FCP X: Improving Performance
(Updated March, April and July, 2012.)
I’ve been getting emails recently about speed issues with Final Cut Pro X. So, I did some digging to learn how to improve the performance of your system, and, along the way, discover some common trouble-shooting tips.
PERFORMANCE
FCP X takes full advantage of the Mac in terms of processor speed, drive speed, RAM and graphics cards. Decoding common camera codecs like AVCHD, XDCAM HD and others can be extremely difficult mathematically. This is no problem for an up-to-date system, but many people are trying to work with HD codecs on older laptops with slower graphics cards and minimal RAM.
These systems are fully supported as a minimum system requirement and, if you were doing minimum things (editing with DV or ProRes Proxy, for instance), then you will generally be fine. But if you are trying to work with professional formats under pressure, you need a system that is configured properly for that level of work.
The best tip for anyone who is experiencing slow response is add more RAM. I recommend a minimum of 8 GB, if your system supports it. And, if you own a MacPro, buy a faster graphics card with more VRAM. You will notice an immediate difference in speed, no matter what video format they are working on.
Another issue that slows performance, aside from the codec, is the image size. Larger images are harder to work with than smaller images.
UPDATE – MARCH 16, 2012
Another issue that affects performance is your graphics card. Earlier versions of Final Cut were totally dependent upon the speed of the CPU. Final Cut Pro X changed that by tightly integrating the graphics chip with video editing.
Don Smith pointed this out recently to me, when a reader complained of very slow performance on his MacBook Pro:
MacTracker says your computer has the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics card inside with only 256 MB of SDRAM shared with the main memory. That’s your problem I’m afraid. Only ATI (now AMD?) cards will accelerate FCPX and Motion.
I just went through this. My company bought a very nice NVIDIA card for the Mac Pro I work on and I posted a note on CreativeCow about how FCP X was “running like a stubborn mule”. I was guided to replace the NVIDIA GeForce card with an ATI card and the improvement was stunning. With the NVIDIA card simply changing from Safari back to FCP X would take 20 seconds and the spinning pizza of death would appear a couple of times. All clicks took two or three seconds to get a response. Shifting the position of a graphic would lag behind then jump ahead and overshoot.
Now, I’m in editing heaven with the ATI card. FCPX and Motion respond like BUTTAH! Just keep an eye on what graphics card is inside. For example, FCPX and Motion also run like buttah on my 17″ MacBook Pro 8,1 (Early 2011) because it has an AMD (ATI) Radeon HD 6750M graphics card inside along with the power-saving HD 3000 graphics.
Larry adds: Thanks, Don, for the suggestion. Here’s a link to Apple’s list of supported devices for Final Cut Pro X: http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/cameras/en/index.html?
UPDATE: April 30, 2012
William Hohauser sent in a trouble-shooting tip regarding running FCP X in full-screen mode in Lion. Read it here.
UPDATE: July 1, 2012
After a listening to a presentation by Apple, I wrote up more performance suggestions in a new article. Read it here.
MORE TROUBLE-SHOOTING
Rebuilding Final Cut Pro X preferences can fix certain types of behavioral issues, but will not increase speed or performance. If a system begins to suddenly respond unreliably, then deleting corrupted prefs is a good place to start the troubleshooting. But, before trashing preferences, the first question to ask is always “How much RAM do you have and what is your codec/frame size?” before diagnosing unexpected behavior.
When the system allows you to optimize the original codec, which means to transcode it from whatever format the camera shot into ProRes 422, then optimizing is always a good idea. If the optimization choice is grayed out on the import menu, then FCP X has determined that there will be no benefit to optimizing. If you are working with a large frame size on a minimum system, you may actually be better off working with proxies and waiting until you get to a faster system before finishing at original resolution.
TRASHING FCP X PREFERENCES
There are two FCP X preference files you need to trash. However, the way you trash them varies between OS X 10.6 and OS X 10.7.
In both cases, start by quitting Final Cut Pro X. Never trash preferences with FCP X running.
OS X 10.6 – Snow Leopard
1. Type Command+H to open your Home directory.
2. Go to the Library > Preferences folder.
3. Trash com.apple.FinalCut.LSSharedFileList.plist
4. Trash com.apple.FinalCut.plist
5. Empty the Trash.
6. Restart Final Cut Pro X.
Be careful to NOT trash your FCP 7 preferences, if they exist. Pay close attention to the actual spelling of these file names.
