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Mac Pro EFi Firmware update killed my Compressor 3
I ran the automatic Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update this morning and it rendered Compressor useless to me. I submit jobs and they remain on “hold” with the message that there is an unknown time remaining to complete (been like that for 30 mins on a QT movie that is only 30 secs long).
I also posted a motion problem earlier today but now I am thinking that was the beginning of something more serious..
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/170/859332
I think that this update is also affecting Motion and when applying behaviors to objects (i.e. the fade ins/outs are not doing what they are supposed to do when I export/render).
I think that my FCS 2 may be corrupted now. I have been running smoothly without any hitches for 3 months. Today, my Mac actually started crashing and locking up (flashback = Windows XP).
I have a video project that is due tomorrow and Mac Tech Support is closed. Does any of this sound familiar? Is this something that I can fix by reinstalling? If I have to reinstall, what is the best way to do that and not lose anything I might need (I am ok if I lose preferences as long as I do not lose any projects/clips, etc).
Mac Pro dual-quad Xeons, 8GB RAM, 1 – 500GB HD, 1 – 750GB HD,
Mac OS X, Dual – 23″ HD Apple Monitors -
5 Replies
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If I were you I try fixing permissions from Disk Utility before flipping out and doing a full FCS install. Maybe it won’t help at all, but maybe it might… If it does it would certainly save you many hours.
If you do a full install make certain to clone your system drive to an outboard firewire drive using Carbon Copy Cloner so that you don’t have to worry about the possibility of blowing away anything you might later regret. That should at least alieve any fears you have and should allow you to proceed with confidence if you find it necessary to go that route.
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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[David Roth Weiss] “If you do a full install make certain to clone your system drive to an outboard firewire drive using Carbon Copy Cloner so that you don’t have to worry about the possibility of blowing away anything you might later regret. That should at least alieve any fears you have and should allow you to proceed with confidence if you find it necessary to go that route.”
I was going to make this is a warning in a full post, but since you brought it up I’ll post it here. I found this out the hard way (while I am in Shanghai by the way, insert your favorite Shanghaied pun here) but you must make sure that when you format your hard drives, the the partition scheme is set to GUID instead of APM (Apple Partition Map). THIS GOES FOR EVERY DRIVE YOU WANT TO USE AND WORK NORMALLY FROM ON YOUR INTEL MAC THAT HAS OSX ON IT. I didn’t have my internal cloned drive set up properly and had some trouble running the firmware update. After cloning my drive to my properly formatted back up drive, and then cloning back, everything is working as normal. Supposedly, OSX won’t boot (or most likely) install to an APM formatted drive if you are running an intel machine. Obviously, mine booted OSX as an APM formatted drive, but it was from a clone and not a disk install. This recent firmware update brought this to life for me and the Apple support forums set me straight.
To make sure your partition is setup properly, go to the disk utility and click on your drive then click the partition tab. Then click the options button toward the bottom and see which partition format is selected.
Jeremy
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[DRW in Jeremy’s quote] “make certain to clone your system drive”
Yes, the absolutely correct thing to do, essential even.
But tread very, very lightly until the next Leopard update. There’s a very well documented bug in 10.5.0 where if there’s any interruption to the COPY process, your original data gets TORCHED.
This is something we’ve never seen before, in Mac or Windows, where a failed copy makes the ORIGINAL data DISAPPEAR.
Again, very well documented. I’d post a link to it, but it’s on my other computer and I’m too lazy to look it up. 🙂
This is surely one of the reasons why we can expect an update so quickly.
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Wow!!! That sounds like the doomsday scenario…
Good post Dr. Stranglove… Maybe this should be posted for all to see as one of your famous Sticky Notes…
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Ric Ford’s Macintouch post on the “massive data loss” bug is truly worth reading. Actually, Ric’s page has been darn nearly daily reading for me for well over 10 years.
Of course, reading it to find the link, I discover that Apple has fixed the bug TODAY.
So it was true up until this morning. 🙂
Stories like this are a single example of why, if you have a Mac — and I think you do — you owe it to yourself to make this a regular stop on your internet rounds.
We have an OS X forum, but nobody thinks to go there. I think there’s a ton of stuff like this that we can be talking about…SHOULD be talking about. As much as I hate getting the class off topic, have any thoughts on this?
thx,
twtw
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