FCPX Spinning wheel of death, I am stumped

Holy crap, the difference is night and day!

I'm really glad that your iMac started working smoothly. I think anyone would be confused if asked to install EtreCheck, which they have never heard of. However, I think you got a good result because you believed in us respondents and decided to take courage and move forward.

Your iMac was suffering from Chrome, so Spinning wheel must have been a sad cry. There is a big difference between believing bad rumors and believing the advice of respondents. Unfortunately, there are times when EtreCheck remains suspicious and cannot resolve the issue.

⚫︎A brief internet search would lead me to believe that EtreCheck is not safe enough to consider using

You're very welcome. Hopefully this takes care of it. Please report back either way.

What mac model?

What OS version?

What drive contains the media, how is it connected, how much space? I know you said you had a lot, but just in case...

And, to get a fuller picture and possibly detect software causes: Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

Etrecheck was written by a long-time member to help speed up the diagnostics process. If you look through this forum you'll see many etrecheck reports posted. They are anonymized reports of the system including kernel extensions, daemons, installed software and other details. Rather than having many back and forths asking and answering questions about configuration and settings, it's all in one report. Have a look at some that have been posted.

[Loaded] com.google.GoogleUpdater.wake.plist (Google LLC - installed 2024-05-08)
    Command: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/GoogleUpdater/Current/GoogleUpdater.app/Contents/MacOS/GoogleUpdater --wake-all --enable-logging --vmodule=*/components/update_client/*=2,*/chrome/updater/*=2

2024-05-08 16:24:52 VTDecoderXPCService High CPU Use

These could point to Google's background processes that overwhelm the MacOS video subsystem. Completely remove Chrome and all the associated cruft that they install. Follow the instructions at https://chromeisbad.com Note that simply dragging Chrome.app to the trash is not enough.

Once you've done that, drag FCP to the Trash but don't empty it. Then download a fresh copy from the AppStore or a known good backup.

How many drives do you have connected? Some appear to be full.

As Luis requested, post the report from https://etrecheck.com

How is the external drive formatted?

If there's any malware on your system it's Google Chrome. The keystone daemons will completely infect your video toolbox and destroy your ability to work.

The article is complete rubbish.

That's great! Thank you for reporting back with your findings.