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MAC PRO – sudden shutdowns with render attempt in FCP 7
Hi,
I have an issue which essentially is my Mac Pro shutting off, like BAM with no warning, when I attempt to render anything. I have limited knowledge of computers so I am really stuck now!
Here’s my computer specs then I’ll give some more detail:Mac Pro
2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
8 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM (Ram)
2TB onboard drive (apps only)
680GB WD (onboard)
2 x 1TB WD Studio II external drives (media only)
Software is Final cut studio 3 – FCP 7 etc etc.
Running Snow leopard – OSX 10.6.6What I’ve noticed, looking at activity monitor, is that pretty much as soon as I hit about 400% CPU usage, when doing a render, I’ll get a black out. Machine instantly cuts power as if I’d pulled the cord out. Having said that, most of the time in FCP it just cuts power as soon as it begins to render (like a second after giving the render command). So I am thinking it may be a hardware issue but I want to know if it possibly relates to Final Cut Studio??
I have tried the same deal in compressor and as soon as I start rendering it cuts out.
Qmaster is not sharing the cores, I don’t have a cluster happening or anything.
I used a program called “CPU test” to check out the processors and all 8 cores fire up and light up the board in Activity monitor with green, without causing a shutoff.
I’ve rendered previews in FCP from 3 different projects and from different drives.
Rendered from FCP timeline through compressor from 3 different projects and from different drives.
Rendered 2 different video files using compressor directly – No FCP.
All cause a shutoff.The footage I’m rendering is mainly XDCAM EX and also some 5D Prores files.
I did a PRAM reset by holding Apple+Option+R+P during start up, until I heard 3 chimes – No change
still shuts off with render attempt.I checked the heatsinks and they seem fine, not loose or anything (??)
I really am not thinking this is a heat issue as it seems so directly, and instantly, attached to CPU usage. Apart from that, it is not hot whatsoever and I’ve monitored the cores in iStat. Fine.I’m fully lost now, I’ve tried all my tricks, time to talk to the experts 🙂
Oh, this is the console log if it’s any help, after the last ‘blackout’ it’s chinese to me I’m sorry…
27/01/11 4:00:04 PM com.apple.launchd[1] *** launchd[1] has started up. ***
27/01/11 4:00:18 PM com.cleverfiles.cfbackd[48] partition offset c805000
27/01/11 4:00:19 PM com.cleverfiles.cfbackd[48] partition offset 8008000
27/01/11 4:00:27 PM com.apple.SystemStarter[22] PACESupport – launchd already started us
27/01/11 4:00:27 PM com.apple.SystemStarter[22] /Library/StartupItems/Digidesign Mbox 2/Digidesign Mbox 2:start
27/01/11 4:00:27 PM com.apple.SystemStarter[22] Starting Digidesign Mbox 2 Configuration Service
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[112] ALF error: cannot find useragent 1102
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[112] plugin.UserEventAgentFactory: called with typeID=FC86416D-6164-2070-726F-70735C216EC0
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[121] (com.apple.ReportCrash) Falling back to default Mach exception handler. Could not find: com.apple.ReportCrash.Self
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM loginwindow[31] Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM com.apple.loginwindow[31] 2011-01-27 16:00:32.580 loginwindow[31:107] Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM com.apple.loginwindow[31] /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM loginwindow[31] Cannot find function pointer NewPlugIn for factory C5A4CE5B-0BB8-11D8-9D75-0003939615B6 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x10050dbe0 (bundle, not loaded)
27/01/11 4:00:32 PM com.apple.loginwindow[31] 2011-01-27 16:00:32.582 loginwindow[31:107] Cannot find function pointer NewPlugIn for factory C5A4CE5B-0BB8-11D8-9D75-0003939615B6 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x10050dbe0 (bundle, not loaded)
27/01/11 4:00:35 PM com.cleverfiles.cfbackd[48] partition offset 8008000
27/01/11 4:00:35 PM com.cleverfiles.cfbackd[48] partition offset 8008000
27/01/11 4:00:38 PM UserEventAgent[146] Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
27/01/11 4:00:38 PM UserEventAgent[146] Cannot find function pointer NewPlugIn for factory C5A4CE5B-0BB8-11D8-9D75-0003939615B6 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x10012d390 (bundle, not loaded)
27/01/11 4:00:38 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[121] (com.apple.Kerberos.renew.plist[151]) Exited with exit code: 1
27/01/11 4:00:41 PM SystemUIServer[126] Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
27/01/11 4:00:41 PM SystemUIServer[126] Cannot find function pointer NewPlugIn for factory C5A4CE5B-0BB8-11D8-9D75-0003939615B6 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x11344b7f0 (bundle, not loaded)Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks guys.
