FCP 11 Suddenly Unusably Slow

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Level 1

4 points

FCP 11 Suddenly Unusably Slow

Launched FCP 11.0 this morning to find it took over a minute to open and load my most recent library. As I started to edit, I received the spinning beach ball with nearly every click, even for the most simple operations (adding an adjustment layer, changing a LUT, etc.) Tried restarting the program multiple times, clearing generated files, restarting my Mac, even updated to Sequoia since I was a bit behind on that. Still the same performance issues. It was running smoothly less than 24 hours ago, with no changes to my computer that I can possibly think of. For reference, I'm running a 16" M2 Pro MacBook Pro with 35GB RAM. All of my files are on an external Samsung SSD and have been for quite some time. Any thoughts/suggestions/ideas on how to bring FCP back to a usable speed would be greatly appreciated!

Posted on Jan 15, 2025 12:03 PM

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Answer 1

Greg_15 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 15, 2025 12:47 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Etrecheck Report

Hi Luis, thank you for the prompt and detailed reply. Unfortunately, the first few tips did not make a difference in FCP's performance. My Macintosh HD currently has 300GB available, and the Samsung external SSD has 1.36TB available. I have added the full Etrecheck report as requested. Thanks again!

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Answer 2

Jan 15, 2025 12:26 PM in response to Greg_15

Delete the application preferences. To delete preferences, hold down command and option while starting the application and click Delete Custom Settings. The application will start with default settings and open an "Untitled" library. Adjust the settings, reopen the library you were working, and see how it works now.

Delete All Render Files.

How much space on the system drive, and on the drive containing your media and library?

Low free space can cause tremendous slowdowns.

If you have adequate space, and the above did not help, then please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

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Answer 3

Jan 16, 2025 12:48 AM in response to Greg_15

You also have Chrome and its background daemons. They are known to hog the system videotoolbox and cause damage to video applications. You should completely uninstall - see https://chromeisbad.com

If you need a Chromium based browser, try Brave, Opera or Edge.

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Answer 4

Jan 16, 2025 12:40 AM in response to Greg_15

The first thing that stands out is that you should uninstall crowdstrike. Any third party antivirus or cleaners are not just unnecessary but hurt performance, especially for pro applications.

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FCP 11 Suddenly Unusably Slow