G5 Tiger never crashed this much

[Michael Gissing]

[Blake Porter] “Does anyone know if this has been common for others?”

Not common here. I had more crashes with Tiger on a G5 than with SL, FCS3 and all up to date. OS and FCS3 were a totally clean install, not an upgrade over an old version. There are so many reasons why you might be having crashes from faulty hardware to the way the system was installed and is maintained.

However, if you have up to date OS and software, then the culprit is less likely to be the OS or FCS3. Many culprits range from plugins, other software that may be running in the background, hardware drivers incompatible with OS and FCS versions.

[Shane Ross]

Try working in ProRes sequences…even with XDCAM footage. When mixing other footage types in XDCAM or other GOP sequences, that leads to crashing as GOP formats are very processor intensive. ProRes in XDCAM is worse by far than XDCAM in ProRes.

Shane

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

[Rafael Amador]

Run DiskWarrior or TechTools on all your HDs.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Ben Holmes]

If I had more than one crash a week, I’d take the system apart and re-install everything. What kind of storage is it connected to?

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Matt Lyon]

Like other people have said, it’s pretty hard to draw general conclusions about why crashes happen. Every editor will have a different set of anecdotes.

In my case, we just upgraded at work from a G5 w/ os 10.4.11 to an Intel box w/ Snow Leopard. Still running FCP 6.0.6 though. I have found it to be LESS stable then my old configuration.

But, I have been experimenting with booting in 32 bit kernel mode (hold down the “3” and “2” key during startup). I have definitely noticed much less crashes. I can’t speak for whether this would be the case w/ FCP 7.

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Blake Porter]

For externals, the most crashes came with: eSATA to RAID 0. Crashing a lot with FCP, while rendering xdcam (proress sequence) to quicktime. Ran Diskwarrior on all drives more than once. Complete fcp re-installs done.

Wondering if eSATA was to blame so I went back to Firewire800 with external Barracudas mounted in a Voyager drive bay. Less crashes during render, but still some crashing during regular editing.

I recently added an INTERNAL 2TB Barracuda. After several days of operation, and In the middle of the first project -BAM- “Mac OS X can’t repair the disk” This new drive crashed too. After rebooting and all folders came back empty. Project gone. Cold sweat panic creeped over me with the deadlines looming.
Diskwarrior brought everything back. Immediately swapped to new external and got the episode out.

I wish there was a fool proof way to read the Crash Reports! … know of any?

Crashes began immediately after receiving system. I purchased through a well known vender. Turn key. All set-up. All proper.

[Jason Porthouse]

I’d point the finger at FCP vs. XDCam. Many haven’t had any trouble, but many have.

Assuming you’ve no stomach for converting all the XDCam to ProRes – you can do the following…

Turn off thumbnails in the browser and timeline if you have them on. Edit in a ProRes sequence with rendering set to ProRes, and if you really want to be radical, strip the extra RAM out of your machine. I know it sounds crazy, but I know of at least 2 people who’ve done this with very good results.

As an aside, call up the Activity Monitor whilst you’re in FCP and have a look at the system memory. On all the machines I’ve had problems with, the free memory has diminished till the crash happens. Dunno why but it’d be interesting to see if yours does this too…

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Shane Ross]

[Blake Porter] “I wish there was a fool proof way to read the Crash Reports! … know of any?”

Yup. CRASH REPORTER, part of the FCS Maintenance Pack from digitalrebellion.com. I use it all the time.

If you are having this many crashes, I too recommend that you back up data, wipe the system drive, and install things fresh. Somethings not right. That isn’t normal.

Shane

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

[Matt Lyon]

You can also keep a “console” window open (Applications>Utilities>Console) while editing and see if Final Cut spits out any error messages. If you see any I/O errors, it could point to problems with the disk drives or buses.

It also probably couldn’t hurt to zap your PRAM. I like to do this whenever I modify any hardware aspects of my machine.

Have you talked to your vendor about these issues?

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[Rafael Amador]

[Jason Porthouse] “I’d point the finger at FCP vs. XDCam.”
Blake started mentioning the stability of the old G5.
I would star by trying to fine-tune the System.
I work with all the XDCAM flavors (25/280 Mbps) since 4 years with no crashes.
Footage alone can not make the system crash unless there is something wrong on the very system.
System maintenance is the key.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com