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FCPX and very occasional lag.
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[Chris Harlan] “I see what you are saying. What I was really referring to is that far fewer people have an actual need to have multiple users in the same project at the same time, as opposed to working on the same project at the same time. For large hard-deadlined non-scripteds, for instance, its critical. For many others, its a terrific convenience, but a convenience that can be achieved, or nearly achieved, by a variety of alternate workarounds. “
True, but if the capability was there, people would use it in ways that don’t necessarily follow conventional wisdom and workflow, you know?
For instance, I could keep editing on my laptop, while the desktop churns through Proxy or high res creation or difficult renders, exporting master files, etc.
[Chris Harlan] “In 7, I would throw a bunch of clips into a timeline and media manage to share, which was okay, but that you can bring keywords, means that its like sending bins, too.”
Precisely, Chris.
[Chris Harlan] “If I just wanted to give somebody a small portion of a project in a separate folder or sneaker-net drive, can I give them just the clips I choose with handles?”
FCPX still uses full clips only (it does not trim down existing clips), BUT you can send only “used clips” which helps to cut down on a massive Event with multitudes of clips.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Chris Harlan] “If I just wanted to give somebody a small portion of a project in a separate folder or sneaker-net drive, can I give them just the clips I choose with handles?”
FCPX still uses full clips only (it does not trim down existing clips), BUT you can send only “used clips” which helps to cut down on a massive Event with multitudes of clips.
“Sadly, for what I do, that’s still a big problem in the sharing department. A single file is usually about 60 gigs and a sizzle project can have a couple of TBs worth of those files. Much easier to hand someone 35 seconds of a sizzle to polish when its boiled down to clips with handles. I still require some form of media management/consolidation as a basic function of what I do for both sharing and archiving.
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[Chris Harlan] “Much easier to hand someone 35 seconds of a sizzle to polish when its boiled down to clips with handles. “
Yep. Trimming is needed. I still use FCP7 for it. 🙁
You could also use Resolve with the FCPX XML round trip, but it is less elegant and the trimming function should be built in to FCPX.
Jeremy
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[Clint Wardlow] “It is more of the idea that Apple seems to want me to update my technology (with the not inconsiderable cost entailed) every two years. But I guess I am just being curmudgeonly on this. Apple sure isn’t alone on this.
It is just my belief that we have been forced into a world of temporary art that dissipates as fast as it is produced. In the future will be locked away in some discarded file format that can’t be opened even if anybody wanted to.
“I feel your concern, but is this rapid obsolescence being driven by Apple? Or more by the general rapidity of the technological evolution happening in labs all over the world?
The fact is that processors, connectivity, memory and software design are ALL evolving very rapidly. In an environment like that, “freezing” your technical specs OR your requirement for hardware backwards compatibility at any point for too long, seems like a pretty sure recipe for competitive disaster.
The plumbing in any NLE is exists in service to the components that sit at the pinch points in signal flow. And as those improve, the software MUST be able to keep up.
I personally think that FCP-X is being designed largely for hardware that is on the development benches at Apple – where there IS a roadmap for where the company expects computer systems to be in 2, 3 or 5 years. Anything else would be silly.
So they create, and ship knowing that some customers with older hardware will struggle – but that time and evolution are the eventual things that will break through the present constraints and allow the software approach to take better advantage of the hardware of the future.
It’s kinda competitive Darwinism. And evolving without adapting to the newer climates is a good way to become extinct.
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.
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Sad new hardware is affected as well, where others have proven it doesn’t have to be that way. And some of the lag-issues seems similar on 2008 and 2012 machines which makes me think “design flaw” at the core.
That said, some things with X is nice but the engine really feels like a work in progress.
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We must just push it differently. Over the last two updates, my FCP-X editing performance has been amazingly smoothe and trouble free. Increasingly rare instances of lag or instability, mostly where I’ve come to expect them like upon reading in clip data for the very first time.
Once I have X in true edit mode, it just disappears like any other good tool.
It’s no difference from how Legacy initially annoyed me when I has to pause to render something to see how it really looked in motion – over time it became nothing more or less then the expected behavior.
For instance, when I select a clip with a whole bunch of connections, I don’t expect it to “grab” quite as rapidly as one with just a few. I suppose it’s a matter of habituation. But in my mind, I expect no impediments to getting my work done when I sit down at X, and that’s pretty much exactly what happens.
I know others have issues. But honestly, I rarely, if ever, seem to. It just works for me.
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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With a/v output on there is a constant play / pause lag on my two systems. This is a maxed out 2008 MacPro and 2012 iMac. There is something very wrong when this happens.
This is just a thing that shouldn’t be happening without the systems being taxes with FX.