OS X 10.7 – Lion
The process is the same, except that Apple hid the Library folder. There are two ways to reveal it:
WAY 1:
Hold down on the Option key and click on the Go menu in the Finder. The Library folder shows up as a selection.
WAY 2
Type Shift+Command+G, or select Go > Go To Folder in the Finder. Then, type ~/Library/ and click Go.
THEN:
3. Go to the Library > Preferences folder.
4. Trash com.apple.FinalCut.LSSharedFileList.plist
5. Trash com.apple.FinalCut.plist
6. Empty the Trash.
7. Restart Final Cut Pro X.
Let me know what performance or trouble-shooting tricks you’ve discovered and I’ll add them to this list.
Don’t forget that Apple has extensive Final Cut Pro X support pages here: www.apple.com/support/finalcutpro/
Also, Apple recently posted a Knowledge Base article on FCP X trouble-shooting. You can read it here: support.apple.com/kb/TS3893
Larry
Comments
40 Comments to “FCP X: Improving Performance”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying...-
[...] Jordan’s recent newsletter mentions these issues, and it is worth a read. You should also check out the official Apple FCPX [...]
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[...] GB sono il minimo per lavorare senza intoppi. Anche la scheda grafica gioca un ruolo fondamentale (per approfondire). Infine consiglio vivamente di utilizzare un harddisk esterno per i propri Progetti ed Eventi, [...]
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[...] Gerade die Grafikkarte sollte über einen möglichst großen VRAM-Speicher verfügen. 256MB VRAM sind die Minimalanforderung. Angeblich sind AMD (ATI) Karten besser als NVidia Karten, wenn man die Wahl hat (Quelle: http://www.larryjordan.biz/improving-fcp-x-performance/) [...]
FCPX also has a problem with RAM allocation. It will use all the RAM on your Mac, leaving as little as 28MB for everything else. However, there is a potential solution (to be released hopefully in an upgrade).
Note that Motion.app has this exact same problem, although in recent versions, it provides users with the controls to correct the problem.
Motion > Preferences > Cache > Memory and Cache > Project Cache: X% of total memory.
If you lower this setting, your Mac becomes instantly more responsive. And even Motion becomes more responsive. It’s questionable how much this slows down Motion’s background processing, but your own performance skyrockets.
Motion didn’t always have this setting. It was really sluggish and awful before it got the setting. Even worse than FCPX. This setting changes everything. FCPX users need the same control.
For more:
http://bradbell.tv/filmmaking/improving-ram-performance-in-final-cut-pro-x/
Dear Bred, Larry and the forum. ,
I am setting up a Final Cut Pro X editing room for a feature I am doing in Australia. I have never used it, or a mac, but due to the lack of funds/budget I need to set it up. What kind of a mac system would you recommend for me to buy, assuming it will be an HD feature, shot with at list 2 cameras, so quite a bit of footage. I was looking at mac pro, but which one? how much ram, how much Hard drives and what size and so on. I would appreciate any advice. Thanks a lot.
R. Zack
Cool, thanks for the advice.
Larry
Trashing prefs helps, but I hope Apple (somehow) takes Brad’s suggestion and implements it, as Adobe Premiere also has this feature of allocating a specific amount of RAM to it (and After Effects), allowing one to choose how much remains for “everything else.”
I have 8GB RAM on an older Mac Powerbook Pro (2.26 GHz Intel Duo) and its sluggish, no doubt about it, as I’m dealing with ProRes 422 files; particularly rendering–it’s like the old days when I’d leave the computer on all night to render. Larry, even though Apple hasn’t updated their towers, would you suggest for editing that this is the way to go, and do you have recommendations for which of the bewildering variety of graphics cards would be best suited?
I and my colleagues have been experiencing epic slowdowns in FCPX ‘when the going gets tough’ – not necessarily editing LONG programmes, but specifically when we start managing COMPLEX edits, and the finger is pointing at Compound Clips, specifically editing Compound Clips that use Compound Clips that are in Compound Clips.
http://t.co/9t3TvH9V
So, you join audio with video in a Compound Clip, you add text to some client-supplied Motion Graphics in a Compound Clip. You need to add top-and-tail graphics that are versioned per-edit as a Compound Clip. This is why we like Compound Clips – it’s like a ‘Group’ command in a draw programme.
But if you need to clip a compound clip (to make room for a transition, or to trim an intro transition that takes too long), you’re editing Compound Clips, and that seems to slow down FCPX in a compounded and exponential way.
Of course, the solution is simple: ‘don’t do that’ – but that’s scant relief as you enter the last 20% of an edit that takes 80% of the time.
