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FCPX should not be using up all memory (FCPX paused – out of application memory)
Well 2+ years later and it still seems like FCPX is work in/not-in progress…. I had two projects in an export queue, one was going to take up around 50GB in pro res, and the other around 80GB. Though I come back to the computer 8 hours later and it’s stalled on the second one at 80% as Mavericks has paused the application as it’s used up all of my 32GB of memory. There is ample disc space so there it no reason why it can’t have off loaded to the hard-drive. Though I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to use up 32GB of memory, I’ve tried purging the memory in Terminal but this didn’t release enough memory to make a difference.
This is a consistent problem I have had when working, FCPX slowly slows down when using for a number of hours until the point where it will barely function, or completely stops responding. I either quit or force quit and then reload and it’s perfectly fine and works normally again. This has only started happening on Mavericks OS X. Largely Mavericks has been fine, normally I wouldn’t update the system so early into a new release, but Mountain Lion has been my worst experience of an operating system ever, detestable pile of crap. Been running Mavericks since about July. This is the only Major problem I have faced.
I don’t want to force quit FCPX as there is like 3-5 hours of export progress already taken place. It probably will do the export if I do just the one export after reloading, as the memory is just clogged up with crap that FCPX clearly isn’t clearing from memory. The first export has no doubt left most of my memory consumed, and the application or operating system is too bugged up to handle memory management properly.
System performance is one of the improvements in Mavericks in general running that I have noticed, certainly the system runs faster than on Lion, and Mountain Lion was awful in too many ways to mention. But this issue is just becoming about one of 5 issues too many I have had this week with FCPX, I really want to change applications as I’ve pretty much had it. Around 2 years since release I would have thought they would have sorted out most of the basic crap by now… I really can’t be bothered with getting into a new application though, as I found some of the functionality of Adobe Premier limiting, certainly with CS5.5 … and it will no doubt be the case of another application and another set of issues.
Is there no way of releasing some memory without quitting FCPX? OR indeed stopping this happening in the first place?
Thanks…
2.4ghz 12 core Mac Pro 2012, 32GB DDR3 DIMM Registered ECC, Mavericks OS X 10.9
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10 Replies
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I restarted the export in the end, though after an hour of exporting my memory is back to almost full, though the memory pressure this time is very low, just a single green bar in Activity monitor as opposed to last time that showed a wide pressure display and with the bars red.
I assume that FCPX is using all available memory and then using virtual memory for any additional space it wants to use. So on the last export that failed I assume the virtual memory must have been full, which was the result of the paused applications and the error message of no more memory. Though there is no where in FCPX I can see that allows you to assign the amount of Virtual Memory. There was more than 100GB of space still available on both my home drive and the drive FCP was exporting to, so there is no need to have a lack of virtual memory issue, yet there is no option to change the amount FCP uses (that I can see).
Something I find puzzling is why there is such a lack of preferences in FCPX, it’s like Apple have some misplaced preconceived idea that their software is so intuitive that user inference is not necessary!? … if ONLY!
2.4ghz 12 core Mac Pro 2012, 32GB DDR3 DIMM Registered ECC, Mavericks OS X 10.9
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What 3rd party plugins/fx/templates are you using? I’ve had a few memory issues over the last few years and that was always the culprit. Switching to Mavericks leaves plugins in need of an update too most likely.
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Also,make sure the App Nap is disabled for FCP-X.
That new Maverics feature to help with laptop battery life can stop X’s rendering queue cold on any computer.
FWIW.
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Not using any 3rd party plugins, I have some installed into FCPX but I am not using them in this project… only plugin I am using is the Radial blur that is part of the FCPX software… though interestingly enough the problem arises around 82% to 86% in, the latest export has just failed at 86%. The plugin does sit about that far into the project. Though I can’t see why it will not process it… would it work better if it was rendered prior to export? I haven’t rendered the project as I was told it renders much faster on export and was not necessary prior to export. Also rendering this entire project would take forever, it’s not complex, just 1 hour 10 minutes long.
I will try exporting the section with the effect on separately and then import it as a clip back into the project, then export the whole project without the need to have the effect present. It’s only on a 20 second clip.
