Help advice to upgrade hack - laggy Final Cut Pro X

Hello all hackintoshers. I'm new to the world of hackintosh and editting in Final Cut.
I mounted my hack after some time learning in my father iMac 12,1. Final Cut Pro X there is real nice and smooth, with a core i5 and only 4GB RAM.
My specs was : core i7 2.8 @ 3.8, 8GB RAM (2GB 2GB 4GB), MB Asus P658XD-E., Geforce GT 240
So i read some articles and the forum here, and so a thinked in buy a SSD.
i buyed a Corsair Force GT 120 GB SATA III runing in 6GB.

I theory, for my eyes my system in nice (very low comparing to some people here )
But in the timelapse playback, its laggy. A simple movie with 720x480, when i add just some text with effect, when i play the rendering gets me slow playback. And after i buyed the SSD, it help a little with this lag, but it still laggy.

I want a advice from the experts, what should i upgrade in my hack? (I ask first because i don't have much money to spend, and don't want to buy some unnecessary thing) Did a new graphic card, or more RAM all with the same size will resolve my issue??

Thanks for your comprehension and helping for a newbie one.

I will give my .02 cents here.

First off how many drives do you have? If all you have is boot drive and SSD then read all your files off the SSD and have your projects/events on boot drive.

Video card, gt240 is great for Premiere Pro and CUDA programs and FCPX does use em. Working with FCPX has shown me that it prefer AMD cards like the 5770 and beyond.

Also, is background rendering turned on? FCPX, will get laggy if your not allowing it to render.

Lastly, X58 is designed to run triple channel RAM. this means 2,2,2 or 4,4,4. 2,2,4; will cause the system to hiccup as it won't be able to cache temporary files correctly.

Good luck.

Hello Solidww, thanks for your assistance.

After i bought my SSD, i cloned my HD and transfer the OS and apps to the SSD and to be my boot drive. I have 2 more HDs, just to store files. But the videos that i'm working i put in the SSD with the system, and the lag still remains (less than before the SSD, but it remains).
I tested FCP with and without background rendering option. Still laggy, but the lag is only when the rendering is still working (the orange flash bar above in the timeline). After the rendering complete in the effect that i use, the clip plays normally.

I'm thinking in get a 4-4-4 GB RAM and a Geforce GTX 550 TI or ATI 6770 (price its not too much to me).
I read about FCPX use OpenCL technology in graphic cards, but i don't know if my GT 240 have this feature.

Thanks again, for your attention.

As for the gt240 here is a good link to see how Motion performs with it. Think gt120 as your comparable card. http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g12.html
Your video card will only be used when you want to preview "un-rendered" footage in FCPX. After it is rendered your using cached media. Thus, an increase in performance. Just an FYI, when using a 8800GT I was able to have a 1 minute timeline and have 2 effects added per clip, multiple transitions, and I had few playback issues. When I used a GTX285 or HD5770 with the the same timeline, I had similar playback. The only improvement was that I could add a few more effects before frames would drop .

On the drive side, have your files on your fastest NON boot drive. Make it your EVENTS folder and use your other NON boot drive as your PROJECT folder. I am thinking you have 3 drives total?

Now, about your RAM situation. 1366 can utilize Triple Channel RAM. Use what your blessed with. Thus get 4,4,4 kits or 2,2,2 kits of RAM. FYI, you have no need to go higher then 1333. Your system can't fully utilize it even if you OverClock. 4,4,4,4; would be a Quad channel kit and won't help your computers performance as much as a triple channel kit will.

Enjoy editing and glad you like FCPX

Thanks again Solidww, i found it really nice this article that you post it. I didn't found in the internet so much this type of comparation between graphic cards in FCPX or Motion, but i found more about Adobe Premier and CUDA graphics, but for me it don't help too much.
Despite of your comment, about the diference you noticed in GT8800 and GTX285 and 5770, in this article say that i can get more FPS in playback and render preview. I will plan to buy a g card after i pay some bills

I noticed in the article that it says too that a more quick storage option didn't affect Motion performance, so i spend some ca$h unnecessary ....but ok i'm liking the SSD.
About the storage sugestions, i don't understand very well, so i'm gonna ask you again please. Yes i have 3 drives, 1 SSD and 2 HDs. Did you said to put files in 1 HD and the projects in another? But what files are you talking about, the movies to import in FC, and save the projects in the 3rd HD?

Thanks again for helping me friend, and i'm liking FCPX yes, its very nice to use it. I tried adobe premiere, but i was totaly lost inside of it, and quickly e got back to FCPX.