I guess the question is… is this a ‘bug’ or a ‘behaviour’?
Matt:
I would argue that since Apple says we can nest compound clips inside compound clips, that this is a bug. I am hearing similar reports to what you mention here.
i’m hoping that Apple takes the time to address performance issues stemming from larger projects in the next update.
Larry
The FCP spinning pinwheel delays in FCP 7 has caused me to rethink this application completely. I have a MacPro tower 2.8Ghz dual quad core-Intel Xeon with 12GB Ram, bus speed 1.6GHz, NVIDIA GeoForce 8800 GT video card, Red Rocket card, Mac 30″ Cinema Display. On a 2-camera shoot using my clients Panasonic HPX-170 cameras at 1920×1080 The files were exported to MP4 and delivered to me for post editing. I used FCP 7 which I found to be unacceptably slow. I tried resetting preferences with no performance speed change. My sole video client purchased Avid Media Player 6 and suggested I do the same. FCP 7 only utilized one of my eight processors (i’m told). FCP X does utilize all processors but has other drawbacks. (again I’m told).
I downloaded the 30 day full trial version of AVID Media Player 6 and am starting to learn it. I haven’t even begun to edit any Red footage yet and am nervous about what delays that may cause, although I’m sure my Red Rocket card will make this smooth.
I welcome… no I beg your thoughts on this please!!!
Jeff:
First, I can’t help you with Avid, as I don’t know the software.
One of the problems you are having, though, is that the media was transcoded to MPEG-4 (MP4). This is a very difficult format to edit. On FCP, you would be far better off transcoding to ProRes. On Avid, you’d be better off transcoding to DNxHD. Either way, avoid MP4.
You are correct in that FCP 7 only uses 1.5 processors. However, FCP X removes that limitation. If speed is what you need, FCP X is also worth considering.
Larry
Thank you Larry.
As an Apple fan I seriously hope future updates to FCP X wins back the support of the professional post production community. Yes, speed is a major concern, but that’s not the only issue. My recent editing job consisted of 8 simple two camera, three minute training videos took a month to deliver when it should have taken a week or less. My other concern is scalability. With Red captured feature length projects on the horizon I can’t afford the same kind of delays. 110 minutes of finished movie would take 8 months to edit at that rate!
Jeff
Tonight I’m so frustrated with how slow FCP 7 is I wish I had the money to hire an editor who had more experience!!!!!
I cleared my preferences, emptied the trash to no avail! No effects, not text, etc. Everything I do, including click play gets a spinning pinwheel for at least 20 seconds.
Jeff:
Now I’m confused. Are you complaining about FCP 7 or FCP X? Also, be SURE you have plenty – 15% or more – of free space on all hard disks, and don’t try to edit MPEG-4 video natively.
Larry
So to be confusing Larry. At the moment I’m using FCP 7 and it’s causing a mountain of frustration. I will be the first to concede that I’m in no way an expert using FCP. I do have plenty of hard drive space having added three additional 1TB 7200 drives to my tower that are 90% free. I believe one issue as you mentioned is the MP4 video. In retrospect I should have transcoded to ProRes 422. The video was captured as DVCPro50 HD and converted to MP4 before handed over to me. We shoot again April 26th and will make sure I don’t use MP4. My video card (not my Red Rocket) is a nvidia geforce 8800 gt with 512mb memory. I’m thinking it would only help to upgrade to a 1-2gb card if I can get one for a few hundred (on ebay). My issue with FCP X is not first hand. I’m very concerned about what I’ve read and heard in online interviews about the high end community having issues. I don’t have the budget of a company such as Light Iron (or the knowledge yet) to build what I’d really like to have, such as their Outpost rack. I know they run FCP, Avid and Premier depending on their clients desired usage. Sorry for all the posts but I’m trying to get this all figured out.
Hi there, AVID is great but FCPX and its way of thinking may be the future and I say this reluctantly as I was not happy with FCPX and spent a full year and alot of money getting involved with AVID and I must say I still do not want to use AVID, its an old way of doing things and you’ll spend alot of time learning instead of editing, I realize this is a late post but after spending 2012 learning AVID I should have spent it learning FCPX since I spent my entire 10 year career on FCPS.
good luck, however if an AVID jobs calls I can cut it?
Rather than spending $1,000.00 to $3,000.00 on a new graphics card and hoping that Apple would step up FCP X to what we need it to be (as I have projects that I need to deliver NOW) I’m going to Learn AVID Media Composer asap. I’m really disappointed in Apple for releasing FCP X so incomplete as they did. At the very least they should have waited until code was written to import files from previous versions.
