FCP quitting unexpectedly…tried practically everything!

[Gary Askham]

This is how I’d approach your problem.

– Disconnect your USB drive and clear up some space on your laptop (you really should keep at least 10% of your boot drive free for normal system operations).

– Run Software Updater so you have the most recent version of your OS, FCP and any other related apps.

– Use Digital Rebellion Preference Manager to trash any preferences and make FCP stable.

– Open up FCP and use Easy Setup to create a new DV NTSC project.

– Open up your old project (with the USB drive still disconnected) and copy your working sequence into the new project.

– Close your old project (without saving it). Save your new project.

– Restart your laptop, connect your USB drive and open your new project.

You may have to reconnect some files but hopefully this will get you up and running. If you need access to your rushes or any other files (music, graphics etc) I would reimport them to the new project. Don’t go back to the old project unless you really have to.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Brad Kopp]

from the apple posts,
10 Gigs left? I would say your drive is too full already. I suggest moving some big files off onto another drive to free up space.

Eddie

you need more free space on the macbook. try freeing up some HD space.

Moto Guzzi rider
dog lover w/wife, Ex & 3 kids

[Eric Johnson]

Having read the Apple thread and what is here, and not knowing where things still stand, this is what I would suggest:

Run DISK UTILITY and repair permissions.

First thing, even if you’ve already done it, TRASH your PREFS
Then, TRASH your RENDER files, they will re-render and these get corrupt like crazy, especially if you’re dealing with any sort of nesting.

Do you have any mp3’s or any sort of MPEG-1, 2, or 4 ? That’s HDV, H264, Sorenson, pretty much anything off the web. If so, download mpeg streamclip and convert all of your non-DV to DV. That also goes for any AVI, WMA or anything you would be needing flip4mac to read. Switch all of your mp3 or AAC’s in iTunes or Soundtrack to AIFF.

If you haven’t done so yet, you would benefit greatly from reinstalling FCP at the very least. Go to Digital Rebellion and get the FCS Remover and delete all FCP files except for the licensing info. That would be if the above doesn’t work.

Also, not to beat a dead horse, but if anything you captured to the USB drive as FAT32 as a DV file was longer than say 37-45 minutes than you have files that have a pointer and sub 2GB pieces. FCP doesn’t really like that, either recapture from FCP or export in QT or MPEG Streamclip as DV 48k.

If you have any stills that are larger than 3500×3500 they will crash any FCP regardless or system resources. You may have issues with anything bigger than 2000×2000.

Also, DON’T run any apps other than FCP while you are trying to figure this out. Especially any app written by Apple, iTunes and Safari are massive RAM hogs. That also goes for any iLife app.

FCP does use the Video card and the VRAM heavily, so any problem here is something that needs to be considered, regardless of it happening in other projects.

Hopefully you’ve gotten it all figured out. If not this should help.

[Adam Cohen]

Please see the further steps I’ve taken and further description on the apple discussions thread of this:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2282805&tstart=0

Thanks again for all help,
Adam

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth 24 times per second.” -Jean-Luc Godard

[David Bogie]

Adam, the problem with the Apple thread is it’s too long to bother with at this point.
You could start another thread that eliminates all of the nonsense and duplication and rules out what you think are not likely causes but there’s little we can do for you fro where we’re sitting.
Your situation is just too bizarre and unfortunate but we’ve given you everything we got. It’s up to you now. You take what’s been offered, process all of our suggestions through your intuition, apply a bunhc of gut feelings, go into rescue mode, and try to salvage the most important pieces that will keep your client happy.

bogiesan