About your drives.
SSD, since it is your boot drive leave it as is.
Fastest HDD, is best as your EVENTS folder. This is where FCPX saves all the media that you import into it from your camera, SD, cards, etc....
Last HDD, is where you put your PROJECTS folder. As this where FCPX will store its cache files for the project your working on. This will most often be called your SCRATCH disk.

I hope this makes sense.

A good video card helps but it doesn't do as much as you would think. Especially, when you start adding effects. The 5770 worked the best for me but your findings maybe different then mine. TTYS

I was having some big problems with FCP X with my GTX 560. Premiere & AE (CS5) were also acting up from time to time. One thing that helped me is ditching the CUDA drivers and going back to the ones in the most recent Multibeast.

In FCP X I would get the spinning wheel whenever I added certain video effects and generators, and would need to restart. Premiere at times was unable to play videos in the viewers.

The alternate drivers appear to have solved my issues with FCP & CS5.

having big problems with FCP X with my GTX 560TI. would like to install CUDA. first time i tried it crashed my computer. pleas if you can help me install CUDA for CS6 that would be great.

CHEERS

slowhand said:

having big problems with FCP X with my GTX 560TI. would like to install CUDA. first time i tried it crashed my computer. pleas if you can help me install CUDA for CS6 that would be great.

CHEERS

Click to expand...

have you edited the cuda text file within cs6 to enable your card if not here.s how to do it...

Another great video Tutorial...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ1FAHQ5HKg&feature=plcp

Or you can follow the text below, The video is much simpler and describes in great detail how to enable Cuda in CS6 or CS5 and any Nvidia card, hope you enjoy my professionally edited video tutorial Lol.

Enabling CUDA Acceleration for Adobe CS6

how to get CUDA Accelerated Performance in CS6. Adobe only has a small number of cards that are natively selected to support CUDA acceleration, but it's easy to change it to your own! This will work on almost ANY nVidia card.

NOTE: This only works with nVidia cards that support CUDA. ATI / AMD Cards will not work.

1) Go to System Preferences and Select CUDA. Make sure you update to the lastest CUDA Drivers



If this doesn't come up, visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html to download them

2) Open Terminal and run the following command to show GPU information:

Code:
/Applications/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6.app/Contents/GPUSniffer.app/Contents/MacOS/GPUSniffer
Enter your password and hit enter

3) From this, find the name of your Graphics card. In my case it is "GeForce GTX 670". Copy the name



4) In Terminal, paste the following command to edit the accepted cards in Premiere Pro CS6:

Code:
sudo nano /Applications/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6.app/Contents/cuda_supported_cards.txt
5) Hit the down arrow until you get to empty space. Paste the name of the Graphics Card in here.

6) After that is done, press Control + X, press Y to accept changes then hit Enter to exit

7) In Terminal, paste the following command to edit the accepted cards in After Effects CS6:

Code:
sudo nano /Applications/Adobe\ After\ Effects\ CS6/Adobe\ After\ Effects\ CS6.app/Contents/raytracer_supported_cards.txt

8) Hit the down arrow until you get to empty space. Paste the name of the Graphics Card in here.

9) After that is done, press Control + X, press Y to accept changes then hit Enter to exit.

Or if you dont like Terminal you can do this manually by going to /Applications/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS6.app/Contents/cuda_supported_cards.txt and entering your cards description, remember right click on the adobe application and show package contents to reach the CUDA-SUPPORTED-CARDS TEXT file.

And that's it! CUDA Acceleration should now work and you should be able to select the graphics card in your After Effects and Premiere settings!

Enabling OpenCL

The following steps will allow you to enable OpenCL on the GTX 670. This also works for the GTX 680 but other cards I'm not sure about.

1) Download the file "libclh.dylib" from http://rghost.net/39181502

2) Navigate to /System/Library/Extensions and find the file "GeForceGLDriver.bundle"

3) Right click on this file and select "Show Package Contents"

4) Select "Contents" then "Mac OS" and you will find the original "libclh.dylib" file. Rename this "libclhBAK.dylib"

5) Copy the new "libclh.dylib" file you just downloaded, enter your password and restart your computer. Done!

Right that me done I'm off to play battlefield see ya

Hey, Tec Junkie

Thank you for the help, and quick reply.

I will looking into the info you posted and see if CUDA at last will work with out crashing my hak lol.

is it true CUDA and OPEN CL dont play well. or is it posable to run both with out a crash pleas let me know.

have a great week.


Cheers.