2017 iMac Pro still struggles with Final Cut Pro X

[Ka Tec]

Hi All,
I've taken the plunge and got myself the latest iMac Pro base model with 3.2 Ghx Intel Xeon W, 32 GB 2666 MHz DDR4. The reason I bought it is I have delved into making promo videos for a business. I have been doing this with the macbook pro 13 inch which just struggled.

So I took the very deep plunge in getting the iMac Pro and currently within the 30 day return period. Now booting up Final Cut Pro X on the iMac has made working on projects that were unworkable on the macbook pro 13 inch now workable. The concern I have is the iMac Pro still struggles with some plugins when used in combination in particular for a 10 sec scene I am using a pixel studio title plugin and a object modelling plugin (http://osmfcpx.com/). And when I mean struggle I will have wait about 5-10 mins for it render when I make changes.

For this machine is this still normal when editing videos with plugins? I am doing 2 min videos which these circumstances are bearable but if I this machine was going to do a 1-2hr footage can it really handle it?

Anyone else using it for serious video editing? Should I increase my RAM (this was the most effected areas with the plugins running 80% in some cases). What else would improve rendering speed?

Ultimately I want to be sure given the price I have paid I have the right machine for the job.

Thanks in advance

 

[Kris Kelvin]

Simply put, you won't find a Mac that's much faster. If FCPX plugins are still slow, it's because they have to do a lot of work or they aren't optimized well.

If I understand correctly, osmFCPX plugins do actual 3D rendering, so I'd think either the CPU or GPU is the limiting factor.
32GB RAM should be enough for most projects.

Generally speaking, video and 3D are use cases where no computer is ever fast enough. When using macOS, the iMac Pro is the best you can do right now.

 

[AppliedVisual]

So many of these plugins are just not well optimized, nor are they designed to be multi-threaded or if they are, they don’t scale well beyond just a couple threads. They are often not using the GPU or other system resources that offer computational speed-ups. You can have 8, 10 or more cores sitting there, but if your software can’t scale up to use them, then they’re just wanted resources.

I have not used the object modeling plugin you speak of.... Also still waiting for our first iMac Pro (14 core, 128GB, Vega 64, 2TB) to be delivered...

 

[pl1984]

If you have a Microcenter nearby go buy one from them to save yourself a thousand dollars and return this one.

 

[adam9c1]

What he means is Micro Center is running $1000 off (for I believe the base model). The price is in store only.