[Blake Porter]

RESULTS ARE IN: The “extended” Apple Hardware Test results: No Trouble Found (50min)

[Blake Porter]

Got some time – so I ran Apple Hardware Test. I did not select “extended testing”.
Test results: “No trouble found” This test took about 1 min. 15sec.

I have now launched the “Perform extended testing”. I will update you all when complete.

[Blake Porter]

OK Jon, after I get this project out I’ll run AHT.
Thanks

[Blake Porter]

Ken Jones: “Did you run Apple Hardware Test and test all of the RAM?”

No. It was tested with FCS Maintenance Pack, I believe.

[Blake Porter]

Chris wrote:
When you say crash, is this the entire OS or just FCP?
Answer: FCP but other applications will crash too. ..And one brand new hard drive sorta wiped itself clear too. (We tested the RAM too)

Chris wrote:
Are you using a good UPS or similar solution?
Response: Interesting! Our UPS has needed a new battery for about as long as we’ve been crashing…
We get daily beeping warnings which we’ve chosen to ignore …for some reason…

[Blake Porter]

The vender did get involved: FCP re-install – forward crash reports – install FCS Maintenance Pak and Diskwarrior…. I think the tech guy was counting on these to “fix” the problems. Beyond installing and the 3rd party repair softwares, he had no real world ideas. I mentioned something about Jpegs once, and he said “oh don’t use an uncompressed Jpeg… that will crash it for sure”. At that point I thinking “this guy has no experience with fcp” Can you imagine a brand new 2011, 12core MacPro with 16GB RAM crashing because of a full size Jpeg? I very politely asked for a new tech guy … for “fresh perspective”. Never got one.’
I suppose a full size Jpeg may not be optimized for FCP, But for a tech guy to point his finger at that? Come-on!

For each serious crash I did come-up with work-arounds to get the job done and out the door

Testing suggestions:
**Console is now open (and loaded with Messages).
**Trying to take notes on Free Ram usage.

[Blake Porter]

For externals, the most crashes came with: eSATA to RAID 0. Crashing a lot with FCP, while rendering xdcam (proress sequence) to quicktime. Ran Diskwarrior on all drives more than once. Complete fcp re-installs done.

Wondering if eSATA was to blame so I went back to Firewire800 with external Barracudas mounted in a Voyager drive bay. Less crashes during render, but still some crashing during regular editing.

I recently added an INTERNAL 2TB Barracuda. After several days of operation, and In the middle of the first project -BAM- “Mac OS X can’t repair the disk” This new drive crashed too. After rebooting and all folders came back empty. Project gone. Cold sweat panic creeped over me with the deadlines looming.
Diskwarrior brought everything back. Immediately swapped to new external and got the episode out.

I wish there was a fool proof way to read the Crash Reports! … know of any?

Crashes began immediately after receiving system. I purchased through a well known vender. Turn key. All set-up. All proper.

[Blake Porter]

Nick Price-i used to use ON2 for FLVs, but have since moved to creating H264s using compressor. Its way way quicker than ON2 when you have qmaster using all your cores. Then once its done change the .mov to .flv and you have a flash. Just as good quality in a fraction of the time

Interesting, but don’t the H264’s end-up being much bigger files?

[Blake Porter]

“The other thing is the graphic card, unfortunately Apple is on the ATI side and Adobe and Black Magic are on the NVidia side. If Color was not in your workflow I would probably get a high end NVidia card.”

Interesting
Currently Color is not in my work flow.
If Adobe is on the NVidia side… Which side is After Effects? Or Lightwave (if you happen to know)

[Blake Porter]

Thanks. Applications vs cores vs RAM vs Processors would make a complex, but useful flow chart.