Please don’t misunderstand. I’m a huge Apple fan. I wonder if Steve Jobs would have released FCP X as it is.. I bet not.
Dear forum,
I am setting up a Final Cut Pro X editing room for a feature I am shooting in Australia. I have never used it, or a mac, but due to the lack of funds/budget I need to set it up. What kind of a mac system would you recommend for me to buy, assuming it will be an HD feature, shot with at list 2 cameras, so quite a bit of footage. I was looking at mac pro, but which one? how much ram, how much Hard drives and what size and so on. I would appreciate any advice. Thanks a lot.
R. Zack
R. Zack:
8 GB of RAM
I would recommend an iMac over a MacPro to take advantage of the Thunderbolt connection for speed.
A Thunderbolt RAID – more will be arriving in June, Promise is the current favorite.
Size of storage TOTALLY depends upon the video format you are shooting and the amount of material. However, the general rule of thumb is to buy as much storage as you can afford.
Larry
Thanks Larry.
Would be cool if FCP X and Motion supported professional grade graphics cards like the Nvidia Quadros.
To Larry,
I just finished your training on FCPX . I have to say after learning how to use it, FCPX is been a great tool. I was, like many frustrated at first using FCPX and saw everything it was missing. But after actually learning how to use it I find it to be a better tool for most things I do.
I can’t seem to get my cores to maximize when doing a straight export out of FCPX. My cores all range around 25%-40% at most.
Is it possible to get them higher?
My workflow typically consists of rendering out a full-size master in native format, and then bring that into compressor and exporting mp4s or wmvs.
THANKS, I LOVE U LARRY
Larry,
My share functions in X are all greyed out. Nothing I try works to resolve. I look to trash prefences and there are no preferences!!!
I fear when I cleaned my computer some files may have been trashed. I am on a free copy of X so I have no option to trash and reload…How can I had the preferences back manually?
I’ve been using Final Cut Pro X since around the Holidays of 2011. Lately it seems to have slowed down.
I’m using a recent machine.
27″ iMac i7
3.4 Ghz Intel i7 iMac, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB graphics card.
OSX 10.8.1
Even if I create proxy media my FCPX seems to drop frames and render slowly.
I’ve trashed preferences and even did a reinstall.
Could one of my RAM sticks have gone bad? If so, what is a good way to test.?
“MacTracker says your computer has the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics card inside with only 256 MB of SDRAM shared with the main memory. That’s your problem I’m afraid. Only ATI (now AMD?) cards will accelerate FCPX and Motion.”
Does anyone know if this is also the case for the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024MB that Apple has put in their newest MacBook Pro line? Has anyone had any experience with it?
Soren:
Here is the definitive list of what graphics cards are supported by FCP X / Motion 5:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
And here is the definitive list of what cameras are supported as well:
http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/cameras/en/index.html?
Larry
Thank you, Larry. According to that list, however, the Nvidia GeForce 320M is also supported by Fcpx and as the quote by Don Smith says it wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven. So I’m worried that this new Nvidia GeForce might not be either.
Hi Larry,
So I got a new SSD and have 8GB of Ram on my MacBook Pro mid 2009 and the editing is still jumpy. Frustrated. The files I am working with are big. Video between 2-5 GB and wav. files. I have Compressor 4 and I am making the videos for Youtube 1080hd.
Would it maybe solve the problem if I first compress the files to your specified youtube settings http://www.larryjordan.biz/compressing-video-for-youtube/ with the difference of switching to 1080hd from 720hd, and then edit?
Or do I need to get a new graphics card or something?
Thanks Larry.
BJ:
I suspect the jumpiness is caused by your video codec. You will probably find editing smoother if you optimize your files. Try that and let me know what happens.
Larry
Thanks for the tip, Larry. How would you go about optimizing?
bj
Hello everyone, Larry thanks for all of your professional insight on this crazy FCP world! This post has been very helpful, I was just hoping to still get a little clarity and confirmation on what it is I need to get my system up to par, if I can. I too am running FCPX, MBP, maybe 2008-9 model, 2.4ghz Intel Duo Core 2 Duo, 6gb ram which I believe is the max for this system, 750 hdd but only about 1/3 is free however I am also using an external 1tb drive that is more than 75% free except I don’t know if it works better or worse when its not on the actual system :/ My graphics card is Nvidia GeForce 8600 M GT, 256 vram. Now am I understanding correctly, I need either a ATI/AMD card to accelerate FCP? I see ppl here having waaaay more souped up systems than mine who are still having similar problems though (suuuuuper slow, dropping frames, choppy, playback). Is there any hope for my system or should I just start checking out something new?? And anyone please feel free to comment, I know its been a while with this thread so I’m not expecting any super fast responses but any insight would be great. Also suggestions on what other programs I could use smoothly on this system (meanwhile) would be great too. Thx everyone. Cheers!
