[Mark Dobson]

Having had a long period of FCPX working really smoothly on a 2012 27′ iMac I recently started to have a lot of irritating problems since upgrading to Mavericks.

The most severe of these problems was loosing the data from several events when I merged them and then realising I also had a corrupted event which was sorted out by a further merge with an empty event.

[Bret Williams] “I find when I start to get the slightest but of weirdness I simply quit and reopen. Takes only a few seconds. If you don’t have a lot of projects/events mounted.”

That’s the first thing I do and it normally gets odd foibles like command Z not working sorted. The next stage is to run Digital Rebellions Preference Manager, re-start the computer and trash the trash. Normally that will have sorted out most problems although sometimes I trash the Final Cut cache file and also repair disk permissions.

On a fairly regular basis I also delete unused render files from my projects because they really start taking up a lot of space after a while.

Has anyone tried out XWiper yet – I’ve not read any feedback, but it looks as if it could be useful.

[Mark Dobson]

I’m pretty relaxed about it all.

I can’t afford a new mac right now and I’m not about to download any updates until the project we are working on is through in early 2014.

having said that . . .

[Mark Dobson]

Thank’s Tim,

Who said overseeing a democratic forum was easy? Things were sliding downhill fast in a way that was uncharacteristic and unpleasant and I applaud you for enforcing the line in the sand.

What seems like fun quickly turns out not to be fun. The fact that this forum thrives on strong disagreements, ironic humour and banter whilst still communicating highly technical information is what keeps me signing in.

So thanks for stepping in and in the words of Bruce Cockburn ‘Open up the window let the bad air out’

[Mark Dobson]

[Helmut Kobler] “The new Mac Pro may be great, I’m definitely looking forward to it, but that doesn’t excuse all the bullshit that’s come beforehand, and I’m really, *really* sick of being in an epic holding pattern because some grossly over-paid, comfy execs couldn’t be bothered to plan a smooth product transition.”

Helmut, not being able to get what you can’t get because it isn’t there for you to get it even though you want it badly isn’t going to get you what you want when you want it because you simply can’t have it because it just isn’t available, not just for you, but for all the other people who are also waiting for something they’ve been waiting for for a long time.

And as I used to say to my children many years ago when they were 3 years old and throwing tantrums over not being able to get what they wanted even though they really, really, really wanted it, ‘You will just have to patient and wait a little longer and its not because we don’t love you it’s just simply that you can’t always get what you want when you want it !’

[Mark Dobson]

[Andy Branner] “He’s a little too full of himself IMHO. He’s a marketing guy, not an editor.”

I’ve met Larry at a supermeet and he’s a very approachable genuine decent knowledgeable guy who know more than I’ll ever know about FCP / FCPX. He has an unusual style which many people really enjoy.

Michael Wohl’s fast, irreverent and cosmopolitan style appeals to me more. I’m just working through Mark Spencer’s Motion Type / Text tutorial and he’s good too. At the end of the day all of these training materials just point you in the right direction and FCPX does seem to be a pretty intuitive application to learn.

[Mark Dobson]

[Andy Branner] “I most certainly don’t see LJ in that club.”

You might be right – he was playing catch up after the last big update. Not sure why though as he is a major player in FCP(X) training and also has a high profile in the industry .

[Marcus Moore] “As for delivery, soon. Tomorrow or next Tues for sure. If these were consumer products Apple would never have let the release run this late, but since Apple isn’t worried about the “Holiday rush” on MacPro and FCPX sales, it’s a special case.”

Let’s keep our fingers crossed. And yes I did follow your thread about maxed out pricing but until we actually get the items listed on the Apple Configuration list we won’t know for sure and I’m certainly not in the market for a maxed out machine.

[Mark Dobson]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Yes, I have, and it falls into the usual Apple just-about-good-enough-but-not-very-much-more-than-that category of offering.
“

Now, where is your Christmas spirit?

[Mark Dobson]

[David Mathis] “Excellent stuff in there. Oliver keeps everything clear, concise and to the point. “

Yes, I would also like to thank Oliver for a series of really well thought out and impartial articles about FCPX and Premier.

So thanks Oliver!

Can’t say I’ve bought many of the plugins he has written about. I’m sort of waiting to see what comes packed with the updated FCPX. For instance has anybody tried out the superb new White Balance tool in iMovie.

[Mark Dobson]

[Jon Chappell] “I just wanted to clarify because it may not be clear to others reading your comment that the latest version of Preference Manager is compatible with Mavericks, but older versions aren’t, so if you experience problems make sure you’re on the latest version.”

Thanks Jon, I had thought I had the latest version but decided to reinstall Preference Manager and it did resolve my problem.

Despite all the version upgrades Preference Manager is still one of the two essential Tools for working with FCPX, the other being Intelligent Assistance’s Event Manager.

[Mark Dobson]

I haven’t encountered the issues you have been dealing with Oliver but FCPX seems to me to require ongoing maintenance and third party tools to work efficiently.

It’s a lot lot better than it was when it was launched, and a lot easier to run than FCP7 was and what I’ve observed through reading about specific problems that experienced and inexperienced users have encountered is that any problems or issues are very user specific.

To solve these issues requires some detective work and the guilty party is normally a piece of 3rd party support software that has not been updated to work with either a new version of FCPX or as I experienced recently, an upgrade to a new operating system.

And that is a risk that you take every time you upgrade. Whilst you know that you will get things working again a lot of time is lost sorting out issues.

I recently found that, since upgrading to Mavericks, I couldn’t escape from Full screen view without quitting FCPX. After a lot of time spent doing the normal things such as 1. Trashing preferences, 2. Repairing Disk permissions, 3. Trashing the Cache folder, 4. Removing all Matrox software and firmware until they catch up with Mavericks.

None of these worked. However I then reinstalled Digital Rebellions Preference Manager and Bingo, my problem was solved.

I think that preference manager has not been adjusted for Mavericks as I am still having issues with trashing preferences on an intermittent basis, but that could just be my set up.