Suggestions on FCPX performance

[Bret Williams]

Since you’re not using an i5/i7 processor with Quicksync, all the decompression of h264 codecs is left to your processor, which is almost 10 years old. Do your processor a solid and optimize everything. You noticed playback was easier with the optimized 4K. That’s why.

_______________________________________________________________________
https://BretFX.com FCPX Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists
Hang Tag https://bretfx.com/product/hang-tag
Overshoot Text https://bretfx.com/product/overshoot-text/
Outliner https://bretfx.com/product/outliner/
Clock Maker https://bretfx.com/product/bretfx-clock-maker/

[Steve Connor]

[Shawn Malone] ” Is it any better to have the Library & Footage on different drives? It sounds like a logical assumption.
“

No I would say it’s better to have both on your fastest drive

[Shawn Malone] “I have background rendering on. I see usually this is recommended off, but doesn’t this render all of my transitions and clipFX? I would want them rendered each time I use them to preview them. Or am I missing something there? “

The general rule is to set this to “off” transitions and FX should be pretty much real time on your system. I never render timeline fx at all and use “Better Performance” mode

[Joe Marler]

Brett mentioned an important point re Quick Sync. Besides using optimized media you could consider using proxy only which gives similar performance improvement but without the 6x size increase of optimized media. Optimized media will reduce the CPU problem but can create an I/O bottleneck due to the large file sizes. By contrast proxies reduce I/O overhead since they are typically about 60% the size of the original H.264.

If most of your content is 1080p then proxy of that is 1/2 the linear and 1/4 the pixel resolution or 960×540, but that’s usually enough for editing decisions. Proxy of 4k is 1080p. The only thing proxy doesn’t support is alpha channel transparency. If you have mixed proxy and non-proxy material, proxy mode is a global setting so you can only see one or the other.

Given the age of your machine using proxy or optimized media may be your best option.

Your Xeon CPU is Bloomfield (a variant of Nehalem) which was Intel’s 1st generation in the “Core” series. Current generation is 8th (Coffee Lake), so there are 7 generational gaps between your CPU and current ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_microprocessors

Each generation slightly improves IPC (Instructions Per Clock) so after many generations there can be a significant cumulative performance improvement at the same clock speed, such as maybe 50%. Note this varies with specific workload.

Nehalem to Broadwell IPC differences: https://us.hardware.info/reviews/6215/2/intel-five-generation-ipc-test-broadwell-haswell-ivy-bridge-sandy-bridge-and-nehalem-results

Broadwell to Coffee Lake IPC differences: https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-Review-Kaby-Lake-and-14nm/Clock-Clock-Kaby-Lake-Skylake-Broad

In general I would suggest considering a newer machine, especially one with an Intel CPU supporting Quick Sync. FCPX on the Xeon-powered iMac Pro uses AMD’s similar UVD/VCE hardware.

[Andreas Kiel]

[Shawn Malone] “Motion Templates currently set to Library”
Never ever do that.
This will screw up your library, projects etc when you change machines/users.

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

\”He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.\” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks for the great info! Never knew about Quicksync. Actually, when I first started using FCPX, I was unknowingly optimizing all of my footage. As I continued to research while using FCPX, I found the large file sizes with optimized media and turned that off except for 4k stuff. Now that I think about it, that’s about when it seemed like FCPX started having hiccups. It definitely appeared to run smoother and quicker on my first few edits before I switched that (it especially seemed much more responsive than Premiere!). Space isn’t too much of a concern right now so I don’t think it’d be a big deal.

Thanks so much for the help!
Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Wow, thanks for the CPU breakdown. You can read all this stuff online, but sometimes you just need a specific succinct explanation and that was it! Financially, I need to stick with this system for now, and I was just trying to see if there were any tweaks I could do to help it along…again, I am not unhappy with it as of now, just trying to smooth it out as much as I can with what I have.

The reason I went with this MacPro is that the PCI slots were appealing, and my peers all said it will perform great compared to more recent Macs, with the added expandability being a plus…but I’d be willing to investigate more on newer systems for the future. If I go with an iMac or newer trash can MacPro, what is the GPU situation? Does the better CPU negate having to have a massive GPU? Being unfamiliar with anything but PCI cards, if I would still utilize a hefty GPU, what is the connectivity? Is it external? Or are they sold with custom configured GPUs of your choice?

I want to eventually go that way, but this seemed like the best way to go at the time, financially and upgrade-wise. When I bought the system, I had almost no edit work (I was just jumping back into it after doing mainly audio for years, having started video editing back in the analog age!). Now I have basically around the clock edits, so I am very happy with the MacPro and that I am making a living with it, but I would like to upgrade when I can afford it. Any other tips on upgrades would be appreciated and thanks again for the valuable info!

Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks! I will give both of these options a try! As far as the library/footage location, I figured it would be less work per drive if they were separated. Does having them together make it easier/faster for the library to access the footage?

Thanks again,
Shawn

[Shawn Malone]

Thanks for the reply! Would this be the only reason to keep them in the Motion Templates folder? I’m a one-man operation so there’s no sharing of edits/machines. I realize that could happen at some point though. I figured it was a good thing to keep the OS drive (where my motion templates folder is) from doing another activity.

Thanks again,
Shawn!

[Bret Williams]

Yup. Keep motion templates out of the library. Many of us have tried and tried but it always goes awry. You’ll end up with multiple “copy 1, 2” versions of effects all over the place. It was an ok idea that they didn’t implement well.

_______________________________________________________________________
https://BretFX.com FCPX Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists
Hang Tag https://bretfx.com/product/hang-tag
Overshoot Text https://bretfx.com/product/overshoot-text/
Outliner https://bretfx.com/product/outliner/
Clock Maker https://bretfx.com/product/bretfx-clock-maker/

[Andreas Kiel]

[Bret Williams] “You’ll end up with multiple “copy 1, 2” versions of effects all over the place”

And that will lead into a situation that your system is even more busy – and needs more memory.
Each instance needs it’s own memory.
One user on the Apple FCP forum had around 20 instances of the same custom template.

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

\”He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.\” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil