OT: Can anyone out there make me feel better about owning a Mac?

I've had a very stressful week and I'm hoping the community can offer me some words of advice or encouragement or something to help make this better . . .

Background:
From August 2000 until this year I edited on a Windows NT machine with DPS Velocity (purchased from SafeHarbor). It had some quirks, but for the most part performed beautifully.

This year I started using a FCP from ProMax:

Power Mac G5 10.4.9
Machine Model: PowerMac 7,3
2 CPU - 2.7 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory 2.5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.35 GHz
Scratch Drive: 1TB
FCP 5.0.4
DVD SP 4.0.3

For years I've been hearing about how reliable and kick-ass Mac is. Super fast. Never crashes. Never locks up.

That just hasn't been my experience.

When I first started using it I was a little intimidated, so I shied away for a while, but then I started getting used to it and liked it.

I get a lot of programs that quit unexpectedly. Just today FCP quit and I had to reset all my preferences and keyboard shortcuts. I only use this machine for editing.

My software updater says everything is current.

Something else that is really making me mental: I'm trying to make a DVD of a 90 minute project using DVD SP. It looks like garbage. There is way too much artifacting (I know I should expect some, but this seems ridiculous. If I were a client I would find it unacceptable.) Also, the movements are choppy like watching old film from the 20s. (I have exported a QT movie of the project [audio & video, self-contained] and let DVD SP do the compression. I have also tried exporting "using compressor" and importing those results into DVD SP. Same result.)

I've scoured the forums (both here and Apple). I've tried all the suggestions. Still looks the same. I've wasted a lot of disks (Verbatim DVD + and - R) trying to figure this out. Why does my 7-year-old stand-alone Panasonic DVD recorder give me better results than current technology??? Okay, I can't make a fancy menu with it, but at least I don't have the choppy motion and I get less visible artifacting!

I also get hits on the disks. I'd like to try slowing the burn speed down, but no one seems to know how to do that. (I believe the burner is Pioneer.)

I'm a one-man company, so the buck stops here. I'm sure most of you know how difficult that is without the added pressure of equipment not performing to expectation. I can't just blame it on someone else and I can't hand the problems off to someone else.

Is there anyone that can help me relax? Should I be performing some routine maintenance that I am unaware of? Are there some settings I should change? Should I change my expectations?

I sincerely appreciate all responses. This site has been invaluable to me. I've already learned so much and avoided so many other issues just by reading the existing threads, but this week has left me feeling defeated.

Robert Faust
Faust Productions

Power Mac G5 10.4.9
Machine Model: PowerMac 7,3
2 CPU - 2.7 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory 6.5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.35 GHz
Scratch Drive: 1TB
FCP 5.0.4
DVD SP 4.0.3

I blame faulty memory. Not the machiine, yours. It took us weeks to get our Velocity up and running with any reliability and it still has quirks to the point that only one or two of the editors is comfortable with it. Which Windows NT? SP6? Wasn't that just the most fun when it decided to hide filenames for you? You never once hit the ghost of the 2G file limit?

Anyway, back to the present.

You have an unstable machine and we need to find out why.

Who made the T-Byte drives and how are they connected? OSX is a UNIX-based operating system. UNIX treats disk drives as extensions of the on-board memory and file system. A ratty drive anywhere will cause no end of insanity.

I would drop by Staples and pick up a short stack of Sony DVD-R disks. Use those for testing.

Close everything. Slide one of those Sonys into the machine and OK the opening dialog. Find 4G worth of any kind of files (doesn't have to be video) and drag them over to the DVD and burn. Do that three times. That will clear the burner and DVD system ( if it succeeds).

Do you have lots of room on all your drives? Multiple crashes can be caused by drives, particularly the System Drive (c:\) filling up.

Have you performed Repair Disk and Repair Permissions?

At any time has your new machine run its fans all the way up? It's unmistakable. It sounds like a C-5 Galaxy taking off.

Which QuickTime version?

Koz

If all your apps are unexpectedly quitting then something is amiss with either the hardware or the OS. Now the hard part. Determine where the problem is. Invest in a utility such as Disk Warrior and run it. If that doesn't cure problem, then try an archive and install re-install of the OS. If things started going bad after a certain upgrade, then find the 10.4.9 combo installer over at Apple downloads and install that.

As for DVDSP artifacts, that should not happen. Period. Re-install QT as a first try at a cure. What settings you using for your Build and Format? Carefully read the manual for settings that will give you best results.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Yep NT 4.0 SP 6. I never had it hide file names and never had the 2 GB file limit. BUT, I made a huge error in ordering the system. I never ordered a firewire card ($2,000 extra dollars) because I was not aware that I needed one, and I could barely afford the $16,000 price tag I was already paying. The breakout box had a firewire jack on it, so I didn't know I needed the card, too. The person who took my order, simply took my order, she didn't know, or care, anything about my needs.). I did all my capturing at S-video quality (4.5 Mbps). My clients never knew the difference, bless 'em.



