12 Core Mac Pro Hangs, Judders, Crashes, Out Of Memory

[John Davidson]

Does it look like this?
https://www.magicfeatherfilms.com/home/example.html

Can you detail any additional hardware you have attached to the systems that display the problem? Perhaps we can cross reference our information and figure out what the ‘trigger’ is…I personally never use twixtor…

[Brad Walker]

Link to clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAUecM5s1mQ

These are all the same plugins used on the other MAC PROS (2006 and 2009). Everything was tested the SAME on the other computers…plugins, media, projects, SAS card, HDElement, everything. Flawless on the other machines.

I have received 2 12 CORE MAC PROS from apple — same issues with 3 DIFFERENT PRORES PROJECTS. It has to be a conflict in the OS. Without plugins: video in viewer window looks like a rave. With plugins, FCP crashes more than 20x a day.

The customer support from the 3rd party plugins has been great from Twixtor and Magic Bullet, however everyone is scratching their heads on this– Apple Level 2 support, FCP support.

UPDATE:
I have completed a third clean install and taken out 2 dimms of memory (I read somewhere that 6 dimms of 2gb each are actually faster than filling all 8. I also kept 10.6.4 and only installed the 7.0.3 update. I also installed Magic Bullet 4.2.1, Twixtor, Noise industries and the DFX plugins. We will see how this test goes…

It

[John Davidson]

If your project is close to due, I’d find an alternative to those plugins if I were you. I wonder if you only went Prores instead of ProresHQ if that would eliminate the problem. HQ obviously takes up more resources. Why don’t you do this – take a sequence that can cause the problem, use media manager to create and recompress the short sequence to standard ProRes in a brand new project, then close the HQ project and try to make it crash with the non-HQ footage.

If you find that HQ footage is causing your problem, recompress all the DSLR footage to standard prores. As was mentioned before, ProResHQ converted dslr footage does nothing but reduce resources and use more disk space on your system.

It’s possible what solved my issue was fixed in OS updates.

And it’s sunday on a long weekend, so I’m not using my own system resources to ensure proper capitalization and spelling!

Good luck!

[Brad Walker]

Thanks for the input but 2 things don’t sit quite right: 1) a 2006 MAC PRO is handling same project perfectly. 2) THis is a 12 core machine…it is SUPPOSED to handle HQ or 4444 or whatever you throw at it. I think 10.6.6 got me in the mess I was in 10.6.4 is working well so far. I’m going to knock on wood.

[John Davidson]

If you can identify that the problem is hdlsr footage at prores hq, wouldn’t that be better than being frustrated? Seems like a far easier experiment than reinstalling the OS three times…

[Brad Walker]

I understand your logic, however, what you are suggesting implicates there is something wrong with the media or transcoding, however, the same prores HQ media works flawlessly with the 2006 and 2009 MAC PROS i the office after thorough testing with the same hard drive, cards, plugins, etc. retranscoding, etc. Perhaps prores HQ does not work with this machine…This would be ridiculous.

[Steve Modica]

[Brad Walker] “Thanks for the input but 2 things don’t sit quite right: 1) a 2006 MAC PRO is handling same project perfectly. 2) THis is a 12 core machine…it is SUPPOSED to handle HQ or 4444 or whatever you throw at it. I think 10.6.6 got me in the mess I was in 10.6.4 is working well so far. I’m going to knock on wood.”

My guess would be a problem with the plugins you’re using and optimization. Little code problems that are normally not hit can go bananas on new hardware. The timing is very different because you have more threads, hyperthreading and an integrated memory controller.

The vendor may know of these problems (or perhaps hasn’t tried their code on a 12 core yet!) and you need to let them know. They might be able to do a non-optimized or debug build that works correctly.

Sometimes, things like this are caused by simple mistakes like uninitialized variables in the code. On older machines, they are always 0 anyhow, but on a newer platform that hits memory faster, something might be left in there.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Brad Walker]

True! Already contacted them and you are correct…Twixtor does not have a 12 core in stock.

[Steve Modica]

Isn’t that funny?

I would be harsher on the vendor, but apple does this to us. They release these systems with no pre-release program. So absolutely no one has seen the system prior to the day you can buy it. Then the vendors have to fight the herd to get one. If the vendor is a small company without a lot of cash, they may not have $5k laying around to buy the thing either.

So word of warning to all of you, when buying systems, remember that the vendors are buying their test systems at the same time.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Tracy Lachance]

I’ve had similar problems with my new mac and I would like to affirm that it isn’t your source material and it isn’t your plug ins. I work with SD footage and my new mac doesn’t have the hardware to show a clip with a Gaussian blur on it, but the old Mac can process it just fine. Just one example of the many problems I’ve had since receiving my new mac.

It’s aggravating that the same material works flawlessly on older machines, but shudders and craps out on a shiny new Mac.

Sorry I have no answers and can only empathize. We’ve talked to the arrogant and asinine FCP “support” with no resolution. Apple screwed up and they don’t know how and they won’t admit it.