AVCHD Media Import Stalls on Optimization

[Chip Gallo]

I recently updated to FCPX 10.1 and brought a new WD My Book Studio 3 TB drive online, connected to my late 2011 iMac by FW800. The library and event were freshly created on this drive. When I ingest AVCHD files from a Canon HF-G10, the optimization step often stalls (meaning it progresses somewhere between 15%-87% and stops). Imports from two HF-G10 cameras exhibit this issue with the file transfer step always being successful. Occasionally, around 10% of the time, it successfully optimizes the file.

I have tried many remedies for this issue including:

Running the OS X Disk Drive repair against the WD and internal drive;

Running Disk Warrior against both drives (which seemed to fix the problem for a while);

Updating the WD My Book firmware;

Disabling WD drive "sleep" features through the OS X panel and WD management software;

Reinstalling FCPX 10.1

Disabling FCPX "app nap (seemed to fix the problem for one file optimization);"

When I click around in the media browser during file optimization, sometimes I get a "beach ball." Sometimes FCPX becomes completely non responsive and it takes a reboot.

When the stall occurs, the drive light on the WD external drive goes from blinking to solid, and then a blink every 10 or 15 seconds like it has gone to sleep. The codec service (viewed in the Background Task window) is non responsive/red.

At this point I am thinking it is a bug in 10.1, Mavericks or the codec itself. Any ideas toward resolving this are welcome.

TIA,

Chip

[David Dixon]

Are you importing/transcoding directly from the camera via usb? Have you tried using a card reader instead? Tried copying the entire SD card structure to your computer and importing from there? Or tried importing without transcoding, then if needed transcoding later from within FCPX?

I'm just brainstorming for things that might eliminate certain bottlenecks. You may already be doing some of the above, but I'm just thinking it's worth trying to split the process into two steps - 1. getting the footage off the camera and/or card and then 2. optimizing. And, depending on your computer, you may find that transcoding is not necessary with 10.1.

Apologies if I've misunderstood.

[Chip Gallo]

The HF-G10 has 32 GB of built-in memory and the transfer to the computer is working. I have also tried kicking off optimization from the FCPX library location.

[update: I got the optimization process to run by going into Activity Monitor and killing a number of other processes running under my user ID. It is a crude work around, but now I can work on the show. I did make a record of what processes were running when it worked and later I can figure out which one has a conflict or doesn't play friendly.]