[Jeff Kirkland]

I’ve output bigger and odder frame sizes from FCPX without any issue so it should output without a crash but if this is for YouTube then 4096 x 2160 is the widest you can go if you want it to be recognised. YouTube actually recommend UHD as the maximum so 3840 x 2160 would probably be even more likely to work.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

I’m not sure it can be done as a playable BD. The only way to fit that length of footage would be to use settings outside anything that’s valid for BD playback.

As a h264 file, you might try installing the x264 quicktime component and trying that in compress but by my guesstimate, the bitrate would be so low, the image would be unwatchable.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Install a copy of Black Magic’s speed test app from the Mac App Store. It’s free and will give you a rough idea of the drive’s performance.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

What is the media type and what drive are you playing it from?

Obviously the Mac shouldn’t have any playback issues so I’d start diagnosis by checking the hard drive throughput before looking at software or hardware issues on the iMac itself.

It’s a new machine so maybe you could also try running things past Apple support. Maybe I’ve just been lucky but they’ve managed to solve some really mysterious tearing-my-hair-out issues for me the past.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

If you don’t want to mess around creating the structure manually, theres an app called VirtualCameraCard that creates a sparse disk image set up for just that purpose. It’s available from https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

[Craig Alan] “What I need is: cover brown outs and provide power when needed with the feature to power down the computer.
“

You’ll need to test the software but from the times I’ve had similar installed, it’s worked about the same as holding down the ‘alt’ key while choosing shutdown from the Apple Menu. In theory it’s sending OS X a “shut it all down right now” message but in reality, if an app like FCPX is rendering, it will pause the shutdown and wait for user to confirm it’s ok to cancel the render.

In which case, the software will only be useful for an unattended shutdown if you’re using FCPX but not actively rendering. Otherwise, it’s just going to sit there with the dialog open until the power runs out and it crashes anyway.

And of course, FCPX is only one of along list of apps that will pause/cancel a shutdown if they think it will cause you to lose data.

I’ll be interested to hear what happens when you test it.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

Well, Apple has been shipping El Capitan for quite a while now and FCPX still isn’t 100% compatible with that so I don’t think, in Apple’s eyes, the state of the hardware has much to do with the performance of the application. I would think that say 5% slower scaled vs unscaled wouldn’t be seen as a significant issue.

I’m not saying it’s show-stoppingly slow, and it would be greatly influenced by the GPU driving it, but I do personally think the UI updating feels a little more sluggish if I’m not using the screen’s native resolution.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

If there’s a difference, it’s going to be in the 5% range, if anything at all. I played with FCPX in all the configuration’s you’ve mentioned while trying to decide on my monitoring options last year, and I didn’t notice any perceptible change in speed from setup to setup.

I’ll add that a 4k display for using FCPX will have to be massive. At smaller desktop friendly sizes like the 27″ 4k display I own, text is way too small to read for any length of time.

One thing I have noticed that seems to make the FCPX user interface a little slower is using a scaled screen resolution. If I use my 4k display scaled back to something I can read, screen refreshing doesn’t feel quite as snappy.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

I use compound clips a lot. Like Bret, I use them for compositing but I also use them as a way of making a quick snapshot of just a small part of a timeline and I always put music tracks, and sometimes temp graphics, inside a compound clip because then I just need to change the contents of the compound clip to globally replace the media in the project.

I think most issues happen when the nesting goes too deep. I try not to put compound clips inside compound clips if I can avoid it but you can probably go two or three levels deep without much of an issue. It’s more that it gets confusing than any performance problem.

Anyway, compound clips aren’t something to avoid – they are a really useful tool as long as you don’t overdo it.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Jeff Kirkland]

What format is the media?

All I can think is that there’s a codec issue of some sort. You might try logging in with a new user account to see if it’s a user-specific or system wide issue.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland