Final Cut Pro crashing constantly!!!

[Shane Ross]

[Thomas Newman] “So i have read about the annoying fact that FCP keeps crashing whenever you click anywhere on the timeline when you want to jump ahead in your sequence.”

Where? Because this isn’t common. This isn’t normal. This means you have a problem. It might be a fact for someone, but not EVERYONE.

[Thomas Newman] “I have no idea why this happens and why its not fixed yet or if Apple is working on an update that will cure this horrible PC like disease. “

They aren’t, because this isn’t common. This is an ISSUE that you are having.

[Thomas Newman] “ere is the crash LOG. Does anyone know how to read this stuff? “

Yup. Using the Crash Analyzer from the FCS MAintenance Pack from https://www.digitalrebellion.com I got…

Suspected Cause:
This crash appears to have been caused by a hardware accelerated decoder on your graphics card. A common cause of this crash is using MPEG-2 media (or MPEG-2-derived media such as XDCAM or HDV) in the timeline. This is one of many reasons why MPEG media is not recommended for editing.

Suggested Actions:
* Transcode any HDV, MPEG-2, XDCAM or other long-GOP media into an editing-friendly format such as ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC).

Relevant Line:
2 com.apple.AppleVADriver 0xd005b342 AVACreateRendererDVDExt + 7986

Your GRAPHICS CARD appears to be causing this. It might be going bad so you might need to replace it….or follow the advice and convert the footage.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Cassia Boyde]

Shane,

Is it possible you could help me out as well? FCP has been crashing whenever I try to capture in HDV format and I can’t figure this out! I would greatly appreciate it,

Cassia

[Thomas Newman]

Hi Shane,

Thank you so much for the clear advice on the issue. However I did manage to go and switch out my graphics card from the ATI Radeon HD 2600 to a Nvidia 8800 GT and I still had the same crashes occur. I then took the card back and switched back the old one. Im getting the crash more and more often even when I play the timeline the hit space n=bar to stop so I can select a clip. Then the beach ball happens and back to the crash. Ive killed the FCP preference files and reinstalled FC and still no luck. So should I change my sequence timeline to what you suggested? This would mean that I have to render footage every time I play with it though correct? Any more advice form yourself or anyone would be a life saver. Im trying to finish my movie Bong Of The Dead and this is really killing me.

Thank you

Thomas

[Brad Elliott]

One possibility to consider.

Whenever our macs have issues in the vein of your problem our support people suggest doing a clean install and reinstalling everything.

The logistics of backing up files, and reinstalling everything is less than pleasant and will mostly take a good part of a day.

What we have found is that whenever we do this everything works great.
The only caveat being there is no problems with the guts.

[Jon Chappell]

The OP didn’t actually post the crashed thread so Crash Analyzer went with its best guess. This means that until the OP posts the crashed thread, we won’t know for sure if that is the issue or not.

But having over 100 simultaneous threads trying to process HDV data plus filters is a recipe for disaster. I would recommend converting the footage to ProRes or at least setting the sequence to render in ProRes.

[Mark Landman]

Another thing you might consider is your RAM configuration. 10GB is a fairly unusual config. It’s my understanding that for anything beyond 2GB, Macs prefer RAM in multiples of 4GB. You might try pulling out 2GB and see if that helps clear things up.

Mark Landman
PM Productions
Champaign, IL

[Brad Kopp]

and do you have enough empty space on the HD w/FC app?

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

[Thomas Newman]

Thanks for the RAM tips. I will pull some out or should I put more in? If 10 is odd then is 12 good. Also I have 500 gigs on the drive where fx is installed and 150 on the second internal drive. I’m just so upset with my mac. Is it the software or hardware?
Thanks
Thomas

[Jon Chappell]

I really don’t think extra RAM will make much difference. I can tell by the crash log that you’re putting a strain on the system by editing what looks like multiple HDV streams complete with filters. When Final Cut Pro can’t keep up with what you’re doing, it’s far more likely to crash, and this is the cause in this instance.

Consider a ProRes workflow – you won’t need to buy anything, it will be faster to composite and process your filters and it will solve your crashing issues.

[Ken Jones]

Hangs and beach balls sounds to me like it might be bad RAM.
You might try a test where you take out all but 4GB of RAM and see what happens.