-
Large projects
Thoughts? Seems like it would be less painful in the list view. But maybe not.
– Oliver
-
114 Replies
-
FCP classic used to be painful with large projects as well, it was only in the later versions that it improved. Hopefully it wont take as long with FCPX.
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
-
This is one of those things where I think the designers considered all they could do with 64 bit processing (clip skimming, filmstrips in the timeline, big thumbnails and filmstrips in the browser, dynamic database searches, background transcoding) and didn’t consider the hardware limitations of current computers with large scale projects.
I too think it would be faster with list mode, and I also wonder just how fast ANY NLE would be searching for 3 clips amongst 16,000, but there does seem to be a fundamental issue with the priority given to the display of clips over the management of the database.
I would like to see the ability to turn off some of these “enhancements” when working on larger projects to keep it snappy.
I also think his suggestion is completely reasonable to have search looking through all the events if nothing is selected. Then you don’t have the problems of caching and building thumbnails for all those events.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
-
Sometimes I see stuff and just shake my head …
I guess speed wasn’t a design priority.
“I don’t know; I’m not a programmer.” (from the video)
Franz.
-
I posted this over on that post, but I am cutting a doc and have to say I’m most disappointed with the responsiveness of the timeline. While I save a lot of time being able to skim and look at the thumbnails, sometimes moving clips around in the timeline and zooming in and out can be a huge pain. I often work in list view, and switch the thumbnails off in the timeline (working either in capsule, or audio only mode). It helps a little bit.
Just FYI, I’m on a 3.4 Ghz i7 with 16GB ram, 2GB ATI card. I bet the bottleneck in my system is the drive, however. (FW800 G-Raid). To help, I am cutting with proxy files, so the video is always flawless, but when it comes to the slow responsiveness of the NLE, I have to wonder if having a Pegasus Raid would speed things up.
—————-
FCP Guru
http://www.fcpguru.com -
Has anyone done any project responsiveness comparisons of working in Events/Projects/timelines where the files are only references (links to other locations) vs. optimized media vs. proxy media?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Movies are now private. :/
-
Matthew – Here is what I found helpful when working on large projects:
– Edit in a Project, not a compound clip in the Event. (I was doing this for smaller projects, on big projects it is a killer.)
– File size of the project file will indicate exactly how slow or fast the timeline will respond. I’ve got a 1 hr project with a 126MB project file and it crawls. I’ve got a 4 hour project that is just 4MB and it screams. Things that increase the size of a project file is split up compound clips that have lots of anything: edits, markers, ranges, etc. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRIeTZ-RNzc and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DEviM0eScU
– Every keystroke saves to the super inefficient project file, so on a large project lowering the volume of a clip by multiple keystrokes, or trimming, or color correction will grid the poor thing to a crawl.
– Audio filters, are actually processed as you edit – so best to leave out any filters, denoise, etc. anything but levels until a final mix.
– Close the timeline index – at least on my machine it slows things down.
– Group your long project into compound clips for each scene. FCP X seems to like this a little bit. Doesn’t do anything for the file size but you’ll find editing inside the compound clip timeline will go much faster (at least it feels faster) than having everything “broken apart” in the main timeline. My one hour project I divided into about 15 scenes. So once I opened a scene, everything moved much faster.
– Watch your ram. I have a little free app from the Mac App store called “Free Memory” it will list your free ram on the menu bar. Very helpful. To free up ram, just quit FCP X.
– Turn off background rendering. In fact don’t render at all. Unless you are using some complex effects it is just as fast to export without rendering that waste all the CPU cycles rendering while you edit.
– Only let FCP X see event you are using and the one project you are working on loaded. Even having an external drive with a even or project on it that FCP X can see will slow it down to a crawl.
I’ve been working in FCP X on a variety of projects, and I am just amazed and the incredibly inefficient way projects and events are stored (see my videos above). It feels like I am working in a program that can only do one thing at a time. This is so unbelievably bad, that it has to be at the top of the list for the FCP X team. In fact pretty much 90% of the problems I have with FCP X is performance. They have to fix it!
——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
[Timothy Payton] “Matthew – Here is what I found helpful when working on large projects:”
Wow! I thought you liked the program 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Timothy,
Thank-you for posting this. In almost six months since the release of FCPX I haven’t seen any information like this, and as I tend to work on larger, longer projects this sort of information is fundamental and crucial to my evaluation.
I am frankly astounded that such performance issues weren’t primary for the FCPX design team.
Manually managing memory …
Breaking sequences into “more manageable segments” …
Turning off the much marketed “background rendering” …
Leaving audio work until the mix …
I really have no words beyond the ellipses. Where is Aindreas when you need him?
Franz.
-
This sounds awful, Timothy.
Would you mind posting your system specs again?
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up