FCPX using more than 70GB of RAM

[Sp00k]

Hello everyone! I own a base model 16" MacBook Pro, and have been frequently using Final Cut Pro X for a video editing class and my personal projects. In it, I don't do too awful much, at most compiling a two minute video with titles, transitions, sfx, and a bit of color correction. However I have been running into an issue that has perplexed me. At random times while video editing, a popup will come up telling me that my computer is out of RAM. Then looking through the list of applications, most hover around where they are supposed to be, but Final Cut is always over 70GB. If I close out of the window without closing Final Cut, the computer most always will freeze and I will have to restart. If I force quit FCPX, everything is fine. Im not a very good explainer, so I have attached a picture of the popup.

Is this a known bug, or does anyone else share the same problem? Does anyone know what causes this? I am on the latest version of FCPX, so I have ruled that out. It's not too big of a problem, just a little disruptive to my workflow. If anyone knows, please leave a comment below.

Thank you!

 

[lin2log]

You think maybe that at minimum giving us your system specs or even some VERSION NUMBERS may have been useful? 😒

 

[Pietrometer]

Hello everyone! I own a base model 16" MacBook Pro, and have been frequently using Final Cut Pro X for a video editing class and my personal projects. In it, I don't do too awful much, at most compiling a two minute video with titles, transitions, sfx, and a bit of color correction. However I have been running into an issue that has perplexed me. At random times while video editing, a popup will come up telling me that my computer is out of RAM. Then looking through the list of applications, most hover around where they are supposed to be, but Final Cut is always over 70GB. If I close out of the window without closing Final Cut, the computer most always will freeze and I will have to restart. If I force quit FCPX, everything is fine. Im not a very good explainer, so I have attached a picture of the popup.

Is this a known bug, or does anyone else share the same problem? Does anyone know what causes this? I am on the latest version of FCPX, so I have ruled that out. It's not too big of a problem, just a little disruptive to my workflow. If anyone knows, please leave a comment below.

Thank you!

Hi Sp00k,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble.

I'd recommend you check that you actually have enough disk space free as the problem may be related to swap space. Though for your described use case I would imagine the 16GB of RAM on the base model would be sufficient, unless the imported footage was quite large in size and was indeed loaded into memory. I'd also recommend you update all software to the latest versions and see if the issue persists. check your memory statistics in the Activity Monitor application found in /System/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app a screenshot may be helpful for us to assist you further.

Best of luck

Connor

 

[kohlson]

This is curious. I regularly use FCPX, and have never approached using anywhere near that much RAM. Disk space - yes. Projects regularly run well beyond 100-200GB, mostly due to background rendering. But system memory is usually no more than 5-7GB, and video memory also about that amount.

Does Activity Monitor say that FCPX is also using this much memory?

 

[Sp00k]

Hello! I wanted to make an update on how I solved my problem for any others with the same issue, and to clear up the question and comments I got.

You think maybe that at minimum giving us your system specs or even some VERSION NUMBERS may have been useful? 😒

As I stated previously, I have a base model MacBook Pro 16" (16GB RAM, 2.6GHZ 6-Core i7, 5300M) and am updated to the most recent FCP version (10.4.8).

Hi Sp00k,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble.

I'd recommend you check that you actually have enough disk space free as the problem may be related to swap space. Though for your described use case I would imagine the 16GB of RAM on the base model would be sufficient, unless the imported footage was quite large in size and was indeed loaded into memory. I'd also recommend you update all software to the latest versions and see if the issue persists. check your memory statistics in the Activity Monitor application found in /System/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app a screenshot may be helpful for us to assist you further.

Best of luck

Connor

This is curious. I regularly use FCPX, and have never approached using anywhere near that much RAM. Disk space - yes. Projects regularly run well beyond 100-200GB, mostly due to background rendering. But system memory is usually no more than 5-7GB, and video memory also about that amount.

Does Activity Monitor say that FCPX is also using this much memory?

Thank you both for your comments and helpful support! Opening up Activity monitor and opening the FCPX background tasks panel let me know that background rendering and tasks with Thumbnails and Waveforms took up copious amounts of memory when they ran (about 12GB every time), and occasionally it would spike to 70+GB of memory that it pulled out of nowhere, causing the system to freak out and show the "out of memory" popup. I have about 150gb left on my ssd, so that wasn't any problem.

I fixed this problem by simply uninstalling and reinstalling FCPX. Could there have been an easier way to fix it? Yes, but whatever works is just fine to me.

 

[kohlson]

I fixed this problem by simply uninstalling and reinstalling FCPX.

Glad it got fixed. You can adjust background rendering to a limited degree in Preferences. Also, I occasionally have to Delete Generated Project/Event/Library files, as FCPX tends to balloon up due to these processes.

 

[Melbourne Park]

I fixed this problem by simply uninstalling and reinstalling FCPX. Could there have been an easier way to fix it? Yes, but whatever works is just fine to me.

Maybe you installed your apps from a backup and hence the FCPX carried over a previous computer's capacity?