Question for new MacPro owners

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jason Jenkins] “So you are maxing out at less than 40% CPU capacity. “

During this project’s playback, yes.

When using Episode or doing transcoding, the CPUs usually hover around 1200%

6 core D700 will be great, I’m sure.

Jeremy

[Julian Bowman]

Hi, my experience is not so awesome I have to say.

on my 2008 2.26 mac pro I experienced a lot of lag in actioning things, such as opening the plugins area, user the Inspector, even moving clips onto the timeline or around the timeline. I would get as many, if not more crashes, than with FCP7.

Though I am getting fewer crashes with the dustbin, I still get them. I still experience lag in opening the plugins area and in the inspector (we’re only talking a couple of seconds but it all trips up the creative flow).

I did some render tests with projects on both machines early on and my old mac was winning in some cases.

I have deleted some of my Pixel Film Studio plugins (one i had caused FCPX to crash every time i tried to render for example).

Sometimes I definitely feel a bit of an improvement but with some MotionVFX logo plugins (made in motion 5) I mostly cannot play them back without them freezing in playback mode on the new mac whereas the old mac at least played them with a stutter.

I also get weird playback on regular pro res clips for about 5 seconds before it ‘settles in’ to the playback.

I guess I should delete all my plugins and reinstall them one by one and test them all to see if there is improvement – and at some point I guess I will but I am a one man band with jobs constantly on the go so it isn’t so convenient – as it may well be some conflict with plugins, but on the whole I am underwhelmed.

I don’t regret buying it, it’s small and neat and lower power consumption etc etc., but i didn’t get the performance boost i was expecting.

[Mitch Ives]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Not one render, background or otherwise, until export. “

I sure wish that was true with me… lots of things need to render…

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

[Eric Santiago]

Whatever happened to the days when we used to say…it just works 😉

All kidding aside, we run all three NLEs here and its been good with one exception.
The Sapphire on Avid MC and OS 10.9.3 is not playing nice.
Have to render to play anything back in real time, even the simplest of things.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I’d suspect your plugins.

When using third party plugs, the performance isn’t as great.

In my scenario, there are no third party plugs and multiple transform, grade and animation.

All real time and full quality.

[Mitch Ives]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I’d suspect your plugins. “

You may be right, but that would be like saying, I suspect the problem with your car is the engine. If you remove the engine, the noise will stop. What’s a car without an engine?

Apple’s whole premise with FCP X was to leverage the third party market to develop the things Apple no longer has any interest in doing. Unless they come up with a system like the one they use for apps in the App Store, I don’t see this fix coming soon. That would actually be a good thing if Apple rated plugins for speed and compatibility… or maybe just certify certain ones that are not slowing down FCP X.

I’m happy that your projects don’t require any additional capabilities, but for most of us, I suspect that we’ll need to use plugins to fill in the gaps…

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

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Eric Santiago] “Whatever happened to the days when we used to say…it just works ;)”

Long long gone.

Long gone.

[Gary Huff]

[Eric Santiago] “Whatever happened to the days when we used to say…it just works ;)”

You came to the realization that it was a statement full of hot air? 😉

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Mitch Ives] “I’m happy that your projects don’t require any additional capabilities, but for most of us, I suspect that we’ll need to use plugins to fill in the gaps…”

It’s more like you are trying to put third party chip in the factory engine computer and things aren’t working as expected.

I don’t use a lot of plugins as After Effects is my plugin, but LUT Utility works tremendously and in real time, I also use SliceX which works well (not quite real time, but I don’t expect tracking to happen in real time).

The plugin architecture has gone major changes since launch, so perhaps things are still getting worked out. This isn’t a blight against the tube as it’s obvious to me that it works very well, but I guess you’d have to take my word for it.

I can’t spell.

[James Culbertson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Real time mixed res multicam…”

FCPX is a lot snappier for me on my new MacPro in almost all ways except native multicam editing. I’ve been doing a lot of 2-3 cam multicam edits lately and I would have expected native playback to be better, but get a certain amount of lag while navigating in the timeline. Not really a problem since I transcode all the footage. But I’m wondering what I can do to improve native playback in that scenario.