What does Apple need to do better with FCPX?

[Joe Marler]

[Robin S. Kurz] “I can’t speak to either codec…So not a yardstick that is in anyway relevant to me personally. But again, the video above comes to a very different conclusion, as does this article/video: https://bit.ly/2MkTS5C … though, granted, the version of Premiere is not mentioned (nor that of FCP) in the latter, so it could potentially be the pre-update version. But it is from yesterday…”

It likely applies to almost any Long GOP codec, including AVCHD, Sony XAVC-S, all the variants of H.264, and HEVC. This means almost anything shot with a smart phone, GoPro, any consumer camcorder, most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, etc.

There were two previously-mentioned videos, one by Jason Vong and the other by Max Yuryev. Jason Vong focused almost exclusively on Premiere *playback* performance of 4k Sony XAVC-S. Any comparison to FCPX was incidental and the details were not well documented.

As opposed to 1x speed *playback* performance, editing operations often involve a lot of rapid scrubbing forward and backward on the timeline using JKL or other shuttle commands at 2x, 4x, etc. Those tests are very revealing, but Jason never mentioned doing those.

But he claimed to get better Premiere 1x playback performance after updating to 12.1.2. The release notes do state hardware accelerated *decoding* on MacBook Pro and iMac Pro running High Sierra. That is new.

However I have a 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro running Premiere 12.1.2, and I can’t tell any difference. It was sluggish before on 4k H.264 scrubbing, and it’s sluggish now. The same JKL commands on FCPX on the same hardware are much more responsive, but the iMac Pro is less responsive on H.264 than my top-spec 2017 iMac, probably due to AMD’s UVD hardware vs Quick Sync.

Re the H.264 encoding tests Jason and Max did which showed FCPX much faster, Premiere has many encoding options, and it’s easy to pick one (e.g, CBR or VBR 2-pass) that makes export much slower. By contrast for “Master File – Computer”, and probably various other presets, FCPX defaults to VBR 1 pass at a fixed bit rate, about 20 mbps for 1080/29.97 and 30 mbps for UHD 4k/29.97. That is an efficient encoding method which can be hardware accelerated. On Premiere if you pick CBR or VBR 2-pass, it will silently fall back to software-only encoding. It’s possible that’s what happened on the tests by Jason and Max.

When I do Premiere vs FCPX encoding tests, I always pick VBR 1-pass and the bit rate that best matches FCPX. Then I examine the output files with Invisor to ensure the file was encoded as expected. That helps ensure a fair and even test.

I just ran some more tests, this time using a simple 60 sec UHD 4k/29.97 XAVC-S clip. Exporting to UHD 4k/29.97 VBR 1-pass at 30 mbps, here are the results:

2017 10-core Vega 64 iMac Pro:
=====================

FCPX 10.4.3: 44.1 sec
Premiere 12.1.2: 34.9 sec

2017 iMac 27, 4.2Ghz i7:
================

FCPX 10.4.3: 40.5 sec
Premiere 12.1.2: 44.1 sec

In Premiere if I encode with different settings than the default used by FCPX “Master File – Computer” default, I get the following times:

Premiere 12.1.2, iMac Pro, CBR 30 mbps: 1:37
Premiere 12.1.2, iMac Pro, VBR 2-pass 30 mbps: 3:12
Premiere 12.1.2, iMac, CBR 30 mbps: 2:54
Premiere 12.1.2, iMac, VBR 2-pass 30 mbps: 5:54

So, you can pick H.264 encoding options that will make Premiere much slower than FCPX. However when using equivalent encoding options, as of 12.1.1 (the early 2018 release) Premiere is essentially as fast on the same hardware as FCPX at H.264 encoding, and even faster in some cases.

Premiere remains much slower than FCPX at *decoding* 4k H.264, and especially at typical JKL scrubbing operations typical of editing. But even FCPX is somewhat laggy at this, despite the iMac Pro’s horsepower. For 4k H.264, I typically must use proxies for fast, fluid editing. When proxies are used, Premiere and FCPX are *both* fast at 4k H.264 timeline operations.

The point is Premiere has generally caught up to FCPX’s H.264 encoding performance, plus added important features like collaborative editing. Similarly, Resolve performance has vastly improved. Apple cannot stand still on either performance or features, but they cannot sacrifice stability. It is difficult to achieve all three of those.

[Robin S. kurz]

[Joe Marler] “The point is Premiere has generally caught up to FCPX’s H.264 encoding performance… “

Again, an area of little concern to me personally. My work consists of 95% of everything else you mentioned in addition to other things where the best possible performance is the key to avoid ulcers. But thanks for the numbers and background nonetheless.

[Joe Marler] “Similarly, Resolve performance has vastly improved. Apple cannot stand still on either performance or features, but they cannot sacrifice stability. It is difficult to achieve all three of those.”

Sure, both are making serious strides forward. No question about that. But then the last seven years have proven that Apple/FCP are clearly NOT “standing still” by any means. Aside from the fact that BOTH are and will always be TRACK based, which has become a complete no-go for many. Certainly for me. And I have yet to meet anyone that has both worked with and understood the trackless timeline that thought going back would actually pose any sort of workflow advantage rather than huge disadvantages in comparison. So there’s that. Simply shaving a few seconds off of an MPEG encode doesn’t exactly move the needle enough to even be noticed and, in the bigger picture, little more than a bandaid on a gaping wound imho.

And yes, as you say, you cannot sacrifice stability. Especially if it’s just for the sake of yet another quickly tacked on feature that is only relevant or for the appeasement of a minuscule but vocal amount of users, which Adobe is become quite infamous for (and BMD more and more as well from what I’m hearing), especially in the context of PPro. Fortunately not something that Apple is in the business of doing, whether that means having to look to 3rd parties for certain specialty features irking some or not.

