[Rob Mackintosh]

Beware markers and compound clips.

My 50 minute PAL DV project ballooned to 1.2GB ( .fcpproject file ), performance was abysmal and eventually the project wouldn’t load. Maxed out RAM and processors. I created a new project from an XML backup but lost transforms, transform keyframes, audio levels, audio fades, compositing modes, and changes to the default title font, size, position.

I am working on a less than stellar machine, (3.06GHz Core2@ Duo with 8GB RAM and a Radeon HD4670 with 256MB vRAM) but one that meets apple min specs.

Finally managed to get the old project to load when I upgraded to 16GB of RAM ( FCPX was using 14GB at one point), replaced instances of the offending compound audio clip with gaps and the project shrunk to 30MB. I then copied the correctly transformed clips over to the new XML derived project.

The compound audio clip was VO that I placed on the primary storyline, turned into a compound clip then removed gaps, breaths etc using the range tool, adding fades and changing levels in it’s own timeline. I could have done this in Soundtrack Pro or Audition and exported a flat file but wanted to try out a new workflow in FCPX. I would use markers to remember where I was up to. Back in the main project I went through the VO and added around 260 markers to the compound clip and used the timeline index to quickly bring in video and stills as connected clips. Also added titles, some multiple layers. Things were slowing down but tolerable until I had to insert some third party clips and animations into the primary storyline, cutting the big compound clip up, each time I got to stare at the rainbow ball for about 10 minutes.

My take on what’s happening – each time you cut a compound clip FCPX is effectively creating and loading a new mini project (sequence), the more complex that sequence, the longer it takes. Each instance of a compound clip has it’s own independent links to media stored in an event(s). Having loads of compound clips is akin to having a lot of projects open in the project browser.

[T.Payton, who helped me with this on another forum, has a good video of the compound clip issue on You Tube.]

I ended up stripping out thousands of references to markers in the XML I used to rebuild this project.
There were only 265 markers attached to the compound VO clip and another 5 left within it’s timeline.
Each section (clip) of the original VO aif had references to multiple markers. One marker, which was no longer on the timeline, was referenced about 600 times)
It seems references to markers are copied to all clips when splitting and the reference persists when the marker is deleted. I reproduced the issue and submitted this to Apple:

Loaded 57 minute 48kHz aiff into new PAL DV project, 25i, Pro Res 422, stereo. Placed on primary storyline, put into compound clip, opened compound clip.
Project about 150KB in size.

Added 10 markers at 5 minute intervals.- showing 10 markers.

Cut aiff file into 152 clips. Exported XML showing 1520 markers.

Deleted markers. Exported XML showing 1520 markers. Project size about 6MB.

On primary storyline cut compound clip into 10. Exported XML showing 15100 markers.
Project file around 60MB. XML file 1.9MB

Cut compound into 30 separate clips. Exported XML showing 45300 markers. Project file now 175 MB. Takes a minute to load.

There are no markers in the project. The audio exported from the project hasn’t changed. The project file is over hundred times it’s original size.