FCP Crashing while in TRIM MODE

[Andy Mees]

You might want to grab Jon Chappell’s FCS Maintenance Pack demo (at his Digital Rebellion website) and use his Crash Analyser took to have a look at those crash logs to see if the problem is the codec or something more easily addressed.

If it is the codec then you are in god company. Lot of folks have reported stability problems with XDCAM and MacPro’s in the past, whilst others seemingly get away with it scot free … assuming you don’t have the option of transcoding your media to less computationally intensive all I-frame codec (like Apple ProRes 422.) then you could try just switching your timeline compressor to that codec instead and see if that improves the situation (or not).

Hope it helps
Andy

[Jeremy Garchow]

It is it XDCam EX footage? Have you tried copying and pasting into a ProRes timeline at full raster and matching frame rate?

[Paul Jay]

Trash your finalcutpro plist/preferences/caches.
Copy pasting in new timeline ( prores or native) also helps a lot indeed.

[Jim Blokland]

I’ve also been experiencing similar issues on an XDCAM feature I’m cutting. At first I thought it might have something to do with the Matrox MX02 mini drivers, but now I’m thinking it’s the same thing you’re experiencing.

I did find a noticeable improvement by trashing the Thumbnail and Waveform caches. Seems to help to do it periodically. (BTW, I’m running on a Westmere Octo…)

If I copy/paste into a ProRes timeline, will I have to render all the ‘RT’ green bar stuff on output? (I already have FCP set to render in ProRes for any FX, anyway…)

Thanks for any advice.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jim Blokland] “If I copy/paste into a ProRes timeline, will I have to render all the ‘RT’ green bar stuff on output?”

Yes, but it’s better than to dreaded “conform” process. Use a ProRes timeline, you will be much happier (in my experience).

Jeremy

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Jeremy:

Thanks for your quick response. One question: what exactly is the ‘dreaded conform’ process? I’m cutting full-res XDCAM EX (with some ProRes elements in the same timeline), and at the end of the day I will either a) output to 444 ProRes QT for colour correct, or do that after I do the CC myself in Color. What issues am I looking at?

Thanks in advance.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jim Blokland] “One question: what exactly is the ‘dreaded conform’ process?”

With long GOP material, FCP has to recreate I_Frames based on the edit. The conform process (upon exporting from FCP) is the creation of those I-Frames. It can take a long time. When using a ProRes sequence, FCP just renders straight to the I-Frame ProRes and there’s no conform. No reason to go 444 either unless you have to.

ProRes timelines add stability to XDCam projects.

Jeremy

[Jim Blokland]

Wow, those are definitely compelling reasons. Thanks again Jeremy for your knowledgeable replies. I’ll give it a go!

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Jim Blokland]

Hey Jeremy:

One more question re ProRes flavours: one post suggested going all the way to an offline ProRes proxy. This has eliminated the crashing bug for him. I’m wondering if I need to go that far, or whether you would recommend ProRes 422 or even ProRes HQ, so I just do the transcode, then link up and forget about the XDCAM forever and ever amen…

I’ve also read that anything over ProRes 422 is overkill for XDCAM originated material.

What’s your take?

Thanks in advance.

Best, JIM.

Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Mac Pro Octo Westmere
14 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 5870
Matrox MX02 Mini
Seritek 4 TB RAID
AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 5 // FCS3

[Raul Alvarez]

Thank you ALL for the responses and suggestions. It has been kind of hell to meet the deadline, switching my timeline over ProRes which has eaten all my Hard Drive space available after rendering and now that I’m back at the edit, it continues crashing the same every single time I use the trim mode or even if I drag a clip within the prores timeline. The only way to “edit” if you might call it like that is to “cut” the clips and “moving” the entire sequence forward to open spaces to paste the desired clips in the desired position. It has even crashed when overwriting or inserting a new source clip from the source monitor.

Does anybody know if apple has addressed this issue in the new version 7?

Thank you all again for any hopeful solution to this!

(Thinking about going back to AVID again!!)