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Ongoing Resolve instability on Late 2013 Mac Pro OS10.11
Hello Forum,
I have been chasing the cause of a nagging instability that causes Resolve to not only freeze but also causes the need for a hard boot of the Mac itself. Resolve will run normally for an indiscriminate period of time and then seemingly decouple from the Mac. No spinning pinwheel and I still have the ability to save the project. Yet hitting play shows a .5 or 1 fps indicator while the timeline does not move. Hitting next or previous scene will update the timeline thumbnail but picture will not move. If in the middle of adjusting a window when the decoupling occurs, the window on the monitor stays where it was while the window on the GUI will adjust. I have learned at that point to save and quit. Then I have to force quit Resolve even though in the force quit menu it is not red highlight or showing “not responding”. After that my Mac loses the ability to restart with software command and requires a hard boot. Fortunately the save works so I hard boot and limp on until the next time. There is always a next time.
I pursued this issue with Apple for months and ultimately wiped my HD three times to reinstall just the core applications for my post work. The thinking was to remove any corrupted programs or lagging incompatibilities. After several HD wipes and OS and Resolve upgrades I still I have the issue. The exact same issue.
It would be easy to say it’s a Mac issue yet Resolve is the one app that consistently fails while other apps do not.
The one bit I gleaned from Apple is that the Macs aren’t very happy with audio extensions that aren’t Apple. I run Logic X with a UA Apollo interface and UA plug ins as well as a few other support audio plug ins.
I have noticed that Resolve sees these plug ins in the Resolve preferences>audio menu. Anytime I add a new plug in, Resolve will automatically enable it in the preferences menu. I continually try to disable all in pursuit of stability yet this morning I have already had to restart after 1 hour.
I am running the latest update of Resolve 12.5.2.101 as well as OS 10.11.6. This issue has been ongoing since last fall with all of the versions of Resolve and OS that entails. During the times I erased the hard drive, I did use time machine to try earlier OS versions that were stable. That had varying degrees of success yet my failure to back up my Resolve projects separately from Time Machine eventually caused me to start over with new OS and new Resolve. That should have worked like a new machine but it hasn’t.
My thinking now is to create a partition for either Resolve or Logic X/UA Audio to try to eliminate this issue. I have heard of other users with ProTools doing this.
However, it seems counter intuitive that a Mac Pro would not be able to run Resolve with another major manufacturer audio interface without consistent problems. Logic runs fine although of course it is an Apple program.
I haven’t heard of any other users having similar problems. I have grown tired of limping along. I may even opt for one machine for grading and one for mixing.
Any advice out there forum dwellers?
Thanks,
Dave
Dave Pickett
Colorist
Spectrum Grading
http://www.davepickett.com
404-775-8519 -
6 Replies
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״However, it seems counter intuitive that a Mac Pro would not be able to run Resolve with another major manufacturer audio interface without consistent problems. Logic runs fine although of course it is an Apple program.
I haven’t heard of any other users having similar problems. I have grown tired of limping along. I may even opt for one machine for grading and one for mixing.״
Why does it seem counter intuitive?
Did you definitively confirm these plugs are causing your problem?
would seem logical to me that there just aren’t enough Resolve/Logic power users like you out there to flush out all potential plug-in bugs.
If the plugins cause the freezes. and you need both Resolve and these Logic plugins.
It makes perfect sense to have a dual boot system in your case. -
I agree with Hector – I mean, if you want to spend your life trying to fix these issues, that’s one thing, but if you’re trying to get your work accomplished, and get your clients to the finish line, separate boot drives for your main apps certainly would seem like the way to go.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los AngelesDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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Therein lies the rub Hector.
I haven’t been able to confirm anything save for that the Mac is operating in a way that Apple deems correctly. To their credit Apple has provided diligent support via Apple Care. It would be nice if Black Magic would mention whether or not they have heard of similar issues and perhaps lend some guidance?
I have been using Resolve and Logic on this Mac since, you guessed it, Late 2013 and it was stable as a rock. A great plug and play solution. Suddenly last fall I began having these problems. I suspect that it was/is a Resolve/Logic/UA/Mac software update tangle.
That is why it seemed counter intuitive. It worked great for two years and then suddenly it didn’t. Old story I know.
I agree that there probably aren’t enough users of my specific apps to generate noise. I think the partition sounds like the way to go.
Thanks for your reply.
Dave Pickett
Colorist
Spectrum Grading
http://www.davepickett.com
404-775-8519 -
Dave, have you sent any crash logs over to BMD Support? I bet that would yield some answers.
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Hi Marc,
I haven’t sent any logs to BMD. Is there a log within Resolve that I can access?
Occasionally I will get the Apple log after a force quit asking if I want to report it and I usually do. However, a much larger percentage of the time Resolve will simply stop responding to my commands and I save and quit rather than Resolve crashing. When I do, Resolve appears to quit yet I have learned that I still need to force quit after it “phantom quits”. Once I do that and restart I do not get the crash prompt.
A headache to be sure which is why I wanted to report to the group. I haven’t tried the partition yet because I am in the middle of a nice gust and don’t want to blow anything away accidentally.
Thanks for your tip!
Dave
Dave Pickett
Colorist
Spectrum Grading
http://www.davepickett.com
404-775-8519 -
Dave asked:
“I haven’t sent any logs to BMD. Is there a log within Resolve that I can access?”Yes. Go to boot drive -> Library -> Application Support -> Blackmagic Design -> DaVinci Resolve, then run CaptureLogs. This will create a document that can be sent to BMD. (This is for Mac OSX — not sure exactly where it is for Windows.)
I wish there was a Troubleshooting section in the Resolve manual that would cover this stuff.
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