[Philip Owens]

Yes, turning off thumbnails in timelines helps a little – but it’s not a cure. I just as frequently have crashes when opening bins with clips set to icon view – during the redraw, FCP will just beachball and go POOF!

[Philip Owens]

It’s not much help to you Michael – not any in fact – but rest assured I have been dealing with exactly this problem for the past six months on a feature I’m cutting in XDCAM EX HD 35Mbps VBR. it’s a total nightmare – I usually suffer through about twenty crashes a day. I’ve gotten used to it. It sucks, mightily. I’ve tried everything. Goat sacrificing may well work, I would have tried it but have little goat access. Saving early and often is the only course of action, I’ve found. I’ve never had this problem with any other format in FCP, so yes, I’m 100% confident it’s the format. Incidentally, yes, I’m on an Octocore.

I wish you luck, forbearance, and if you hear anything, let me know. I warn you, it’s not promising.

[Philip Owens]

Don’t do it – there’s no advantage to one big monitor, no matter how big, and huge advantages to two – even if they’re much smaller. What you want is your editing interface entirely filling one monitor, and the browser on another. It’s a long-established monitoring solution for a reason – it works very well. (A third can also be useful, for a permanent fullframe display, but that’s usually best done as an external monitor anyway).

[Philip Owens]

I’ve come to this thread very late but want to confirm everything that’s being said. In short, I have a large XDCAM EX HD 35Mbps project that is almost impossible to work with – timeline scrolling and opening a bin with icons displayed seem to be the most common reason for a crash, but they also happen for multiple other reasons – editing, in playback, including at least three occasions where I wasn’t even touching the keyboard and was across the room, nothing happening on the system and POOF! FCP just disappeared. It’s desperately frustrating, and as the project proceeds, it’s getting worse. To synopsize:

FCP 6.06
OSX 10.5.8
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHZ w/ 14GB RAM.
Media is on external eSATA five-drive Port Multiplied RAID

I’m trying the name only, no thumbnails thing now. If that is connected, I’m wondering if that, and the opening a bin of iconized clips, are also connected – if it’s something to do with icon/thumbnail creation or cache?

[Philip Owens]

I think we can safely assume that Snow Leopard will make a very significant difference to the performance of all these apps. Apple have always said that multi-core performance optimisation was one of the key tasks for SL, and early leaks from the SL tests (poke about the net) suggest that all CPU’s are very maximally used. If that’s the case, you might easily see at least double your current performance on multi-CPU (Intel) systems, just by upgrading the OS (for the paltry sum of $29) -and who knows how much more performance will be there, given that FCP7 is Open CL-aware, and will presumably be shoving a hell of a lot lot of work out to the GPU. I think the really important question is – has the codebase been completely updated to Cocoa? If so, this release will mark a really important foundation for future development that they have probably been unable to achieve in the past, what with them supporting both Cocoa and Carbon code, and Intel and PPC CPU’s. Once liberated to focus only on one path, I think the next releases are going to have very significant technological leaps.

[Philip Owens]

Absolutely. And, it’s perfectly possible, if not likely, that Apple will resolve this temporary hiccup for video pros. I’d surprised if they didn’t revise this decision in the course of the next year, in which case, panic over. And since my desktop is a Quad G5, and can’t go Snow Leopard, that’ll be the first system to get rotated out anyway. I can wait until next year for a new 15″ laptop. But I can’t wait much longer than that…

[Philip Owens]

[Zane Barker] “So you dump Apple buy ALL new software, yes ALL because none of the software you have on your mac can will run on Windows.

You are correct – no Mac software runs on PC’s. But who said I was planning to “dump Apple”? My only concern is with the 15″ MBP. I would continue to work on a MacPro, naturally, and I already own all the software I would need for that.

[Zane Barker] You then buy a 15″ Windows machine, please keep in mind that those computers are not as nicely physically engineered as a machine from Apple so your new 15″ Windows machine is going to be bigger physically then a Apple 15″, and quite possibly it will almost be as big as the 17″Apple machine you say is to big. “

No-one said it would be pretty, desirable, or perfect.

[Philip Owens]

“[Philip Owens] ” The 17″ is FAR too big, sorry, and completely unnecessary. ”

[Jeremy Garchow] Don’t knock it till you try it.

Oh, I certainly have done. Like I said, it’s too big.

“[Philip Owens ” After that, if there’s no resolution to this problem, I will absolutely have to look elsewhere, which I dread.”

[Jeremy Garchow] Seriously, you can’t be serious. You’d buy a whole new setup with all new software (OS, NLE, and whatever other odds and ends such as the Adobe Suite) and all new hardware and all new learning curves and all new plug ins just because you think the 17″ is too big? Wow.”

Yes, I would. I do the vast majority of my editing on a desktop rig, but I absolutely must be able to take my edits around to mixes, colour sessions, finishing houses and when I travel. I don’t do finishing, so I couldn’t give much of a damn about how the pictures look on the laptop – they’re going to be finished with a pro somewhere anyway. After more than a decade cutting on Avid, I switched – eagerly and happily – to FCP, for software reasons. If I have to move again for hardware reasons, I can do that too – I still frequently cut on, and own, Avid. Avid runs very well on excellent PC laptops, and the projects are interchangeable with Avid on a Mac desktop, and both can hook up to eSATA or MXO. That would work for me, I’ve been thinking about this today. I don’t need to make a decision for a year though, so I’m hoping that it simply gets resolved. It’s certainly not something I want to do – dragging me back to Avid would be a little painful, but they’ve been improving a lot recently.

[Philip Owens]

I’m adding my voice to those disappointed with the ExpressCard drop. I haven’t cut anything in years that wasn’t on an eSATA RAID, and like Shane I’ve been editing on a 15″ since the Powerbook G4 – it’s perfectly possible, quite comfortable, and truly portable. Now, it’s simply not possible. The 17″ is FAR too big, sorry, and completely unnecessary. Apple now no longer not make a laptop I can buy, which is something I can live with for about another year. After that, if there’s no resolution to this problem, I will absolutely have to look elsewhere, which I dread.

[Philip Owens]

Hmmm….innnteresting. Yes, of course, you’re right – turning to Unlimited RT at least makes the ProRes HQ clip be orange, and it plays. I was dickying around with everything else and ignoring that one. That would work, I’m guessing…though I haven’t gotten to 14 tracks of audio yet, which I’m sure I’ll be at. For now, this is very helpful Bret, thank you.