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9 Replies
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Do you have all your equipment plugged into one power strip, perchance?
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Under the apple menu, select About This Mac. Click More Info. Under the hardware area, click memory and make sure the status of all your RAM says OK.
If you’ve had ram go bad, some vendors (like OWC) have a lifetime guarantee. You’ll have to send back both DIMMs though so they can replace it with a matched pair.
Andrew Wilson
WestView Digital Video & Design
http://www.westviewdigital.com -
Yeah, it sure sounds like you’re overloading your circuit breakers from the power source. More CPU’s = more power consumption. Try putting the computer on a separate circuit.
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Sorry guys, should have mentioned..
I have bypassed the power board and plugged the computer directly into the power point, to eliminate the power board from the list of issues.I am starting to think this could be a bad ram issue like Andrew has suggested. Am doing a ram test now. I’ll follow with a hardware test from the osx disc next because the computer is now not even firing up. And I am getting the little blinking white light below the power button when I try some sticks isolated. Apparently that is the mac saying bad ram?
Thanks for help so far!
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Another thing to try to resetting the SMC. Unplug the power cord from the back of the mac. Hold down the power button for 5 seconds. Plug it back in and then boot up.
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964best of luck.
Andrew Wilson
WestView Digital Video & Design
http://www.westviewdigital.com -
Just an update,
I’ve moved off the bad ram idea and am starting to think my power supply is struggling. It’s now got to the point where the computer doesn’t even boot, it just turns on and then cuts seconds later. So since it’s gone from bad to worse I’m starting to think that it can’t be giving me worsening results for a ram problem that is static, random results maybe, but not this downward trend. I can see how repeated power ups and interruptions would be stuffing the capacitators or something.
It also makes sense however that if the power supply, or some capacitators in it (or the motherboard) are getting flooded that it would struggle most when you choose to render something and the cpu’s demand more power. That is probably what triggers the mac to shut down out of safety.Still not sure but I am getting it looked at on Monday by a tec and I’m thinking it will be a power supply replacement, or repair.
Does this sound like it fits the symptoms to anyone else??
Cheers
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Ok,
Half solved! I took it to a mac tech and he reset the PMU. You can push this tiny button on the motherboard and it resets the power management unit. To it is not the power supply, I don’t think, but yeah, a power issue. Not sure yet what caused the PMU to stuff up but he reset it but pressing this button very quickly. If u have this problem he said to me it is not a good idea to try and push this button yourself as it can do something not good to your motherboard. It’s free to go into a apple store and get this button pressed.
It solved the problem for a while, but whatever is causing the PMU to go funny is still doing it because my computer is slowly starting to do the same thing again. AHHHGGGG!!!
The mac tech said that he thinks it could be the graphics card considering that it seems aligned with rendering or specifically video rendering (even though I’m quite sure that Final cut studio doesn’t use GPU processing, but there must be more to it than I understand). It did give us a weird graphics card error message in the shop too, but then never did it again. Something about quartz??
The graphics card is a ATI Raedon card. I’ll let you know what becomes of it.Anyone have any other ideas??
Peace
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Alright, problem is solved!!
Yes it was the power supply. That’s what was mucking up the PMU I guess, but strangly the first time we reset it, it seemed to refresh the computer and it worked alright for a while until the dodgy power corrupted it again. But the 2nd time I took it in, we reset the PMU and it did absolutely nothing??
Thanks everyone who gave their comments!
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Thanks man. I’ve had the exact same problem. On a deadline too. If you don’t mind, how much did it set you back? Did it take long?
thanks again!
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