– RK

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[Greg Janza]

[Joe Marler] “Apple cannot stand still on either performance or features, but they cannot sacrifice stability. “

An issue that might be slightly off-topic: I freelance at a number of post facilities that are Apple based and lately ( within the last year) each and every place I’ve worked has a variety of stability issues.

I’m working at facilities that have a multitude of trashcan macs or imacs and both are equally unstable. These facilities are running san systems as well as Adobe CC and not FCPX.

The trashcan macs have overheating issues which result in rendering problems. The imacs have multiple issues that often result in hard crashes.

I mention this because the facilities that I work at have full engineering support and so the systems are maintained as best as possible.

Windows 10 Pro | i7-5820k CPU | 64 gigs RAM | NvidiaGeForceGTX970 | Blackmagic Decklink 4k Mini Monitor |
Adobe CC 2018 |Renders/cache: Samsung SSD 950 Pro x2 in Raid 0 | Media: Samsung SSD 960 PRO PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 | Media: OWC Thunderbay 4 x 2 Raid 0 mirrored with FreeFileSync

[Oliver Peters]

[greg janza] “The trashcan macs have overheating issues which result in rendering problems. The imacs have multiple issues that often result in hard crashes. “

I also have heat issues with the trash can. I added an app called Mac Fans Control, which allows me to set the fan to run at max speed all the time. This helps.

Interesting about the iMacs. We are running 3 Retina iMacs and 3 iMac Pros. All with the Adobe toolset. Our graphics guy pushes After Effects really hard. No issues. Only occasionally the SAN volumes spontaneously dismount on some machines. But the Macs themselves are fine.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Greg Janza]

[Oliver Peters] “Interesting about the iMacs. We are running 3 Retina iMacs and 3 iMac Pros. All with the Adobe toolset. Our graphics guy pushes After Effects really hard. No issues. Only occasionally the SAN volumes spontaneously dismount on some machines. But the Macs themselves are fine.”

As luck would have it, the engineer at this facility (which has a dozen edit suites) is swapping out the trashcans and older imacs with new fully decked out imac pros so in theory the instability issues should improve.

I’m working on one of the new imac pro’s today so it’s my first chance to put it through the paces.

Windows 10 Pro | i7-5820k CPU | 64 gigs RAM | NvidiaGeForceGTX970 | Blackmagic Decklink 4k Mini Monitor |
Adobe CC 2018 |Renders/cache: Samsung SSD 950 Pro x2 in Raid 0 | Media: Samsung SSD 960 PRO PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 | Media: OWC Thunderbay 4 x 2 Raid 0 mirrored with FreeFileSync

[Ronny Courtens]

Oliver,

Are you sure Energy Settings on all iMacs are set to never sleep? Going into sleep mode is one of the main causes for workstations getting dismounted on a NAS.

– Ronny

[Oliver Peters]

[Ronny Courtens] “Are you sure Energy Settings on all iMacs are set to never sleep?”

Thanks, but yes. This actually happens in the middle of someone working. It primarily happens on the machine used by our AE artist. So he’s taken to working only locally when he’s in AE and then moving files back and forth to QNAP. However, it also happens when that machine is idle. Primarily that machine and not too often on any others. We’ve tried both SMB and AFP and direct 10GigE, as well as TB3 through a Sonnet adapter. Don’t really see any change, although it has settled down a bit lately.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Tangier Clarke]

I’d be happy with just the ability to batch export from FCP X or batch send to Compressor, better relinking tools and reporting, batch syncing, and for FCP X to be able to read the chapters in a Quicktime that it created…just for starters.

Some additional nice treats would be:

• To have the crop and retime buttons/menus, all other buttons, and timecode display available above the timeline when using viewers on a second display.
• Being able to rename clips in the app which would also change in the finder the way FCP 7 did. This feature alone would allow me not to have to use EditReady.
• To have the exported role names in a multitrack Quicktime come back into FCP X as those same names.
• To be able to shift-select all channels at once (rather than manually selecting each one) in a polyphonic audio file.
• Have the forward/backward selection (using T) from FCP 7 back.
• Speed ramping curves more akin to FCP 7
• Expand a compound clip in place, rather then in a storyline.
• IG Story preset for Compressor – yep it’s a part of my workflow now – vertical and 30p. I can only do this in FCP X at the moment.
• Have content scaled inside a mask do actually that.
• Some smart Apple-esque features like auto detect the best audio channel and disable the others for dialogue. Not perfect, but just a starting point to save time from enabling/disabling channels. Another unique feature would be auto marking where the clapper hits…for those times when you have to manually sync content. These two are far fetched but they would be tantamount to the magnetic timeline for me in reducing clicks and time.
• The ability to save a Compressor batch session. Couldn’t we do that a while ago or am I imagining that?

[Tangier Clarke]

I forgot one long-standing thing that I wish were resolved. With it’s database backbone, I wish FCP X had some way of restricting the creation of duplicate or sometimes multiples of the same clips in a library. Too often I cam cleaning my events and libraries to isolate the original imports that have been created and their keywords.; clips that are in use and not. This takes up too much time. Merging same clips and their information (metadata, ins and outs, etc.) could be a welcome option.

I find that duplicates and multiples of clips seems to be just par for the course working in FCP X and especially when moving XMLs back and forth between editors. The organizational and search capabilities of FCP X are great, but this is one item I wish Apple would address…and Reveal in Browser working better in identifying the clip. I tend to have to Shift+F several times before I can see the clip.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Great list, Tangier. I hope you sent it to Apple through their feedback menu.

https://mathieughekiere.wordpress.com