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Rendering in FCPX
Downloaded the 30 day trial and worked with it. It is pretty, and it appears fast, until I start to do anything that typically needs rendering, then it grinds to crawl as the background rendering eats up all of the computer power (Macbook Pro 2.55, 4 meg of memory). I assume that my machine which is running snow leopard is just too limited a machine for it. Should I turn off background tasks and go back to getting a cup of coffee while it renders out effects and imports files?
I also seem to lose in-points with great regularity. I haven’t mastered the technique / work flow that keeps them in place. Any suggestions?
The interface is cool looking. I like the keyword / database tools. The timeline , oops, tracks/storyline seem arbitrarily different. Never had a problem with the old way of doing things! It has to be learned just like the old tools had to be learned. The fact that it is different means that it is not intuitive to those who used something else, first. Really see no reason at this point to use it in place of FCP 7 or AVID, which I am using more and more.
Chroma key works well, but does take a long time to render and certainly not in the background. Somewhat easier than doing Chroma key in Boris Effects,but fewer tools to work with for problem keys.
Interesting first pass at a new interface.
Question: where are the updates that were promised last summer? One small update does not make an update stream. Wish Apple would communicate more about where they are headed and get more user input.
Regards,
Jeremy -
7 Replies
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[Jeremy Cole] “grinds to crawl as the background rendering eats up all of the computer power (Macbook Pro 2.55, 4 meg of memory)”
Yeah, 4 gigs is just barely scratching the surface; 8 is helpful; 64 bit apps will eat it all up. I’d suggest rendering after the fact, at specific times, rather than using background rendering.
[Jeremy Cole] “I also seem to lose in-points with great regularity.”
Click on the clip and they disappear. One method people use is F- favoriting that section of a clip.[Jeremy Cole] “where are the updates that were promised last summer? One small update does not make an update stream. Wish Apple would communicate more about where they are headed and get more user input.
Here’s a link where apple lists the exact changes for 1.01. You’ll never see them communicate more about where they’re headed; that’s been a long term marketing plan of theirs. Apple does as Apple does with such things.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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Get more RAM. Turn off background rendering and then Render All as needed. Yes, (to me) rendering in all cases feels slower that the equivalent renders in FCP7. Snow Leopard is fine.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Just in the middle of my first paying job with FCPX (with a fresh, clean install) and the slowness of rendering is proving to be a really big issue for me – my paltry 8GB of RAM appears to be wholly unequal to the task.
Because I’ve got render-requiring effects on every clip in the timeline I effectively can’t edit until they are all rendered, but it takes so long to render them that it seriously impedes the process. It feels like being back in the stone-age with an early version of Media Composer. It’s certainly a long way from the speed of FCP7 – and that wasn’t exactly great anyway.
Not sure where all the vaunted 64-bit power of FCPX is getting used – it feels excessively RAM-hungry for no very obvious benefit.
…
(Otherwise I am really enjoying cutting on it and I’m finding that I just can’t live without the “power of gaps” when I go back to anything else.)
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Just in the middle of my first paying job with FCPX”
I find that once you get outside of the sweet spot of soundbite-based, news-style story packages, FCP X starts to become very cumbersome to use. I’m glad you like cutting on it, but the more I use it, the more I feel that by every measure, except maybe some improved performance, it’s a huge step backwards from FCP 7.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I find that once you get outside of the sweet spot of soundbite-based, news-style story packages, FCP X starts to become very cumbersome to use.
You’re so right – and actually the piece I’m cutting is only 90 seconds long anyway!!!!!
The poor performance of FCPX in terms of basic speed doesn’t seem to have come in for much criticism, which surprises me. Maybe everyone is running it on machines with massive amounts of RAM …
I can happily cut ProRes SQ (and even 4444 at a pinch) on my MBP with only 2GB of RAM in FCP7 – but even fairly basic editing in FCPX is virtually impossible on the same machine.
I’d love to know where the massive performance hike from 64-bit is supposed to show itself – I’m sure you can answer this conundrum far better than I can.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I’d love to know where the massive performance hike from 64-bit is supposed to show itself – I’m sure you can answer this conundrum far better than I can.”
Probably chewed up by the chrome and glitz and animation in the UI itself. Note that the more projects you have in the project browser, the more of these have to be buffered into RAM at the start. Thus the slower the load times. You might try running with background render off and set the prefs to optimize for performance (not quality). You might also do better using a proxy workflow and then swap out media at the end.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I’ve only got four versions of the one 90 second project in the library; I’ve turned off background rendering because that’s not useful at all; I’m working with ProResLT media …
Anecdotal evidence suggests that it doesn’t like render-intensive effects – looks like the RAM gets maxed out very fast …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com
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