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Is it my Mac?
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I also recently updated from an aging Mac Pro with 5770 to the top of the line iMac with 32GB memory, Fusion drive and GTX680 w/2GB and external Thunderbolt RAID – my performance is dramatically better with everything. FCPX runs great even with files larger than 1080p. The only things that are still sluggish are plug-ins such as Magic Bullet stuff that is obviously not optimized for FCPX (I love how Red Giant still blames Apple, yet most of my plug-ins run in real-time) Photoshop is now faster than my very fast PC.
I’m very happy with my purchase and now waiting on Apple to update the Thunderbolt Display to match the new iMac display.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
[John Davidson] “so any blue ray burning you want to do will have to be done with a usb 3 external burner. I don’t know about purchasing one of those but they probably exist.”
Anything that works USB2 will work fine over USB3, including burners. For FW and FC you can get Thunderbolt adapters.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Lance Bachelder] “The only things that are still sluggish are plug-ins such as Magic Bullet stuff that is obviously not optimized for FCPX (I love how Red Giant still blames Apple, yet most of my plug-ins run in real-time)”
That’s because they are correct. There is a bug in rendering. General real-time performance and UI responsiveness with third-party plug-ins is awful. All developers off-the-record complain about trying to stay ahead of the curve with issues that Apple tosses at them, due to updates in the app and OS. It’s an Apple issue that all developers are struggling with.
There is no FCP X plug-in architecture like there was in “legacy” or is in Premiere Pro, MC, Vegas, etc. It is FxPlug by way of Motion, so all effects in FCP X are Motion templates, not true plug-ins. Apple can deviate from that, so the built-in stuff runs faster. Outside developers can have fast plug-ins if they don’t do very much with them – that is don’t gang a lot of processes into one filter. These have to be designed and published as Motion templates. So, for example, BCC8 for FCP X are filters that install into Motion and then a subset of those appear in FCP X, because Boris has built the corresponding Motion templates.
Red Giant MB Looks, Sapphire Edge Tiffen Dfx and the DFT products work completely differently. All processing is external of FCP X, so the plug-in is really a “conduit” that sends a frame to the engine (a separate application) for processing. This is returned to FCP X as the effected frame. This adds overhead and in all likelihood may require some non-standard “hacking” because of the limitations of FCP X.
The bottom line is that if you want fast-running filters, stick to those that are purely Motion templates. If you want advanced filters that give you a lot more control – use After Effects and buy the filters for that.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “The bottom line is that if you want fast-running filters, stick to those that are purely Motion templates. If you want advanced filters that give you a lot more control – use After Effects and buy the filters for that.”
Yep. Totally agree. I find that when most Apple products have issues it’s with 3rd party products or software. I feel like we avoid so many problems by building our own filters, generators, and transitions. I love my red giant products, but not having to maintain a database of 3rd party plugins and keeping them all up to date is a big time saver.
My dream in life is for all 3rd party plugins to be sold over the App store and auto-update with Apple’s software update. I’d like for Adobe to do that too, but I don’t think that will ever happen.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[Oliver Peters] “That’s because they are correct. There is a bug in rendering. General real-time performance and UI responsiveness with third-party plug-ins is awful.”
There is certainly a bug in rendering but not everyone seems to have it, MB Looks works fine for me in FCPX, UI is as quick as PPro and After FX, frame rate in FCPX with filters applied is better than AFX but not as good as PPro.
I haven’t had the green frames problem at all (yet!)
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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Thursday Last week, we set up our new 27″ iMac maxed out with RAM, 3TB Fusion Drive plus 27″ Thunderbolt display. We moved our 1.5 TB event from a MacPro which was also Maxed out. I was experiencing all the issues you mentioned on the MacPro. Sluggish performance, me having to wait for the computer to catch up. Im happy to say the performance on the iMac v the MacPro is like chalk and cheese.
Go out and get a new iMac now ….. I said Now!
I noticed that this has been uploaded to youtube. I cut this in FCPX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbS82klNGvU
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I’m not talking about rendering – I’m talking about playback performance – Red Giant stuff sucks, it hasn’t been improved in any app in years. Yes they off-load some heavy lifting to graphics card and this was great 3 or 4 years ago, but they’ve fallen way behind in the era of CUDA etc.
I have a LOT of paid 3rd party plugs in FCPX – regardless of the architecture and Motion blah blah – they all playback very smoothly compared to Magic Bullet stuff which chokes – even in Premiere etc. The only other really slow plug-in I’ve tried in FCPX is Film Convert, which is even worse than MB stuff.
But thanks for the tech lesson and deep insight into what ALL the companies are saying “off the record”.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
[Lance Bachelder] “I have a LOT of paid 3rd party plugs in FCPX – regardless of the architecture and Motion blah blah – they all playback very smoothly compared to Magic Bullet stuff which chokes – even in Premiere etc. The only other really slow plug-in I’ve tried in FCPX is Film Convert, which is even worse than MB stuff. “
Sorry, but there is no blah, blah, blah. It’s physics and engineering. EVERY plug-in that uses an external pipeline to an outside engine has the same problem. I’m also talking about playback, not rendering. Nearly all 3rd party plug-ins for FCP X are Motion templates. That is a completely different architecture and it affects performance. For example, most of the FxFactory plug-ins use this structure. Just having a lot of 3rd party plug-ins doesn’t mean you have the ones that cause issues. CoreMelt’s various plug-ins also have issues, thanks to bug in the app. For example, do you have Tiffen, Sapphire Edge or any of the DFT filters? These are glacial as well. FWIW – MB Looks on Premiere Pro on my machine plays reasonably well in real-time at 1/2-res.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[craig slattery] “We moved our 1.5 TB event from a MacPro which was also Maxed out. I was experiencing all the issues you mentioned on the MacPro. Sluggish performance, me having to wait for the computer to catch up. Im happy to say the performance on the iMac v the MacPro is like chalk and cheese.”
Thanks for that. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone post a direct comparison. Good news.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
This is just getting stupid now – EVERY plug-in does NOT have the same problem – many perform fantastic with smooth playback that allows a workflow without rendering until the cut is done – sorry you don’t believe that – maybe the physics part is your Mac? Although many plug-ins performed well even on my old Mac Pro with 5770.
Back to cutting and applying plug-ins….
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
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