCP X effects seem to work the best, but they are also extremely simplistic. Compare DVShade to any of the built-in looks or stylize effects and you can see what I mean.
6. Playback through broadcast cards is not good when skimming or scrubbing – at least not with Decklinks. A/V output simply doesn’t keep up with the operator, though sync playback at normal speed is pretty good. I have seen much better performance with some of the Thunderbolt units, like AJA’s IoXT.
7. Playback though to the screen or via broadcast output often stutters. This is not dropping frames, but seems to be the way the screen is refreshed for vertical sync. That appears to also affect the broadcast output, which is handled by the OS now. The bottom line is that live playback through a card cannot be used for mastering under FCP X’s power. I guess that’s why they call it broadcast monitoring and not broadcast mastering. Again, there seems to be a consistency issue. I can see this problem one day and then open the same project the next and it’s fine.
8. Skimming often gets “stuck” when quickly going between events and projects. You often have to click and load an event clip to get the playhead/cursor to properly respond.
9. Often you will start to play a project timeline and video stays frozen or in black. Stopping and starting again at the head seems to “wakes up” X.
I have not done any extensive testing since the 10.0.8 update, so I’m not sure how some of this might have improved. To talk about modern machines and old Mac Pros is a complete cop-out, IMHO. These same machines are running Media Composer/Symphony, Premiere Pro, Smoke 2013, FCP 7, FCP X and Resolve. For the most part, none of these other applications display these symptoms. Or at least not as many of them.
Depending on the functions, a loaded 4-year-old Mac Pro will outperform a new iMac or Retina MBP – especially in tasks that use rendering, or take advantage of extra GPU power in the NVIDIA cards. What’s more likely is that Apple has simply been doing all of its development on iMacs, with total internal indifference to Mac Pros. Simply because iMacs are the newest company design and ProApps isn’t any more privy to unreleased hardware than the average users. So yes, maybe they’ve tweaked for i7 processors. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear consistent among all iMac users.
“Sounds like a nightmare, I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to use FCPX
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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[Steve Connor] “Sounds like a nightmare, I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to use FCPX”
I think you have to look at it as a matter of degree. All software suffers from some issues. There are pros and cons. These happen to be the cons that affect many FCP X users to varying degrees. But they do exist and need to be addressed by Apple.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “These happen to be the cons that affect many FCP X users to varying degrees. But they do exist and need to be addressed by Apple.”
This is a reasonable and helpful statement. This: “Aah… But the next version will be soooooooo much better ;-)” really isn’t. The implication being that people who aren’t having these problems, or who have experienced them occasionally at one time or other but aren’t terribly bothered by them, are somehow brainwashed, uncritical rubes who think Apple and FCP X are perfect. That’s kind of a broad brush, don’t you think?
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “The implication being that people who aren’t having these problems,….That’s kind of a broad brush, don’t you think?”
Wow!!!! You are reading a whole lot more into that comment than intended. I would say that about any software. It’s generic. There was no implication at all – please don’t make it as if there was.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Wow!!!! You are reading a whole lot more into that comment than intended. I would say that about any software. It’s generic. There was no implication at all – please don’t make it as if there was.
“I guess you’re right… I’m getting a little thin-skinned lately, which is probably not the best skin type to have. LOL FWIW, I find your posts to be informative and reasonable. 🙂
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Charlie Austin] “I guess you’re right… I’m getting a little thin-skinned lately, which is probably not the best skin type to have. LOL FWIW, I find your posts to be informative and reasonable. :-)”
Thanks. I do realize some of these points sound like a litany of complaints. Obviously if I weren’t using the app productively, I wouldn’t put it in front of clients. That’s far from the case, as I’ve done almost every session through it for months. There are times where I have to tap-dance around some of these items, but on balance, there are way more pros than cons. For me – and others on this list – at least that’s been the experience.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[John Davidson] “2. What drives are you using? Certainly not a thunderbolt RAID, and I can only imagine that if you’re working on a 5 yr old mac pro you’re NOT working on a super fast RAID.”
Just had to debate THIS point. I have a 2008 MacPro, 16GB RAM, GTX285 graphics card…but more to the point…a CalDigit HDOne via miniSAS that is Raid 5 and gets 380MB/s read/write. On par, if not faster, than a Thunderbolt RAID.
It is true though, that I wouldn’t attempt to use FCX on that machine, nor expect it to work great! Because Apple considers anything 3 years old or older to be ancient.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Shane Ross] “It is true though, that I wouldn’t attempt to use FCX on that machine, nor expect it to work great! Because Apple considers anything 3 years old or older to be ancient.”
That’s the machine I use FCPX on and I’m cutting 4K on it at the moment, the lag issue isn’t across everyone’s MacPro systems. However there doesn’t seem to be any common denominator amongst those who have the issue
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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