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When working with XDCAM, FCP X performance worse than FCP 7?
I have the feeling that FCP X has much more performance issues in working with XDCAM footage then the old FCP7.
If I work with XDCAM footage in FCP 7 (Quicktime Wrap, trough XDCAM Transfer, so NOT a transcode) I can make a multicam clip with 4 angles and have it play perfectly all the way trough to cut.
Sources are on a Firewire 800 7200rpm drive.If I use the same drive in FCP X, on the same hardware with the same clips, and make a multicam-clip, I get dropped frames after a couple of seconds playing, which is a pitty because FCP X has much more flexibility in it’s multicam features (changing the multicam-clip in the Angle Editor).
It seems ridicilous that I would have to convert every angle to Proxy Prores, if the old 32-bit FCP 7 can effortlessly do this.It’s not the first time I have been seeing this. When working with 3D clips one time a couple of months ago, I noticed much better performance in working in FCP 7 then FCP X when working with XDCAM EX clips. So much that I ultimately did my edit in FCP 7, because that could play the footage perfectly from the internal drive and work with it, while FCP X stuttered.
I hope the MXF support that Apple promised this year, is going to make things better…
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9 Replies
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You sure you’re comparing apples to apples? What do you use for playback settings in 7? Many people leave it at dynamic and may have dropped frame warnings turned off. In X you would turn on better performance to get the same.
Obviously it would have to be the same frame rate too. 4 720p24 clips will certainly play back easier than 4 1080p30 clips will.
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Do have “better performance” selected in prefs?
Steve Connor
“The ripple command is just a workaround for not having a magnetic timelinel”
Adrenalin Television -
I’m doing very much An Apples to apples comparison:
Same footage, better performance is used in FCPX, dynamic RT in FCP7.
Don’t get me wrong: both play, but performance is much worse and choppier in fcpx.
In FCP 7 it Keeps playing smooth.
And it’s the second time that I did a comparison (different projects) and in both cases I came to the Same results.No one noticing the same?
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I just grabbed 4 random xdcam clips off the system and made them a multicam clip. 1080i60. They seem fine. They don’t appear to be dropping frames, but if I have the multicam viewer on the certainly get the dropped frames warning. But everything is fine and seems normal with just a couple minutes in the timeline. Maybe as a project gets bigger you get some slowdown?
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Many people say there’s some performance problems when using older Macs with Final Cut Pro X. For example I can play easily XDCAM HD with Premiere Pro or FCP7 on my Macbook Pro 2009 but not on FCPX. On newer Macbook Pro 2011 I can play XDCAM HD as well on FCPX than on FCP7. I guess that’s because FCPX is optimized to work with quite new Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors.
Premiere Pro and FCP7 works much better with older hardware. So that might be the problem. It seems new Macbook Pro runs FCPX much better than top-line 2009 Mac Pro.
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There’s something to this. CS6 runs worse on my i7 iMac than FCP 7. Mainly because it makes no use of the GPU and I feel t relies heavily on that for performance.
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Maybe. Hardware is an i7 iMac 2.7 ghz from 2010 quad core, 8GB RAM.
Yes, it’s if I put the multicam viewer on that I see the frames dropping. As one camera was shooting out of the hand and moving a lot, it’s difficult making editing decisions on the fly when you see that camera choppy (the rest is less of a problem because they are more static shots).
It makes cutting on the fly, which is the whole point of multicam, rather difficult in this case – if not impossible.But in the multicam viewer in FCP 7 they all play very smoothly.
I noticed the same once with performance on a i5 recent MBP 13″ (previous generation) but not in multicam. Just cutting 3D XDCAM clips (well, actually, normal 1080i clips, but with a side by side image).
Performance was much choppier in FCP X then FCP 7.As MXF is the native format of many XDCAM formats, I can only hope that the promised MXF support that’s coming will also include better XDCAM performance.
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Do a test and copy the source files to your internal SATA.
Try the same.
It’s not recommended to edit from system drive but this way you have SATA speed to test compared to FW800
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Hi Paul,
tried that today but I got the same results.
Best regards,
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