FCPX user interface responsiveness

[Jeff Markgraf]

Well, that would have been too easy. AV is off. So that ain’t it, kid, that ain’t it. (Bonus points if you get the reference.)

Can’t pull the TB cable, since I need the PCI card cage for the Fiber raid card. Maybe I’ll try setting the tim line to something easy like HD and see if smooths the odd video stutters.

Anyone else want to weigh in on the audio Tourette’s and the beach balling?

[Jeremy Garchow]

That’s the next suggestion, work in an HD timeline.

Also, run a disk speed test on your hard drive to make sure it’s not a disk performance issue.

Your Proxy media is somewhere around 2.5k. Even though it’s a low data rate, it’s still pushing a lot of pixels around.

Also, try switching to better performance and double check your are, in fact, in proxy mode.

[Justin Crowell]

I just want to weigh in here to say that I’m seeing similar things to what the video is showing. The most frustrating is dragging a clip in from the browser and having to wait for the timeline to figure out what’s going on. I love FCPX’s timeline, but I can’t stand that lag.

FWIW, I have a similar machine to the one in the video (i7 Sandy Bridge with adequate throughput from a raid).

Editor, Producer, DP
JustinCrowell.com

[Nicholas Kleczewski]

I too can attest to the slugish responsiveness. Granted it takes me working on a fairly complex project, but nothing any nle couldn’t handle in the past.

I bet others would agree, but you can almost feel it incrementally get slower with every new edit decision, effect, compound clip (still the worst offender)

I don’t know if it’s related to the database style that FCPX is built on but it’s like FCPX is engineered to juggle some exact number of balls at once. Stay under that magic number of balls and it’s a blazing fast experince. But the minute you add even a single ball over that limit the whole system collapses and the juggler is sweating bullets keeping up with what’s falling from the air.

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’m speaking totally ignorant of how fcp is really juggling all this info at once, but I wish there almost a conveinence vs performance slider you could change based on the needs of a new project.

30 sec simple spot? Slide to full conveinence mode and sail right through it. Editing a 30 min show with tons of footage, effects etc? Slide to performance mode, lose some of the thumbnails, waveforms etc on the fly but get fcp7/avid user interface responsiveness back.

I’ve literally lost hours on projects adding up all those little half – 2 sec pauses on every decision. It can be quite a soul crushing experience.

[Mitch Ives]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I still find it to be much less beach ball prone than earlier versions. Sometimes things seem to lag a bit, but not beachball.”

I’d agree with that. I do have slowness in some areas and it’s quicker in others. I haven’t bothered to track it scientifically, but it’s definitely experiencing some slow downs here and there…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

[Jeff Markgraf]

Quick update, Jeremy.

1. Changing timeline to HD had no effect. Just puts a render bar over everything.

2. Definitely in proxy mode. Better performance is selected when looking at original footage, but as noted above, I can’t use original at 5k on the laptop.

3. The freezing/beach-balling is almost definitely related to trimming. Especially trimming too fast.

4. I may try using the system audio card instead of the Kontrol-1 USB audio interface I’ve been using for the last couple of years. I’ve noticed some odd audio behavior since X. Maybe there’s a conflict somewhere.

Thanks for troubleshooting with me. Anyone else is welcome to weigh in.

Jeff M.

[Justin Crowell]

If there is a conflict, I’m wondering if it might show up in the Console. Maybe you should try and leave that open while you work?

Editor, Producer, DP
JustinCrowell.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jeff Markgraf] “2. Definitely in proxy mode. Better performance is selected when looking at original footage, but as noted above, I can’t use original at 5k on the laptop.”

I haven’t worked with 5k Red proxy footage in FCPX. When you open a Proxy file in QT, what pixel size is it?

[Jeff Markgraf] “3. The freezing/beach-balling is almost definitely related to trimming. Especially trimming too fast.”

What’s your disk speed and is the Library on your system drive or GSpeed? Wherever your library is, that’s where your proxy files are. If you don’t have the latest SDD Retina, that might be your bottleneck. That also relates to your answer of question 2.

[Jeff Markgraf] “4. I may try using the system audio card instead of the Kontrol-1 USB audio interface I’ve been using for the last couple of years. I’ve noticed some odd audio behavior since X. Maybe there’s a conflict somewhere.”

In the Applications > AJA Utilities folder there’s a conflict checker. Try running it with the Kontrol-1 plugged in.

Jeremy