Professional Work

[dasx]

Hi all!

I own an end 2014 Retina 5K iMac, i7 4GHz, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD + external thunderbolt Lacie 6TB, Radeon R9 M295X, and I do heavy video editing on FCPX.

I started working on a hobbie on a 2012 Mac Mini, which was pretty useless for the task, so decided to go for an almost top-tier Retina iMac on January 2015.

Now, 1.5 years later, this hobbie has become my job, and I do A LOT of video editing, and I feel my iMac is struggling a lot. I usually find the following problems:
- Too much memory used: System gets 99% memory used and FCPX slows down a lot, I have to keep restarting the software every now and then.
- Long projects with several audio/video tracks are difficult to work with, you stutter just scrolling horizontally through it, and simple cuts of the footage are pretty laggy.
- Random crashes I can't really explain, such as dragging a simple image into the timeline, beach ball for 3 seconds then crash.

A the beginning it felt great, but at this point I don't know if it was just because I was coming from a Mac Mini... very plausible.

That being said, I searched a little and the Mac Pro seems like the most intelligent choice, although right now... 3 year-old hardware? Really? I can't justify spending over €4.000 on a computer which is 3 years old. Some people tell me to buy a powerful up-to-date Dell and Hackintosh it, but for every good opinion on Hackintosh there are 100 threads of problems...

What's the most intelligent option here? I think I could just wait... but the lack of information on the Mac Pro makes me feel like they abandoned it or don't plan on upgrading for some other years.

Thank you and sorry for the long thread!

 

[keysofanxiety]

With those specs it shouldn't really be exhibiting issues like that. There are a few quick things you can try to hopefully get it running a little smoother.

1) Ensure you shut down daily with the option reopen windows when logging back in disabled/unticked
2) Update to latest OS if you haven't already (10.11.6)
3) Ensure all your software is fully up-to-date
4) Run Disk Utility verification
5) Disable unneccesary startup/login items

 

[dasx]

Mmm, interesting. Let's see:

1. Yeah, I don't usually reboot. I have it always on either rendering or importing/exporting, so I get even 2 week cycles without a single reboot. Right now I'm at just 4 days, but being honest, I haven't noticed a direct relationship between how long it's been on and the stuttering and all. I'll definitely try though!
2. I haven't actually. In fact I'm on 10.10.5... I remember not updating because I have never made a clean install on this iMac and I wanted to, but one never has time...
3. Aside from OS, it is.
4 & 5. That I usually do yes.

Thanks for your help! Let's see if specially 2) helps.

With those specs it shouldn't really be exhibiting issues like that. There are a few quick things you can try to hopefully get it running a little smoother.

1) Ensure you shut down daily with the option reopen windows when logging back in disabled/unticked
2) Update to latest OS if you haven't already (10.11.6)
3) Ensure all your software is fully up-to-date
4) Run Disk Utility verification
5) Disable unneccesary startup/login items

 

[keysofanxiety]

Mmm, interesting. Let's see:

1. Yeah, I don't usually reboot. I have it always on either rendering or importing/exporting, so I get even 2 week cycles without a single reboot. Right now I'm at just 4 days, but being honest, I haven't noticed a direct relationship between how long it's been on and the stuttering and all. I'll definitely try though!
2. I haven't actually. In fact I'm on 10.10.5... I remember not updating because I have never made a clean install on this iMac and I wanted to, but one never has time...
3. Aside from OS, it is.
4 & 5. That I usually do yes.

Thanks for your help! Let's see if specially 2) helps.

Yeah I find that the newer iterations of OS X tend to manifest some odd performance issues with larger uptimes. Memory leaks or disk paging occasionally compound, until the system is just a crawl. Shutting down every few days with that option unticked should help with that.

El Cap is a little kinder on resources than Yosemite, so I'd definitely recommend updating to that at your earliest convenience.

Best wishes and hope you have a lovely weekend.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'll bet if you get into the routine of shutting it down at night and rebooting in the morning, it will run better...

 

[dasx]

Imho, I think doing a clean OS install would show much better results. I don't know when I'll have time for that though, when it's your work computer... you kind of don't want to mess with it too much

I've been monitoring more closely what happens, and it's weird. I open up the software and everything is fine, I can edit pretty decently. BUT, after maybe 1h of playback and cuts here and there, maybe adding audio tracks and deleting others, everything starts to stutter and a FCPX restart is required.