Is FCP ever going to sort out the “large project file” crash problem?

[Rob Grauert]

I am on 6.0.6 and I don’t have a problem with FCP Project files of that size. A 15MB FCP project is kinda the norm, at least for me anyway. I believe problems occur when your FCP project file is larger than 50MB

How is your system set up? You’re not loading media to your system drive, are you? Have your tried trashing preferences? Digital Rebellion’s FCS Maintenance Pack?

Rob Grauert, Jr.
http://www.robgrauert.com
command-r.tumblr.com

[Trevor Asquerthian]

I work on pretty much a sequence per project – makes it much easier to open / save / find in the finder. But your problem may be the XDCam material – long GOP format that FCP does not seem that smooth with (in my experience). It’s got to do a lot of decoding on the fly.

I do have issues with some of my longer selects sequences – 3 hours of DVCProHD on a fast raid. They are fine when playing or mousing around, but as soon as I try and shuttle or JKL I get a spinning beach ball. Can’t quite get to the bottom of it, but I assume it’s the fact that the machine is trying to pull lots of data off the disks and through the CPUs. No crashes from that though. XDCam sequences, on the other hand, especially if they have 50fps material in them… say goodbye and check your autosave vault.

[Chris Dixon]

Hi Rob.

I’m loading media to a centralized server, as well as mirroring it to an external hard drive, both of which give me the same results. I’ve trashed prefs. Haven’t tried the FCP Maintenance Pack. Is it worth the investment? I haven’t had this problem before, but the current projects I’m working on are much larger than I’m used to… in amount of b-roll anyway.

Thanks,
Chris

[Chris Borjis]

[Chris Dixon] “‘m loading media to a centralized server, as well as mirroring it to an external hard drive, both of which give me the same results.”

are you using gigabit ethernet to the server?

what connection type to the external hard drive?

I’m doing some sizeable xdcam hd projects but over fibre-channel raid5 arrays with no problems.

one thing that helps stability with xdcam and fcp is only having one sequence open at a time. have multiple ones open and beach ball crashes occur regularly.

[Tony Silanskas]

I second the XDCAM problems. Search a little more around here and you’ll see similar threads like the one you were referencing. It seems that it is mostly with the XDCAM EX format (like from an Sony EX3) with Final Cut on Snow Leopard. Had to cut a 30min show last year with footage from an EX3 and literally had hundreds of crashes. Wasn’t allowed to transcode to ProRes because of client so had to make do.

A few things I did to help it crash less was turn-off “Scrub High Quality” in the timeline and delete my thumbnail scratch from time to time, along with Final Cut’s preferences. I can’t remember where I read it, probably here somewhere, but there was a bug with how XDCAM EX footage would create thumbnails in Final Cut at one time. Now, none of these got rid of the crashes totally, but it did alleviate it a bit. If you can, transcode to ProRes and don’t look back.

BTW, did a quick search and here are a few similar threads that might have info that could help you:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1055718#1063091

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1011917#1049619

tony

[Paul Jay]

150+GB of Long Gop Mpeg 2 is your problem.

[Gary Askham]

15MB isn’t a large FCP project. I too would say that your problem is down to the XDCAM media. I have worked on large, multi-episode XDCAM projects with hundreds of hours of footage where 6 or 7 crashes a day were the norm.

We found that not using thumbnails at all helped (view your bins as lists and turn off thumbnails in the timeline). Unfortunately a lot of editors need these features so they would prefer to use thumbnails and put up with the crashes.

One of the recommendations we received from Apple was to spread the RAM evenly over the risers. This is a good practice anyway but seems even more important when working with XDCAM. And I do mean EVENLY. If you have 8 slots then you should put 1 GB in each slot.

(After my experiences with XDCAM I have since become a big fan of transcoding media before it gets anywhere near my timeline)

————————
FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Brad Steiner]

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1003922

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1011917

https://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9545404#9545404

even more threads talking about the problem.

Far as I can tell, some date back to 2008. I’ve been suffering through the crashes for a few months now, when I went years without. We were an early adopter of the XDCAM HD (350). things have been fine till recently. That’s what is so frustrating. People can say that we’ve apparently made a bad call going with the format. But almost 3 years of great results, only now to have issues is killing me.

The problem isn’t isolated to just one or two people, but it’s not consistent for all users. Seems MacPro boxes are more susceptible. And some are reporting that mixing formats with XDCAM make is worse, or perhaps smoothcam on an XDCam clip.

People have done complete re-installs with no success. I’ve got the same issue across 3 edit suites, some on projects connected to a SAN, others projects with internal storage. One box with a Kona, another without any card at all.

Going all prores for the hundreds upon hundreds of projects is not an option for a system that has been fine, and should work. Turning off thumbnails is not an option for those editing using visuals.

I’m interested in hearing from SOMEONE who has some definitive information. Such as they spoke with APPLE. Or they found a fix that worked for them. If I hear that it’s just my fault for not running disk warrior….

Praise to the COW

BrAd Steiner
ImageWorks Media Group

[Jason Porthouse]

I’m currently cutting a doc with about 700 gigs of media, mostly XDCam EX720p50. We’re using Calibrated Software’s MP4 plugin for FCP, and I’ve had very few crashes in the time we’ve been cutting. Project size is about 20megs.

I too have had terrible problems cutting XDCam EX1080 and 720 when converted with Sony’s software tool, but short of transcoding to Pro-Res there’s not a lot you can do. Turn off all thumbnails; turn off any thumbs in the timeline; make sure your drives aren’t too full. Set autosave to 5 mins and cross your fingers…

Seriously though, I think it is media, rather than project size that matters. I’ve had some big projects (100 megs +) that have been rock solid, if a little slow in opening, but with DV media (offline for eventual uncompressed SD online).

Jason

_________________________________

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[Shane Ross]

Don’t use and XDCAM sequence. Use all that footage in a ProRes sequence and things will be much more stable.

Shane

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