Punks and perfection — The instability debate

[Mike Parfit]

Hi, Stephen,

People seem to have various solutions, including complete reinstallation, including reformatting the drive. That didn’t work for me — twice — but may for you.

The other things that have dramatically reduced the crashing for me and perhaps a few others, though not eliminated it completely, have been to remove 2 GB of the memory or to remove the Kona 3 card (Or the BM card). Removing the card has been almost completely successful for me, to the extent that when I have to do a long render I routinely just take it out and get on with it. In doing at least 50 of these I have had just one crash, but with the card in none of those renders would have been completed.

This workaround is, of course, completely unacceptable in a system dedicated to FCP but as you have noted here this problem is rare enough that many of those with stable systems simply see us as flailing amateurs and give advice accordingly.

I can see their point, because it is probably some obscure setting that’s doing us in and we may indeed feel foolish when we learn what it is. But it is good to know that other pros with dedicated systems and a willingness to troubleshoot vigorously are also experiencing variations on this story. So if it is a setting it is certainly obscure.

The bottom line is that FCP claims to be an everyman’s editing system uniquely usable by pros and amateurs alike, and if it is boobytrapping some of the relatively competent among us it is simply not fulfilling that promise.

To tell us that we have to spend, literally, thousands (given my remote location, particularly, and the down time that would result) to bring in highly-paid technical expertise to fix the problem (who would no doubt spend my money going through all the steps I have already taken before moving on to the more sophisticated ones) is very likely true but avoids the basic issue: If we have all the equipment Apple says we need and we install and use the program the way Apple says we must and it still does not work properly, then Apple is not providing us with the flexible, powerful, accessible and stable program that it touts FCP to be. If Apple and the equipment manufacturers who claim to work with Apple to make their stuff succeed with FCP, like BM and AJA, cannot solve this issue then there is no debate: They have let us down.

Mike