FCPX 10.0.5 Bugs & Problems

First the good news - FCPX 10.0.5 seems to have improved the program's handling of Ram & remaining hard-disc space. On a MacBookPro, you see how much FCPX gobbles up resources, like pacman with the munchies. This version is a little better than the predecessor, but when the HD space is getting low (below 7 gigs), I've had plenty of crashes. That's working on a little 10 minute HD video with a few effects & titles, suddenly the project folder is over 50 gigs!

Imagine working on a feature...

Granted, I'm only on 4 gigs of ram, which Apple says is enough, but it's definitely not. Many times, if it's rendering or processing a file transcoding & you click something else, you'll get the spinning beach ball of death for a minute then the whole program crashes.

Ok, here's a real pet peeve. It's been mentioned in other forums on this site, but I'm really hoping you guys are pestering Apple about it - Renaming Files in the Event Browser, doesn't change their names in the Timeline. If you're working with voiceovers, this becomes a nightmare. You'll have multiple copies of Voiceover 1, 2, 3 etc. Trashing them creates other problems, the whole thing is awful.

One of the great features in FCPX 10.0.4 that is now GONE in 0.5, is the resizing of the Viewer window. You know when you want to crop or transform a frame in the Viewer, you can click on Fit, 50% or 25%, the latter is the lowest you can go in the pull down tab. In 0.4 you could click Control Minus, & that screen would drop down to 15% which is so handy when working with large photos or wanting to zoom in on media. This is now gone completely, only the pull down tab, no more Control Minus for resizing smaller than 25%.

Please complain to Apple.

One other thing I've noticed regarding audio levels. Trying to adjust them with the mouse is very finicky. If you're trying to get 7 db, it will jump from 6 to 9. Going into the inspector & trying to type the numbers, seems to create keyframes which I didn't want. Am I missing a trick here? Oddly, I can set my levels & have no clipping, then the next time I open the project & play it, suddenly a few spots are clipping, where they weren't before. What's up with that?

Still, I gotta say, I love this way of editing, much prefer it to FCP 7. Hoping to master this one...

Minimum specs give minimum performance, that's with any application. Time to get 8GM RAM upgrade!

Renaming a master clip in the Browser has never, not even in legacy FCP, changed the name of the "copies" that are already in Timelines. I suggest you do media management as such first, before dropping things into the Timeilne. As for audio recordings, yes, I find that systems needs some tweaking, fill out the feedback page. Once I do a recording, I rename in the Browser right away, then do a quick Replace edit. Very quick way to deal with it for now.

Command-minus and Command-plus still zoom in and out of the Viewer and timeline. I don't see zooming out more than 25%. If you have still that are larger enough to not work zoomed out that much, they're probably too large to start with. Sills should only be as large as necessary, but no larger. But, zooming out more could be nice on rare occasion.

Controlling audio via the Timeline with the mouse is not the most and never will be the most accurate way to do it. Like any other function with a mouse on a computer screen, the more you zoom in, the more precise control you have. The more you zoom out, the less precise control. Perhaps learn the Control-plus and Control-minus shortcuts for raising and lowering audio on a clip in the Timeline.

No one person complaining to Apple on your behalf will do any good. You need to go to the feedback page (via the Final Cut Pro menu) and let Apple know what you're happy and not happy about yourself. They do track those forms. Fill them out once for each feature you'd like changed or added. When you see other complain about the same thing, encourage them to fill out the feedback page. That's what we all do here.

Renaming them in the "Timeline Index" does.

Thanks for the tips, gents.

Can't wait to try them...

Sorry to type a new note - but I need HELP.


Well, the FCPX 10.0.5 nightmare continues. I've had more crashes & complete system freezes in the past week, than the previous 20 years on Mac.

Cursor freezes, then intermittent crazy fast cursor movements. Ridiculous render times, then spinning beach ball of death for 10 minutes til total freeze. Can't get to the Finder when all this is happening. Have to power down. Brutal.

With 10.0.4 there was a little more leeway. I'm only on 4 gigs of ram here, but it was workable. Had a 10 minute video with lots of effects, titles, transitions, etc. My main concern was performance as the last of the hard disc space was being gobbled up. Those 10 minutes were 50 gigs! (that space is free now)

But now, with 0.5, I'm working on a 1 minute video & it's crashing repeatedly. Basically I have to shut the program down after every edit, or effect, then reboot it, to insure it doesn't crash. Made the mistake of applying a complicated transition called Smithereens. Then it went into impossible render mode, then freeze. Necessitating powerdown reboot. So now if I fire up FCPX, it will immediately being trying to render that transition again, & thus freeze again. Essentially useless.

I was thinking if there was a way to go into the project folder, remove this project, then reboot FCPX, but I'd hate to lose my work.

Is there a way that I could go into the folder & remove that transition that is causing the freeze?
Or how about if I remove that transition from the Motion Templates folder? Then when FCPX boots, that transition will just be a red box missing entity...? Workable?

Any advice?

thank you

Sorry to hear you are having problems. I don't know if it is much consolation, but I can assure you that this is not normal 10.0.5 behavior, something is definitely up with your machine.

My early 2007 MacBook Pro only has 4GB of RAM and a barely qualified video card, and I'm not having any of the problems you are encountering. So there is hope for you.

