[Michael Graziano]

I was just about to post to the thread when I read this.

I do have background rendering turned on, which makes sense that as the timeline expanded the increased weight would cause the pinwheeling. I’ll try cutting without it on to see if that helps. although, WTH this almost all straight cuts, not effects, titles or even tags yet.

All that said – don’t know why I didn’t think about this earlier – but I turned off audio and video skimming after my last post and performance improved *dramatically* – pinwheeling only a fraction of the time – back to 90% performance.

Maybe if I turn off BG rendering i’ll be back to 100%.

What are the pros cons of turning off BG render altogether vs. just trashing render files periodically? If i go with the latter, i.e. trash but leave BG render on, won’t that just cause the program to attempt to re-render everything that I trashed as soon as I’m back on the timeline?

thanks again,

mike

[Michael Graziano]

I hear you. Both my computer and drives are brand new. Like I mentioned before, not the most high performance, but still should be more than enough. I ran disk repair on everything to see if something was failing or corrupted, but there were no problems at all.

It’s still workable. And never pinwheels for more than 30 secs, but it’s maddening when trying to trim a clunky and/or long winded interview response and every time you use the blade the pinwheel comes out, even if it’s only for 5 seconds.

If this keeps up I’m going to get a thunderbolt raid. I thought USB 3 would be enough (I was able to get 2 brand new 4TB USB3 G drives for the same price as 1 4tb thunderbolt raid). we’ll see…

I looked at the render files. All of them put together only add up to 100gb, which shouldn’t be the problem.

In any case, before I pony up for the thunderbolt I’m hoping there’s some default or preference or something that’s causing the trouble that I’ve overlooked and to which someone points me

thanks for your input

mike

[Michael Graziano]

hi T, I just emailed you.

Thanks

[Michael Graziano]

Thanks everyone for your responses.

@ T Payton
Thanks for the good questions. here are answers with your original questions included:
What version of FCPX are you on?
10.0.8

What kind of media are you working on?
I’ve been creating optimized clips on import. I have plenty of storage and up until a couple days ago performance has been fine. Originally shot in 1920×1080 24p on Canon c100. Canon C300, and 5d

How many elements are on your timeline?
400 (is this outside the normal range? What is “normal”? Would be great to get your feedback on this)

How large is your currentversion.fcpproject file?
16.7 MB

Page outs is either 0 or a few kb

I think you may be right about it being an issue with my HD. I’m dumping everything on to a different drive now to see if that makes a difference.

@ Carsten

I get why breaking the film up into section and assigning each of those sections a different project/event could help performance, but to my mind you shouldn’t have to do that … I cut similarly sized projects on FCP7 with a slower older computer and slower older drives with no problem. Now suddenly I have to break everything apart?

That said, I’m not bashing FCPX. I’m converted and i think it’s great. ANd the workflow/approach you propose does make sense, and if it works well for you that’s all that matters, but I don’t think we should *have* to do this with large projects.

I actually think I’m having some kind of HD problem on my external.

@ Oliver

I’m doing none of those things you warn against

@ Michael ANgelo

Thanks for the encouragement. I haven’t even looked at event manager x. I have to have a fine cut of this by the first week of Sept. and a final cut by Oct 1 so I’m just trying to get through. As I mentioned, everything was working beautifully until a few days ago, which seemed to coincide with the time line approaching the 2 hr mark. The size of my event, however, has not really changed – i.e. all the footage was already imported and optimized well before I started this heavy editing. I’m thinking / hoping that it’s just an issue with my external HD (which totally sucks because it’s brand new).

Will keep you posted

Also, Larry Jordan mentioned trashing preferences as a way to improve performance – he was referring to earlier versions of FCPX though. I’m wary of doing this with 10.0.8. Anyone have any thoughts?
thanks again, mike

[Michael Graziano]

Thanks for the input.

Paul,

When you mention the logging feature are you referring to the “name folders” section of the shotput window or is there another more robust logging feature like the log and transfer/capture in FCP?

[Michael Graziano]

i do have specs for pro res, but I ended up using streamclip to convert archival files to HDV 1080i60 (same as other footage) and it worked like a charm. thanks again for all the help.

[Michael Graziano]

great. Thanks andrew.

[Michael Graziano]

All of the non archival footage, which is most of it, is HDV. I could’ve missed it, but I didn’t see an HDV export/conversion option in Mpeg streamclip. I’ll keep playing with it to see. thanks

[Michael Graziano]

right … I’ll try it.
Thanks for responding so quickly.

Do you suggest a particular format?