The second “lag” issue is what you mention when moving editing blocks around. In general on the iMac things are smooth here but there is still this “rubber band” feel that’s not so good.
On the flip side, editing with some fx (3 CC’s + transformation and a few blur filters) works impressively on the iMac. It’s a bit silly the playback setting can’t be changed on the fly while editing as “High quality” stutters here but the “High performance” is a great boost and as you say – using that and skipping a/v output the tool almost becomes transparent. Even with 4-9 multicam clips it just keeps on running.
Still a few big issues to nail down. The GUI can become really sluggish as well which isn’t OK and the simple playback to ref-monitor is subpar.
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It has been pretty well documented on creative cow and others that FCPX does not run on a MacPro nearly as well as it does on an iMac or MBP in the area of the issues you are talking about. Doesn’t matter if its a brand new MacPro or the age of the one your describing. I’m sure theres weird tuning reasons by engineers as to why this is and them just never bothering to make it work as well as it could with old tech but, most pretty informed people think it as something to do with this:
https://software.intel.com/en-us/avx/
Apple mentions it quite specifically here:
https://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/all-features/Basically FCPX wants to take advantage of some modern extensions that let FCPX zip that dont exist in the processor family that MacPros use. There seems to be no feasible way to completely know for sure if this is true, and of course Apple would never admit, but at this point it seems to be the answer.
I would argue, that yes, rendering matters, a lot. So multi proc, all you can throw at it matters. But what matters more, what happens when you walk away, or how the program feels on a macro second to second basis stalling just that tiny bit with every decision you make. I’ve gone back and forth on numerous projects small and huge between MacPros and my macbook retina and the difference is apparent very quickly.
Basically, don’t waste another penny on MacPro upgrades if all you need it for is FCPX, the new one is imminent at this point lets face it and will at the very least support a processor with AVX and god knows what else.
Director, Editor, Colorist
http://www.trsociety.com -
[Julian Bowman] ” I’ll keep trying stuff and hoping Apple release the new MacPros with expediency :)”
Don’t sell your MacPro yet, do this instead; Get an Intel SSD. Install it in ODD’s lower bay, It’s very simple to do. Do not transfer older OS account or clone, install fresh. Get 4 identical HDDs (1,2 or 3TB) Go to Disk utiity and build an internal RAID 0 with the HDDs (+500MB/s) You can swap those anytime you want for others you already have, no problems with this besides shutting it down, unplugging and sliding them out and in again. Your RAID will pick up again when you plug all drives back in. Get Backup Drives also (FW800) and set up Time Machine to back all up with those every hour. All this may provide you some headroom for you to wait without breaking the bank…Since you have already upped your RAM and GPU, you might try this. I’m telling you, It works.
EDIT- Don’t use cheap WD Green HDDs, go for the Black ones or preferably the Enterprise ones for a good RAID experience.
Regarding FCPX. You’re using two LCDs, right? Place your Event Browser at the secondary monitor and leave the Viewer smaller at the main one along with the timeline, when full screen is needed press cmd+shift+f, hiding the inspector helps a lot as well, to delete project renders in File/Delete Project Render Files is a good recurring practice too and finally get used to Preference Manager to delete your preferences. Good luck!
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Hey Christian, thanks for this. I had briefly thought about Raiding my drives but the thought of decluttering my mac and reinstalling everything combined with general ignorance of the process pushed the thought out of my head. But buying a new iMac (ideally want a MacPro anyway) and external raid and back up storage is going to cost £4k and given I have already upgraded the ram and graphics card it seems like biting the bullet and spending only around £500 (SSD and new external drive for back up) is a sensible short term plan. Hoping it works 🙂
Some questions though.
1) I have googled and I see what you mean about the SSD in the second optical drive. Overclockers do a Intel 520 Series 240GB 2.5″ SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive for £240. Is that one you would recommend?
2) You said to ensure my 4 drives are all the same. Do you mean just the same size or the same size and brand etc.? I currently have 4 x 2TB drives in my mac and Disc Utility suggests that they are all Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 Media
3) When I Raid them all together, does it format them and delete everything on them? I’m guessing so and am transferring stuff I need to an external, but I don’t know so it may leave data on there.
4) I do a fresh install of OSX on my SSD and then set that as my boot drive. At that point I can delete the OSX on my current boot drive and RAID my 4 internals. Is that correct and it as simple as that?
Right, I think that is it unless it looks like i have missed the point on something. I am, shortly, going to be at a point of having completed jobs and not having to start the edit on other jobs, so this is a good time to give this a go.
Many thanks again for the suggestion and in advance for the answer to these questions above (or to anyone else who happens to answer them).
Cheers
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