Regarding starting up without rendering that effect, just disabled all your events & projects, and then restart FCP, turn of background rendering in preferences and you'll be good to go.

You didn't mention trashing preferences, so I would definitely try that.

It sounds like you might have corrupted media also in there, or maybe a corrupted font. The more you crash and app and a computer for that matter the greater the chance that your open files will become corrupted. I had a problem with a single corrupted image, it was a bad JPEG that kept FCP from crashing. It took a while to narrow down, but once I did and removed it FCP ran just fine.

Also take a look at this post and see if you might get some help.

First one from Apple:

support.apple.com/kb/TS3893?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

And here is one from Richard Taylor:

fcpx.tv/troubleshooting.html

BTW. What Mac are you using, what video card and storage?

How much space do you have left on your hard drive? You need at least 15% of your disks total capacity.

Uninstall FCPX using FCP Remover or AppCleaner. Download again from the App Store. Update to latest version of Lion. See if the problem is corrected.

The trick to fine tuning audio is to hold down the cmd key while dragging the audio levels. Works great!

4GB of RAM for a demanding 64-bit application on a 64-bit OS is like starving a marathon runner and wondering why he can't finish the race.

8GB should be the minimum, IMO.

Nice Audio tip, Jeremy. Thanks.

I'm on a MBP 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo

4 GB ram 1067 hmz DDR3

OS X 10.6.8

NVIDIA GeForce 320M

I think my system is corrupted somehow, startup now takes almost 5 minutes. This started about a week ago. I've run all the fix-it scripts, but to no avail.

Run Disk Warrior to repair the directories on all hard drives.
Verify you have at least 15% of the drives capacity as free space.
http://www.fcproxuniversity.com/documents/FCSystemMaintenance.pdf

At the recent LAFCPUG meeting, Larry Jordan revealed that running FCPX 10.0.3 or above (maybe 10.0.4) with Snow Leopard may produce bugs in FCPX, because those updates were optimized for OS X Lion, not Snow Leopard. He sited speaking directly with Apple engineers on the topic.

It is no longer more stable to run FCPX in Snow Leopard, everyone should be running the latest versions of OS X and FCPX for best performance.

Go buy the update in the App Store, do it now or risk being stuck with Mountain Lion in a couple weeks. You could risk breaking legacy FCP with the new OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Anyone with a Gold Master want to test this? Also, check to see if your model Macbook Pro is on the list of unsupported Macs for Mountain Lion, I don't think it is but worth checking.

But I also agree, upgrade to 8GB RAM (its super cheap now on Other World Computing).

You may need to BACKUP, do a clean install of Snow Leopard or Lion with a new user, upgrade to Lion if needed, download the combo update to latest 10.7.4 and then migrate over users, apps, etc using Migration Assistant, then uninstall FCPX, Motion 5, and Compressor 4 and do a clean install of the latest versions from the App Store. This would be the best possible solution if repair permissions or repair disk doesn't work, b/c it rarely does.

I think 10.8 will be a much better os than lion ever will be. Can't say much about legacy and ml but I wouldn't get in a tizzy just yet.

For those of you with FB, the "I HONESTLY LOVE FCP X" group, Gilbert Rae makes games for OS X and is running the gold master just released to developers of Mountain Lion. He says FCP X is very stable and nice to use in Mountain Lion.

Also be aware that older Macs won't run Mountain Lion due to the lack of 64-bit GPU driver support. Here's the official list.
http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

"Your Mac must be one of the following models:

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)

If you are running Lion, you can find out if your current Mac qualifies by clicking the Apple icon at the top left of your screen, choosing About This Mac, then clicking More Info."

Mountain Lion will undoubtedly be a better version of OSX, but what we haven't seen yet on the App Store is how Apple handles new versions of OS X. Lion was the first to be available for download. Will Lion still be available for download after 10.8 is released? I somehow doubt it, but we just don't know yet. Nobody does.

What I asked is if anyone tested legacy FCP in Mountain Lion, not FCPX. Many editors are still using both FCP7 and FCPX. The question for editors needing to upgrade or reinstall OS X right now to fix problems is will LEGACY FCP7 work in Mountain Lion? Of course FCPX will, but Apple isn't supporting legacy FCP any longer so eventually its gonna break, just when is a big question.

It may be well worth everyone's time to take some preventative steps right now, download Lion and create a boot disk for the installer. There are several tuts out there that show you how. Do it before it's not available anymore.

Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath that they'll work in ML. It may be when I finally uninstall Final Cut Studio for good.

I'm hoping MLworks just like FCP X in that it looks for a modern graphic card and not the 64Bit EFI.

What are you going to do Ben? I really want to wait and see what this new Mac Pro is going to be but I want my Mountain Lion too!

Don't wait for something that may never come along. There isn't any proof suggesting a new Mac Pro will ever arrive.

The Retina MBP is an amazing machine and shouldn't be overlooked as the primary choice for FCPX editors. Combine with a Thunderbolt RAID, broadcast monitor and some Blackmagic, M-Audio or AJA products suited for your workflow and the Retina MBP is all you need. The price is around the same as a Mac Pro setup, maybe cheaper. 2X Thunderbolt and HDMI, 16GB RAM, around 400Mb/s read/write internal flash, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, sign me up. The only thing I'm really waiting for to upgrade is full Retina support from Adobe, which is coming soon.

Only if they offered 64 GB RAM in there books