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How to optimize your FCPX experience
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[Andrew Kimery] “IMO, the X or Not forum has mellowed with age (as the program and user base have grown) where as the the CC or Not forum has the same level of vitriol today as it did 2yrs ago because the situation is exactly the same.”
FCP X or Not was a reaction to a change in the editing methodology. Adobe or Not was a reaction to the change in the business model. Different pain points and therefore different focus for each forum.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “FCP X or Not was a reaction to a change in the editing methodology. Adobe or Not was a reaction to the change in the business model. Different pain points and therefore different focus for each forum.”
Different pain points (though as I said there is a lot of slamming of Adobe’s app, not just the business model) but I still think it’s far fetched to paint the entire COW as Pro-Adobe and Anti-X. I mean, they each have their own ‘complaint forum’ (and I’d say the Adobe one is more venomous than the X one), unless, as Bill implied, that those people haven’t been to the COW in a number of years (and presumably didn’t frequent the Techniques forum).
Also, apologies for sidetracking an otherwise very useful thread, Oliver.
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Are you having the problem just with Blu-ray or with DVDs as well? Does it happen both when burning a disc and when saving an image file?
The 68% issue is a flag. Googling this issues suggests that a number of other people encounter problems around that point as well. Apple has a support document pointing out that time. I also found a thread from a couple of years ago on FCP.co that mentions that time as well. The last comment in that thread notes:
The 66% part sounds like the handoff to the embedded app, Create Disk was fumbled.
I had thought the most recent FCP X update was supposed to have addressed a number of Blu Ray encoding and disk creation problems. Have you updated to 10,1,3 yet?
From other forums, I recall that many users with problems were those who had long videos. If you have updated and it still doesn’t work, see if you can get a short section to encode and burn. (To save the expense of a test disk, I’d save it to hard drive to make a disk image.)
Not sure if that helps any, but perhaps points in some direction.
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Nick: just BluRay, DVD seems to work fine, but I think you may be onto something with the “create disk hand-off” idea. So as to not interfere with the rest of the thread, I’ll take this issue over to the techniques forum tomorrow instead, but thanks for the ideas.
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[Oliver Peters] “while 5K EPIC is better on PProCC.”
I can never remember my Mercury from my CL or my GL or whatever when it comes to graphics, but…
Don’t properly optimized PPro systems use a different kind of graphics card from a Mac? Can CC2014 or 2015 now use the GPU for playback decoding? And would any of this make a difference? Also, is your 5k on PPro experience with full or 1/2 or 1/4 playback resolution?
I had no luck with R3D 5k files on my MacBook Pro Retina – had to use the FCPX generated proxies, which worked great (roughly equivalent to 2.5k files, if I understand the proxy workflow correctly). My MacPro trashcan with D700s and a ton o’ ram handles the 5k files pretty well. Given the huge increase in data going from 4k to 5k, I’m not at all surprised the laptop just couldn’t handle the decoding & debayering in real time.
As a point of comparison, I wonder how Avid 8.4, with its new abilities to handle large frame sizes, handles 5k (if at all). My understanding is that the realtime proxy generation for playback requires a new and beefy computer to even hope to make this work. Would make an interesting comparison to PPro.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Maybe those X guys you mention should take another look at the COW instead of basing their opinions on a years old, outdated version of the COW. “
Tried that. When I got to know Thomas Carter of Honda the Other Side fame (A singular editing achievement that broke new ground and swept every major editing award in the UK), I invited him to stop by to discuss his use of X to cut that work. Afterwords that I got a very polite, very Brittish “no thanks” as to further participation here. Too bad too, cuz he still shares stories with us X guys on other boards about his work cutting stuff like the new Android spots now running globally. Who wants to attend a party where people constantly diss ones choice of tools? Few I know. Imagine showing up to talk editing and stumbling on an ill-timed Aindreas rant about what a waste of effort X represents for the entire editing universe? That alone is likely enough to send someone who’s regularly cutting multi-million dollar level work on it – heading for the door fast. Just sayin’
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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The thing was: with FCP7 it play or it didn’t play. Or it crashed.
With FCPX, it can try to play, it can give you beach balls, and sometimes it can crash. It’s in that way a lot less predictable, performance wise.
Of course the program is doing so much (thumbnails, an updating inspector, waveforms, …)
That being said, I cannot stress how little I see of this on modern computers with 10.2. I don’t do work with 50 audio tracks though, but I do work with some fairly long timelines sometimes, with 6 to 10 clips playing, and all of them having pretty heavy effects.The difference between FCP7 and FCPX seems to be that in my experience, the USER INTERFACE of 7 never really slowed down (if it didn’t crash).
In X, the user interface itself can sometimes slow down, which can make the app feel slower. -
[Jeff Markgraf] “Don’t properly optimized PPro systems use a different kind of graphics card from a Mac?”
Depends on the card you have. Most NVIDIA/PNY cards are CUDA accelerated, whereas ATI/AMD/Radeon cards would be OpenCL. FCP X can only take advantage of OpenCL and/or OpenGL acceleration. In Premiere, you can set your preferences to match the card or to use software emulation. In the case on my comparison, this was on a Mac Pro tower with a Sapphire 7950 card, so Premiere was set to OpenCL hardware acceleration. Therefore, FCP X and Premiere should, in theory, be making equal use of GPU acceleration.
[Jeff Markgraf] “Also, is your 5k on PPro experience with full or 1/2 or 1/4 playback resolution? “
Half.
[Jeff Markgraf] “As a point of comparison, I wonder how Avid 8.4, with its new abilities to handle large frame sizes, handles 5k (if at all).”
I can test that and get back later.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “[Jeff Markgraf] “As a point of comparison, I wonder how Avid 8.4, with its new abilities to handle large frame sizes, handles 5k (if at all).”
I can test that and get back later.”OK, I tested – all at 1/2 res (or best performance). PProCC2015 is very smooth. FCP X is moderate but stutters and drops frames. MC is worse than X. Plus, I can add Lumetri color correction to PPro and it’s still smooth, while performance drops with X when using the color board.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Connected titles and generators – these seem to cause me more grief”
A big yes from me on this also. Titles seem to slow it down a bit for me and when I got to the closing credits it really got slow.
I don’t know if anyone has done a long credit roll but I’d like to know how that went for you.
(I’m on a cheese grader though)
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