[Douglas K. dempsey]

Phooey.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

I have a friend who upgraded to 10.1.1 on his 2010 MBP 17″, and is being tortured by beach balls. Meanwhile, my copy is on a brand new MBPr 13″, 16GB RAM, i7 and SSD. Media on RAID, FW -to-TBolt adapter. Flies along beautifully, though needs proxy files for multicam clips to play seamlessly.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

I feel your pain. I have done so many tests I no longer know what I know.

Grading in FCPX on a recent 27″ iMac looks perfect.

It never looks that good again on any other hardware, and varies from app to app.

It looks redder on my MacBook Pro 17.” It looks yellow on my NEC 24.” It looks contrasty on my 13″ Retina. But all of that is to be expected.

But the kicker, and this is what Dustin is spot on about — precisely the same clip, uploaded to Vimeo (where it always gets darker), is washed out if played on the Vimeo site via Safari, contrasty and darker if played on the Vimeo site via Chrome, and looks closest to correct if played on the Vimeo site via Firefox.

These relative results hold, whether played on iMac, MacBookPro or NEC 24″ LCD — although each hardware of course adds its own look, as is reasonable to expect.

I have tried Share via FCPX with no adjustments, Send to Compressor with all manner of variation including the x264 codec and lots of variations in the settings (HD 1-1-1 etc), and also adding FCPX contrast and gamma corrections.

As I said, I start to lose track of what has worked, because it seems to vary project to project anyway. Only consistency is that different browsers deliver difference user experiences.

I assume some of this is me, as I am not all that accomplished in grading and such.

SO… while it is a mess, I am not prepared to blame it ALL on Apple software. Just some of it!

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

My test is working on native HDV footage, and occasionally some AVCHD.

I don’t optimize because of the time and the storage demands, since this is documentary and I immediately throw out 90% of the material, looking for the “moments.” THEN the selects can be optimized, proxy etc.

So working with the raw Long GOP is a good test. MBPr 13″, i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD — in other words, their max package on the little laptop. Should be similar to your Air I think.

Thing rips along fine on single timeline, up to 30% connected clips and all audio detached, double-tracked, EQ effects added. Even with titles over the top, a little slow to render but then moves just fine.

But put just TWO of those clips in a multi cam and try to work, it all falls apart. Convert over to proxy, and it it’s fine again.

The SSD working with external drive (2TB or 4TB RAID, FW-via-TBolt adapter) seems to make a big difference, as this is already better performance than my theoretically faster 2012 iMac.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Really. This is like a parody of “build on demand” wherein the normally hubristic Apple somehow anticipates NO demand, builds a couple dozen units and then sits on their hands to see how demand will shake out.

I can hear the plant manager: “Okay, prototype team, pack it up. People are actually buying the Tube, so no more one-offs. We’re tooling up to make … HUNDREDS of these things!” 🙂

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Yikes! Will be following this thread closely, as that is a disaster.

I used to get intermittent crackles or pops — usually at cut points in the audio tracks — in FCP7, which seemed to be created by FCP, since the original files had no noise. I always assumed it was my fault somehow, and the only work-around was to re-import audio.

Anything heard in realtime on the tracks, of course, went through to the export.

But have not yet heard this on FCPX, e.g. noise created at export. Mostly working with dual mono (one track from on-camera mic, other from boom or lav) in which I sometimes mix the two if the camera mic reverb enhances the sound, usually in wide shots, or just do with the boom/lav otherwise. No export of audio for any other enhancements, and no hardware mixer, just rubber-banding tracks with keyframes and output, usually Export Master File.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Excellent, Bill. Thanks. Another useful aspect of X that helps you handle professional workflows efficiently!

D

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Sorry, haven’t worked on that big a gig; can you explain “sparse bundle dance?” Thanks

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

I don’t know of any “apply a cross fade” transition that works on detached audio. The work-around for me is to “Expand Audio” and then overlap by trimming out head and tail, apply the built-in fader. If you control-click on the fader you have choice of linear, 3dB etc.

As for adjusting level on “an entire track” — well there ARE no tracks in X. You can select the clips that make up the “track” you want to define, and make those into a Compound Clip. A CC can accept a global filter, correction or level adjustment.

When having trouble with clip attachments, remember that you can move the attachment anchor to another clip, by placing the cursor where you want the attachment anchor to go, and use option-command-click on the two clips.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

https://www.notebookreview.com/news/western-digital-my-passport-2tb-review/2/

Reviewer suggests software to test performance, and discusses the WD Passport USB3.0
drives mentioned elsewhere on the FCPX forums

Doug D