[Jim Waterwash]

I was told that the source media size did not matter and that it was just the quantity of compound clips within a project, that should be restricted. 35 compound clips added to a project from event browser keywords, was enough to bloat and bring my specific project to a crawl. I still suspect that the original source media length can play a role, as does the use of nested clips.

I’m starting to think that the people that are using fcpx with no problems, are simply not using compound clips as organizational units, but just maybe as containers for a few special situations. I have worked on simple projects with absolutely no issues at all.

For the record, I have seen my project file get way above 200 MB at times, almost a gig once, but usually with a force quit ending. I really don’t understand what they are trying to store in that project file to make it so big, if the media and render files are located in their own locations. Whatever it is, that file size or the processing that is going on within it, has been the source of my woes and slow performance that I spent a huge amount of time trying to diagnose. I’ve only been able to remedy it by breaking apart all my compound clips that originally came from the EB via keywords. Interestingly, if I turn them back into compound clips, the project file size does not expand and my system does not slow, but by then, I’ve lost all the useful linkages back to the EB.

[Jim Waterwash]

Working in the EB is great until you start having to break apart your clips within your projects, just to keep the project files from being so bloated that they don’t bog down your system. And once you break apart your clips, you loose references to intermediate compound clips in your EB (like those you may have used to sync external audio), as well as your painstakingly created keywords.

When my project files get over about 100 MB, everything gets very sluggish so I always keep an eye on that file size, reducing my use of compound clips as much as possible. Until they allow compound clips to be used as they were envisioned, nothing is VERY easy or intuitive in my opinion.

[Jim Waterwash]

So while those empty entries within my events was a suspect cause for some of my problems, I believe there is most probably a bug involving Event Keywords that have overlapping regions.

I have a region named “interview” within my event, whose region contains multiple keywords defining sub regions. I believe this is what is confusing FCPX.

While it is possible for me to now select all the keywords in the event browser’s list view and add them to a project, the resulting keywords that make it into the project are a bit scrambled around these overlapping keywords. This may be the cause for the project still taking over a minute to load (and I have the events and projects on an SSD now).

I just wanted to provide more details so the bug can be verified, avoided, or maybe even fixed..

[Jim Waterwash]

It worked! Thanks for your help.

Step #1 (exporting and reimporting the event’s xml seems to have done it.

I can now just select all my keywords and add them to a new project all at once. Before, when I would select a single keyword segment, after adding one to a project, it would take a minute or two of spinning beach balls before I could even use FCPX. Selecting more then about 3 and adding them would hang FCPX.

Thanks again.
Jim

[Jim Waterwash]

The more expensive logitech mice have programmable buttons and they include a good configuration interface that can be specific to an application.

[Jim Waterwash]

I wish Disk warrior had a demo.. If the event is corrupt, I wish FCPX could recognize it and fix it, rather than just spin balls and continue like everything is OK when it is not..

Thanks for your help.

[Jim Waterwash]

The only way that I was able to add all of my keyword sub-clips into a project timeline and avoid the beach balls (and the usual corruption of the project that often followed when reloading FCPX) was by adding the entire parent clip to the project.

I then used the defined keyword regions now within the project, to again chop up the video and delete the video that I had not key-worded. This totally makes no sense as a workflow, but I guess that is apple’s way if you are working with a long video source. I could not find an easy way to just select a keyword within a project and turn that highlighted region into it’s own project sub-clip.

Deleting preferences and using the maintenance tools suggested was of no benefit to me. I did not try the disk tools.

Getting the beach balls and then having projects not be able to load, has made me very fearful about FCPX corrupting my projects.

[Jim Waterwash]

Not sure if this will help in the latest version, but I had similar problems with a 4 minute final edit taking 3 hours to render. I found that for every sub-clip that I had made, if I turned off the default Color, Transform, Crop, etc, within the inspector, that my encode time dropped to 15 min. I was speculating that FCPX was doing extra work for these sub-clips even though they were left at their defaults. I had a timeline that had nested sub-clips, maybe 4 deep. It worked for me..

[Jim Waterwash]

I’m also having critical lag problems.

I have a new imac 27″. When I select a keyword in the events browser list view that is associated with a 1.5 hour video, it takes 3 seconds before the beach ball starts spinning, then about 90 seconds for it to stop spinning before the new keyword is highlighted. When I press “e” to add it to a project, I get to wait another minute. By then I forgot what I’m even doing, so my productivity has dropped to about 10%. I can’t work like this.

I bought a thunderbolt drive and expensive cable and it did nothing at all to help.

If I select all the keywords and add them at once to a project, my systems hangs and I have to force quit.

No idea what to do.

[Jim Waterwash]

One thing that I’ve noticed in managing my key-worded clips, is that the only way that I can see the listing of my keywords sorted by time-code, is if I select the parent clip within the event browser, using “All clips”.

That in itself, might often disable the use of your technique of smart collections. I’ve run into this many times already, where I am forced to use numbers at the beginning of a keyword, just to retain the ordering. I just simply trying to manage pointers into the video of each line of a poem.