Activity Monitor shows red and wide area of memory pressure… not that I am entirely sure what memory pressure means, but I have a sort of loose interpretation floating in my mind that may or may not be accurate.
2.4ghz 12 core Mac Pro 2012, 32GB DDR3 DIMM Registered ECC, Mavericks OS X 10.9
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Thanks for that, that wasn’t disabled, though I can’t think why such a thing would exist when I am using a Mac Pro desktop that obviously doesn’t have a battery! Surely it wouldn’t have the facility or option installed in such circumstances, seems strange I even have the option for disabling it when not necessary in the first place.
I was using Caffeine to keep the computer awake, would that by default have rendered App Nap ineffective?
Thanks
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Well I removed the plugin from the process and am testing an export of just the last 20% of the project first of all… if that shows no errors then I’ll try the whole project again.
App Nap my well have been what has been causing the problem with my export queues then, I could get the render/export queues to operate, I just couldn’t run any other application or use the computer in any way whilst in the process as it would pretty quickly causes an error telling me that export had failed at frame blah blah blah… which is basic nonsense, it just screws up wherever it happens to be when some other external issue interferes with the process. Be interesting to see if that problem now goes away.
2.4ghz 12 core Mac Pro 2012, 32GB DDR3 DIMM Registered ECC, Mavericks OS X 10.9
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My card is an ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB
I’ve previously found exporting directly to Compressor to be problematic and to take ages… My CPU is only being used at about 8-10% whilst exporting currently.
I never had this problem with exporting in Lion OS X, whatever the project length or complexity
On the last point, that is nothing to do with a corrupt render, it will do it on every export I do if I use the computer in anyway. It will only render/export out if I do not touch anything. Loading another application will just cause the error, and seriously I mean it will do it every-time, and will state a different frame every-time. But if the computer is not touched during the export then it never happens. So it is absolutely nothing to do with the error it reports. I use to occasionally get this error on LION OS X, but it was very occasional. Now unless the computer is left by itself it will happen for sure. To further emphasise the point, when I created a queue of exports the second export would always fail, and I realised that the process of FCPX loading the first completed export into Quicktime was causing the problem. Since I changed the option in FCPX to “do nothing” after the render/export it now doesn’t report any errors on the following exports. They complete without problem. Well until this particular one at the moment, which is larger than any others I have done recently.
A larger GPU would be good, but vastly too much money, I couldn’t find anything that seemed to rate significant improvements over my current one for much less than £1000.00, so that is not an option I am willing to take presently. Though a lot of the statistics and advice was highly subjective and contradictory and platform dependant, so without trying them out it seems very hard to be sure without knowing someone who has done the same thing with a similar setup.
2.4ghz 12 core Mac Pro 2012, 32GB DDR3 DIMM Registered ECC, Mavericks OS X 10.9
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Yeah agreed… I just couldn’t take Mountain Lion, it was problematic enough on my Laptop which really has the most bog standard setup and is not normally used for anything too taxing, Lion was somewhat sluggish in performance, but highly reliable and I felt my Desktop Mac Pro was significantly under performing on Lion. I definitely notice the general improvement on Mavericks, but as with new operating systems, there are always downsides to an early transfer. This unfortunately and also surprisingly has been the only real big downside…
For now I have exported in two parts and then placed them back into FCPX and sent them to compressor, as they need to be uploaded. Will see later if it will export the entire project in one haul now I have removed the plugin. Compressor is definitely better at using the CPU, I am now using a whopping 26% of it. A memory upgrade to 96GB would probably help a bit, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that got clogged up in not much more time than 32GB’s does presently.
Thanks for help..
2.4ghz 12 core Mac Pro 2012, 32GB DDR3 DIMM Registered ECC, Mavericks OS X 10.9
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Though the export issue with queued items may have been affected by the App Nap feature that I have only just disabled, so that may turn out to have been the source of that problem, time will tell…
2.4ghz 12 core Mac Pro 2012, 32GB DDR3 DIMM Registered ECC, Mavericks OS X 10.9
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App nap drove me crazy until I disabled it. Even disabling it is done in an less than intuitive way.
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