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Can a project be too large?
I’m working on a film that’s a little over 3 hours. I find every day, FCP X crashes once or twice. I usually close most of my programs so it’s not computer memory, and both my computer and the external drives have at least 10% free. Is the problem just the sheer size of my project? Should I just edit in different project and then combine them at the end? Any other thoughts?
Thanks as always. FCP X has been amazing for this project. I took forever logging, but the metadata and ability to put transcripts in each clip (I put it in the Camera Name section so I could view it in the inspector) has been amazing.
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8 Replies
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Is there a warning or report when it crashes?
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What’s your workflow?
For me, a full feature with RED files rarely crashes, mostly spinning ball of death but a quick kill helps.
Don’t even have to reboot the Mac for that.
I’ve had more issues with odd formats since I avoid creating proxies with them. -
[Noam Osband] ” both my computer and the external drives have at least 10% free.”
That is extremely tight. Both FCPX and macOS are constantly using storage for paging, temp files, render files, etc. The in-use storage you see statically does not necessarily reflect the flickering “high water mark” of dynamic storage consumption. Ideally software should exhibit graceful degradation when hitting limits or errors, but this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it just crashes. I would personally never operate with a boot drive at 10% free space or a media drive holding a library at 10% free space.
However that was just a thought — your crashes may have some other cause. If you’ve made many project snapshots of a 3-hr project, that could slow it down at startup, but it shouldn’t cause a crash. It might be worth breaking it into smaller projects just for an experiment.
Are you on 10.3.2? That version contains significant performance enhancements for large projects.
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I did upgrade really excited for it to work better….and it didn’t. Interesting to hear that you keep more than 10% free. I’ve been meaning to get rid of lots of music I have backed up. I guess now’s as good a time as ever. I need to get this film in today for a deadline (my PhD dissertation actually….the first time my school is taking a film for a dissertation!), but when I work on it going forward, I’m going to test breaking it up into smaller portions.
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Congrats and hope this forum gets a shoutout in your dissertation.????
Noah
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What is the nature of the crash? Does it just turn off and reboot or do you get a kernel panic notification? If its the former, its not about size. Its a hardware issues that effects a percentage of imacs that Apple knows about but won’t admit it.
if it the later it could be a clean install might help. If might be bad ram. the system log might provide some clues.
Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic HPX250P, FCP X 10.3, teach video production in L.A.
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It’s the former. It just shuts off and then I restart it. Occasionally, rarely but sometimes, I get signed out of my user account and then back in. That’s an odd reaction as it always terrifies me that my computer is crashing, but it isn’t.
I’m using a MBP. Any more info on that as a hardware problem? I have another 4 months as a warranty and if there really is a problem, I’d love to try and get the apple store to somehow help me. The fact you said they dont admit it doesn’t augur well.
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I don’t have experience with MBP but what I am told and haven’t had time to deal with it yet is to take it to apple store and insist on a new one. They will of course look into the problem before doing so. It might be a software issue or some component who knows. But if what they did doesn’t solve it insist that you get a new unit that your livelihood is on the line. Make sure to do this while under apple care and if you can extend the warranty at additional cost. If one store doesn’t help you might find another one that will. Also when you bring it in insist on a loaner and clone the one you have onto to the loaner. That way you don’t loose any time and it might show something if the loner doesn’t have the same problem. Shutting down is not a symptom of the system not being able to handle a project that is too large. Slowing down or crashing FCP or freezing maybe.
Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic HPX250P, FCP X 10.3, teach video production in L.A.
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