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Optimizing Final Cut
Hi there,
I am facing a rather puzzling problem with Final Cut Pro 7. When I am editing HD material, the reproduction progressively slows down, skipping more and more frames as I go and becoming noticeably choppy. Things seem to be worse if I am using an external monitor to play full frame. If I reboot the computer, things seem to get slightly better. If I delete de preferences, I go back to square one (everything is fine but slowly going south).
Here is the kick: I have changed my entire system, and the problem persists. I had it originally with an i7 MacBook Pro with external FW800 drives. Now I have it with a top of the line Mac Pro (12 GB of RAM, SSD, dedicated external SCSI RAID…). The performance is equally bad, no matter the project. Plus this same system is running Avid, no problem whatsoever.
I suspect it has to do with the settings. I have played with the RT settings, but that doesn’t appear to help. Things seem to go south the more I render, so I tried moving my renders folder to another dedicated drive. Nothing.
Do you guys have any ideas? It feels like if the hard drives where slowing down, or the RAM running out (although I have more RAM than Final Cut could ever use).
Thank you very much!
V.- -
7 Replies
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Hi Vicente,
FC application seats on top of a complicated Mac OS, and is always more possible that glitches, slow downs and malfunctions happens because the system than because the very application. After a clean and proper install of the OS and applications, the system is such mess that hardly can properly run the applications. With the use, the mess increases.
My advice is for you to start by optimizing the System and all your HD. I use DiskWarrior that helps me to make thing running without glitches and applications and HDs working fast.
rafael -
[Vicente Perez] “When I am editing HD material, the reproduction progressively slows down, skipping more and more frames as I go and becoming noticeably choppy.”
Are you working with HDV, MPEG 2 or long GOP footage? If yes, they are your problem. If working with ProRes, you should have no problems.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Creative Pro Users Group -
Thank you for you answer Steven. Unfortunately, the problem happens with ProRes too. My latest project was ProRes 422 LT. It is true though that the symptoms may be worse when I use other formats.
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Thank you very much, Amador. That was my first instinct, and when I moved to the Mac Pro I took the opportunity to reinstall everything from scratch. But the problem was still there… That said, I will find some time in between projects to wipe out the system and reinstall again. It cannot hurt 🙂
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[Vicente Perez] “Thank you very much, Amador. That was my first instinct, and when I moved to the Mac Pro I took the opportunity to reinstall everything from scratch. But the problem was still there… That said, I will find some time in between projects to wipe out the system and reinstall again. It cannot hurt :)”
No reinstall it, clean it.
When ever I make a clean install from scratches, DiskWarrior shows that at least 30% of the directories are “out of order”. Mac OsX is unable to optimize him self.
rafael -
Thanks for the tip. I will give it a shot!
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I have cleaned everything, reformatting and reinstalling the system and… unfortunately, the problem is still there. Everything plays well at first, but after some time FCP begins to skip frames. If I keep working, soon the viewer and canvas freeze altogether (though I can still see picture through my external monitor). And if I keep working still, I end up getting an “out of memory” error.
Only way to reset the problem is by trashing the preferences, which take you back to square one (from where the slippery slope begins again).
I am currently working with 1080i H264 footage, at 23.98. I would blame it on the H264 compression, but in the past the same has happened with ProRes also.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
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