• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  ProRes Crashes FCP and entire machine…

  Posted by Carl Sundermann on November 10, 2008 at 5:56 pm

  Hi all –

  Having a problem using Prores, can’t seem to pinpoint what’s causing
  it. I’m getting a lot of crashing as I render my sequences.

  Workflow –
  Shoot HDV 720p using JVC HD250 cameras.
  Injest from JVC BR-HD50 deck via AJA IoHD (Out HDMI from deck)
  IoHD is set to 720p 59.94.
  Edit, adding lower thirds and other graphics imported from Motion or
  After Effects CS3. (Lower thirds are the Animation codec, and AE
  imports are usually ProRes, unless I need an alpha channel, then I’ll
  use Animation).

  Problem –
  Many times (lets say 3 out of 5) when I’m finished with a sequence,
  and Opt+R to render all, it will start fine, but get to a point and
  the machine will sound like it’s starting a jet engine, and I’ll try
  to move the mouse and it will be locked up. The machine will stay in
  this state until manually shutting off or pulling the cord (I left it
  overnight like this once to see if it would come back, and it did
  not). And unless I make sure to pull the power cord after I’ve shut
  off the machine, when I start it back up, it will have the fans
  roaring again as well. When I do get it back up and running, I’ll
  restart Final Cut and it will have defaulted back to the factory
  window layout, all on one screen. Capture scratch is still set
  appropriately.

  What I’ve tried –
  Rendering smaller sections seems to help the problem. By turning on
  the options to have it render everything when I do Cmd+R, and setting
  in/out points, saving between renders, I’m able to get it rendered.
  However, it STILL DOES crash on occasion when doing it this way (this
  is what finally irritated me enough to write a post to the group
  because it just happened to me a few minutes ago).
  I’ve tried to notice when it crashes, and from what I can tell, it’s
  not at the same part of the sequence each time..
  I’ve tried using FCP Rescue. No difference.
  I’ve tried repairing permissions. No difference.
  I’ve tried turning off spotlight on all but my main HD. No
  difference. (found that on a post on the Cow, I think.)
  I’ve tried leaving the machine to autorender all open sequences.
  Same problem.
  This is not just one project. We’ve been noticing this ever since we
  started working with Prores, and have been trying to find solutions.
  I’ve tried copy/paste to a new sequence. Same problem.

  Machine specs –
  2 x 3 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon
  16GB RAM (all the same, purchased at the same time from OWC)
  Four 750GB Hard Drives – Projects, Projects Backup, Media, System
  FCP 6.0.4
  OSX 10.5.5
  While rendering, viewing the Activity Monitor, I can see all 8 cores
  are running approx 70-80%

  The kicker is that we have two machines configured just as above, and
  they BOTH experience this behavior on rendering.

  Has anyone noticed anything like this? Are there other things I can
  do to check in the system? (Like permissions?)

  I am mixing different formats in the timeline, so I don’t know that
  Prores is totally to blame (ie, Animation codec for lower thirds,
  Prores for the rest of the video, TIFF images for stills, DV content
  from old SD footage).

  Whatever the problem is, it makes this workflow VERY difficult to use!

  TIA-

  Carl Sundermann

  Carl Sundermann replied 17 years, 6 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
• 0 Replies

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