Hello everyone, Larry thanks for all of your professional insight on this crazy FCP world! This post has been very helpful, I was just hoping to still get a little clarity and confirmation on what it is I need to get my system up to par, if I can. I too am running FCPX, MBP, maybe 2008-9 model, 2.4ghz Intel Duo Core 2 Duo, 6gb ram which I believe is the max for this system, 750 hdd but only about 1/3 is free however I am also using an external 1tb drive that is more than 75% free except I don’t know if it works better or worse when its not on the actual system :/ My graphics card is Nvidia GeForce 8600 M GT, 256 vram. Now am I understanding correctly, I need either a ATI/AMD card to accelerate FCP? I see ppl here having waaaay more souped up systems than mine who are still having similar problems though (suuuuuper slow, dropping frames, choppy, playback). Is there any hope for my system or should I just start checking out something new?? And anyone please feel free to comment, I know its been a while with this thread so I’m not expecting any super fast responses but any insight would be great. Also suggestions on what other programs I could use smoothly on this system (meanwhile) would be great too. Thx everyone. Cheers! (Please respond to this one, I made a mistake on the last one’s email address :/)
Hi Elise,
I have a similar issue. My mac ia a mbp 2009. I’ve got it maxed out with 8 gb ram and a steady state drive, and though ican run more programs while fcpx or compressor 4 is running it didnt totally solve the jumpiness in the playback, but what has helped a bunch is this.
When you import your files transcode them to be proxy media. The already imported media can just be right clicked and then select Transcode Media. This will take a bit to transcode, but once you do this and are ready to edit, go to your fcpx preferences, go to playback and click the option “Use Proxy Media”. But do this before you put the clip on the storyline and begin editing. You should notice a lot less jumpiness.
Rendering can only be sped up with a new computer, so I normally try to get the editing of the picture(keying, color, cropping, etc) first and just let it render while I do some non-fcpx activity. After I let it render then I can add all the other stuff like images, text, transitions because they take a lot less time to render.
Before exporting I think you need to go back to your preferences under playback and switch back to “Use original or optimized media” and then export, but I’m not sure.
So that’s how I do it my turtle friend. Can’t wait to get a bunny someday.
bj
Dear Larry, thank you for your invaluable insights.
I HOPE someone can help? I use FCPx on an iMac, I use an external hard drive for all FCP event and project files. Together with Event Manager X. Everything has been running smoothly until I needed to use an off-site Macbook Pro (i5 with 8gig RAM) to edit some of the Projects on the hard disk. The Macbook is VERY slow when rendering (which I understand) but some of the media seem to be missing. Although when I plug back into the iMac it is all there. The Genius at the genius bar thinks it is Event Manager and suggests I reload everything back on my iMac, then duplicate as per usual – not using EM. I am desperate for a solution other than this, it doesn’t seem to be the permission, the ownership of the files…I am stumped…anybody have any ideas?
Thanks
Karin
Karin:
It probably won’t be Event Manager X, that is simply duplicating what the Finder can do.
I suspect that you have media and render files on other locations than the external hard drive. The reason is that the files ARE there on your iMac, but NOT on the MacBook Pro. The best thing to do is consolidate your project to the external drive. That will locate all your files on the external drive and resolve this problem.
Larry
Dear Larry
Thanks so much for this. I have MAYBE found another culprit (me thinks!) I use Motion on both the iMac and Macbook, however I had not copied the Motion settings to the Macbook. So what was happening was the compound clips weren’t functioning as they should since the Motion templates weren’t present. I have now succeeded in opening 1 project, so far so good. VERRY slow at rendering on the 8 gig system however wish I could get some more speed going. Crashed once…but on second try getting there! Already using proxies btw.
Will keep you posted.
Thanks for your prompt reply! What would we do without the internet and gurus!!!
k
fcpx is automatic crashing my system spec are 4gb ram core i3.can u plz provide me fix for this. If u want i ll provide u screenshot of crash report.
thanks
If your system is consistently crashing, call Apple immediately.
Larry