FCP quitting unexpectly during rendering

[Shane Ross]

Do you have enough room on the drive you are rendering to? Typically that message refers to RAM, but I see that you have plenty…so…

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Peter Wiggins]

Got any plugins or a llot of stills in your project?

Peter

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you Peter and Shane.

I appreciate your responses.

I hav 50GB left on my G-Raid, and I don’t have any plugins installed, and a few photos the timeline, but not many.

It is an 80 minute timeline, with 12 audio tracks and six video tracks. but, there are RARELY times when all 6 tracks are used during the same period in the film.

Also, I have the real-time audio mixing set to 4 tracks.

I just rendered the same timeline again, and it rendered successfully this time.

but now, I am a little concerned about the computer crashing when I Master to Tape on the BetaSP deck I just rented this afternoon.

Also, I am using a AJA Kona LHe breakoutbox and card.

I appreciate your thoughts about this.

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hello,

I wanted to post an update…

I managed to “Edit to Tape” 95% of the 80 minute film, and then the sequence stopped because of a dropped frame.

Of course, I have the real time audio tracks set to 4, and rendered EVERYTHING, including audio levels.

But, I went back and laid down to tape the last 5% from where the Sequence stopped, and now I have the whole thing on tape…

I have to output to BetaSP four more copies of the film, so I’m hoping it will not be a long night.

If anyone has any thought about the crashing or dropped frames, then I would appreciate it.

One more bit of information: my project file if about 300MB – I wasn’t sure it that might be a factor.

Thanks,

Khashyar

[Anders Haavie]

300 mb is ALOT. You should split your projects into smaller pieces. I find that 100mb is max to still work effective in fcp.

Dropped frames is usually from slow harddrives. There is no reason to panic though. Even on good working macs, I sometimes get that.

Anders

[Mathias Theissen]

This might be a little late, but possibly useful for future reference; I’ve experienced the same problems with crashes during renders as well as the “out of memory” error (despite having 8 GB of ram on my system). The problem seems to be related to how fcp treats cached video during renders – where e.g. certain fx-script effects or plugins (or combinations thereof) inhibits fcp/osx in flushing/releasing inactive ram, which causes fcp to “run out of” free ram where it can temporarily store the video render data (and then either crash or display the “out of memory” msg).
A workaround for this is to run the (system) activity monitor (under applications>utilities) while rendering in fcp, and closely watching the inactive memory usage under the system memory tab, and abort the render when the inactive memory (the blue slice of the cake diagram) closes in on 90-95%, then save the project and start the render over again. Keep on doing this until the render is done. It’s a bit more work, but a lot better then leaving an overnight render just to discover the next morning that absolutely nothing has been rendered..
I’ve run into this problem more often with higher resolution footage eg 1080, and even worse with large jpegs that has to be scaled for ken burns effects or similar. Also the the (boris)”title 3d” generator is notorious in producing these kinds of errors..
Hope this will be a thing of the past though, when fx-plug architecture slowly replaces the fx-scripts..

[Mike Parfit]

OK, I have had this problem for a year, with a G5 and a Mac Pro, FCP5 and 6. Identical problem. Large file, long render, always crashes. Also dropped frames. I have a Kona 3.

My workaround: Save. Shut down. Unplug. Take the Kona card out of the computer. That’s right. Take it out. Put it somewhere very dry, safe, and memorable. Don’t step on it.

Plug in. Start up. Then render a full single clip of the show. It will now probably render all the way through. My crashes are almost entirely gone when the card is out of the machine.

Shut down. Unplug. Put the Kona card back in. Put that clip on a timeline by itself. Print to tape. It should play through without a dropped frame.

This is not a good thing to be doing to this card. It’s not built for it. But in your kind of emergency it may be necessary. I have to do it every time I need to make single clip for a DVD or something.

Please let me know if this workaround succeeds. AJA has been working with me for months to try to solve this, and I have not wanted to put it on the forum because they’ve gone to a lot of effort to try to fix it and I don’t want to give that fine organization any grief here. But they have given me the impression that I am the only one who has encountered this problem. If that is not the case then they need everyone’s feedback and I would like to see that. And I would like to get my system to actually work as advertised.

Thank you,

Mike

[Patrick Troy]

Hi

I have the same recurring problem as you.
Eg Making reference QT of 40 min HD timeline to make draft DVD. I get Out of Memory Error

My workaround has been closing all other seqs and bins, restarting machine, opening and rendering without doing anything else.
Reluctant to keep messing with the card but if it works will do so as it is so so frustrating.

Nb Just spoke with my Kona/sytem supplier who is seeing this problem alot with and without Kona cards. He says I may actually need more ram than the 4gb I have.

[Mike Parfit]

Hi,

My problem just happened again while trying to make a 25-min QT movie. Crash. I don’t just get an out of memory error. For me, Final Cut just disappears. Today, as many times, it just vanished without even providing the report opportunity.

I have to say, my problem is almost always solved by removing the Kona 3. With the card out, FCP virtually always gets through the long renders. I think I’ve had one FCP crash in a month with the card out, and I have one every time I try a long render with it in. I think the card is demanding some resources that makes some FCP problem much worse.

My project file is not huge — just 50MB. By the way, prior to the last render I used Onyx and did all the maintenance operations available. Still crashed.

Are there any solutions out there?

Mike

[Patrick Troy]

I feel for you.

My Kona supplier advised to have the Activity Monitor out and watch what happens during the render. If the free memory falls below 512mb apparently more physical memory is needed.
HAve you first rendered the seq you are trying to export?
Have you tried rendering it in smaller chunks ?

I close all seqs and bins prior to rendering.

Its obviously a serious problem, is it called a memory leak?

Patrick