[Dave Gage]

[Bret Williams] “When things start to bog, I often look at the available RAM with a little widget I have. Usually notice it has dropped to next to nothing. Even on a 32 gig system. I’ve noticed this in any project. ProRes, XDCam, h264. A quick reboot of X fixes it. Which takes all of 20 seconds or so.”
I do the same. I use the “Free Memory” app which I’ve had very good luck with.

I’ve been meaning to start a thread about quick tips to speed up FCP X, but haven’t gotten around to it. Here’s a few things that speed up my fairly simple workflow though:

* Keep the amount of Events and Projects loaded as few as possible.

* When possible, usually after I’m done with audio mods, I change Clip Appearance to single blue bar to avoid thumbnail and audio waveform re-draws.

* If I do need to show audio waveforms or video thumbnails for extended periods, I open the filter browser as it literally shortens the Project timeline and thus requires less screen re-drawing. This is really one of the best tricks I’ve found to keep FCP X from bogging down if I must have the waveform view.

* When possible, I close the Inspector so it doesn’t keep re-calculating aspects of the timeline that don’t need recalculating. Unfortunately, since I’m constantly adding and editing lower 3rd text notes, I’m usually forced to leave the Inspector open.

* If I get a “lag” (which is not common for me): I occasionally pause within an edit and let FCPX “think” for a few seconds (it seems to need to get caught up from time to time). Along these lines, if I need to move a text clip on the timeline, I hit the “Space bar” to stop Play which seems to help it not bog down.

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Mathieu Ghekiere] “Once you begin working with
A. 6 layers of video, all with a timecode generator on top of it, sometimes in a timeline of hours long (we have some pretty specific needs)

B. Having video that needs to be exported QUICKLY, because you are exporting 10 things and they all need to encoded to H.264 and online in a couple of hours, for instance, then you really begin to feel the speed of Prores.”

None of that applies to me. I’m fortunate in that I have no clients, I only do video for my small business which ends up being 3 X 45 minute online classes a week that I screen capture and then edit. I typically only have one layer of video and one lower 3rd at one time with about 40 or so lower 3rds per class. I do always need to to tweak the audio with some compression/limiting, EQ, and noise reduction. Most times I don’t need any color correction, but when I do, it’s fairly minimal. So, my demands on FCP X and the computer are low.

All in all, I’ve been very lucky with FCP X. I have had a few minors issues that required workarounds, but now that I’ve a solid workflow set up, it’s all very smooth and easy.

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Mathieu Ghekiere] “although working in Prores does help in speed.”

Mathieu and Bret,

I don’t and have never really had a need to make Proxies or Optimize. When I shoot with a camera, I get AVCHD files that I then ClipWrap to use in FCPX, which works fine. But mostly, I do ScreenFlow captures that I export as H.264 and then use directly in FCP X. I’ve tried PR422 and have not seen much difference in speed or change in quality for final export. Also, I never rendered the timeline unless I really need to see how a transition or effect will come out.

Is speed, mostly I’m guessing for Color Correction, the main and only reason to use Proxy or Optimized media? Are there any other reasons I might be missing that I’m not aware of?

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Bret Williams] ” You can easily fix that by deleting their program files from the app folder. :)”

I’ve mostly moved over to Open Office anyway except for Excel stuff, but I hear ya.

[Dave Gage]

[Bret Williams] “”Final Cut Pro has quit unexpectedly””

Sadly, since I upgraded my version of MS Office a few weeks ago, Word and Excel both have the same problem upon quitting. Man, I can’t stand upgrading. If it wasn’t for making my living using computers and technology, I wouldn’t do it.

Dave
(Still on: OS 10.6.8 and FCPX 10.0.4, ’cause everything works to my satisfaction)

[Dave Gage]

Thoughts from Macintouch.com are basically the same-
https://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/applications/index.html#d07may2013

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Craig Alan] “Plus you can do things like run disk warrior from one partition to trouble shoot another.”

I do the exactly the same thing. I have 10.6.8 on the main partition and 10.8.3 on a smaller 70GB one. I’ll leave 10.6.8 when I feel necessary, but so far it works great for what I do.

Dave

[Dave Gage]

[Jari Innanen] ”
Ripple Training iPad app worth investing $1.99:”

Wow !! That’s an unbelievable deal. $1.99 for 2 hours of instruction in a total of about a half GB download (and Apple takes 30%). I don’t understand the pricing for that being in the music video instruction business and also selling video instruction, but more power to them if they can make money off that. Maybe the thinking is that this instruction is for 10.0.6 and that making something is better than nothing since their main product now is 10.0.8. Still, an incredible deal for the customer.

Dave

[Dave Gage]

Alex,

Take a look at a recent post I made-
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/19530

Do you ever run DiskWarrior? I had all kinds of problems with an external RAID drive used purely for FCP X media, Events, and Projects. I and OWC thought it was a bad enclosure, but it turned out that either FCP X and/or Carbon Copy Cloner were doing something to the directory structure because the drive got hosed bad a couple of times. Now that I run DiskWarrior every month or so, I’ve not had an issue. (No, I don’t work for the company, but it may be the best $100 I spent last year.) Aside from this problem, I’ve been fairly trouble free with FCP X since day one.

There are lots of different individual reasons why people have problems like yours, but one can be directory structure corruption, so if you can run DW on it, it may not solve the problem, but it can’t hurt. In terms of other possible causes, T. Payton is about as good as they get around here, so he may have some other suggestions to try also.

I wish you luck,
Dave

MBP i7, 16 GB RAM, (Early 2011 model)

[Dave Gage]

Let me re-phrase this into a different question.

What makes the fans come on in a MBP more, drive usage or CPU, RAM, and GPU? The main reason I ask is because I use ScreenFlow to capture live Adobe Connect classes and when both of these are running at the same time, my MBP fans go nuts. I wouldn’t care except for all the white noise created that I later need to try and gate and EQ out when I do the class edit.

Do you think that SSDs would run cooler and help keep the fans from revving up so much, or is it mostly the CPU, GPU, and maybe RAM usage that causes the fans to do this?

Thanks,
Dave