Just two weeks ago I had an issue with the system after I tried to install some updates. Tech support had me run Repair Disk and Repair Permissions at the time. Maybe I should try that again.

The system drive (which ProMax named "Final Cut" has 47.68 GB available. (But I don't know out of how many GB. How do I figure that out?)

I have a 250 GB drive they named "Video," which has 227.15 GB available.

The 1TB scratch drive called "ProMAX" is external. It has 420.77 GB available. It is connected to the machine with 4 flat cables that I am not familiar with so I don't know what they're called.

Ocassionally, I hear the fans rev up, but I always assumed that was just the nature of Mac so I ignored it.

I've been saving my QT movie (QT ver. 7.1.5) to the 1TB drive. Good lord, do I simply need to start saving it to the 250GB drive to burn it to disk? Would that solve my problem? Not using the external drive to burn my DVDs?

I'll try the Sony disks either tonight or tomorrow, I'm actually about to leave for the rest of the day.

Thanks for such a quick reply Koz. Your response has made me feel like it's not all in my head. PHEW! Now I'm especially eager to get to the bottom of it!

I would also take a look at your ram sticks as this sounds like it could be faulty ram to me.

My 2 cents.

--ken

<<I would also take a look at your ram sticks as this sounds like it could be faulty ram to me. >>>

We check that by doing what?

<<<Your response has made me feel like it's not all in my head. >>>

It is, but we're just making you feel better about it. It's a California thing.

Just kidding. OSX has a terminal command called "uptime." It's not unusual for UNIX machines to have uptime values, that is the amount of continuous operation in the days, weeks, or months. The machine I'm typing on right now has an uptime value of 7 days 13 hours, so no, constant instability is not acceptable.

The fans go into "aircraft" roar mode when the machine is convinced that there is something wrong and it loses control. Usually, you get the fans right before the cursor and keyboard go away. We do have one machine that slides gently into and out of slightly elevated fan mode on occasion and that does seem to be normal. Another machine stays silent for weeks. It would be difficult to hold a telephone conversation in the same room with a machine running in emergency fan mode.

I'm intentionally leaving the ratty picture until later. The basic machine is not suppose to fail.

I'm still fuzzy on the connection of your drives. Drives cause a lot of machine problems. *Where* are all your drives? There is an internal System Drive and then what?

[from left field]
Do you have Photoshop?

Koz

My fan revved up like crazy, but it only took one phone call to fix. (I had to reboot the computer holding down two keys -- maybe r & f -- and that was that.)

I second the Disk Warrior purchase, and the Archive and Reinstall. The second one is a pain, but it solved a lot of problems for me a couple of times.

As for the DVDSP, I have found that using Compressor first and then importing the separate audio and video files into SP produces a better-looking DVD. I have no idea why this would be the case, and I don't have extensive experience doing this, so it may not always be true, but it's worth a shot.

The hardware testing diks that comes with your OS will tell you if Ram is bad.

Michael Horton
-------------------

I don't know if I can make you feel better, I'm loosing faith myself. I did find the answer to my problem in the FAQ about capture issues with FCP 4.5 after upgrading to OS 10.4.9. I've spent the past couple of weeks trying to figure that out (and purchased another $300 hard drive in the process). I also am a sole proprietor and have a lot riding on my system (my entire business), I bought MAC's because I thought they would be the best, and yet I've experienced many problems during my tenure with these machines. I've though of jumping ship however I think at this point I'm way past committed to the Apple line. I'm not saying that PC's are better, I just wish that I wasn't so ignorant at times. The problem I have with the Apple store and their "genius bar" is that it seems all a bit too pretentious to me. I've spent many an hour trying to figure out problems with my machines that noone had a clue about when system X first arrived and I bought my first MAC, yet here I am still typing on that same keyboard. Bottom line, I love making video, and I hope that as time passes and I read the problems of others on this site that in the end I become better at doing that thing that I love and working with my sometimes temperamental MAC's. Hang in there, your not alone.

Without some knowledge of troubleshooting and without periodic maintenance it doesn't matter if we are talking about a washing machine. You are doomed to frustration. That said, stick to forums and google searches for cures to your problems before you waste time at a Genius Bar. Not to say they dont have the answer, its just others usually find the answer and post it before they do.

Michael Horton
-------------------

"I also am a sole proprietor and have a lot riding on my system (my entire business)"

I'm not trying to be unduly harsh here, but... if that is the case, don't you think you should have a viable back up plan? I don't mean a trip to the genius bar. How about a second "spare" system available to take over should your primary go down. How about a battery back up for when the power goes out? How about investing in enough personal training to get you through these incidents?

Blaming Apple for making unreliable systems is not going to help you. You need to take responsibility for obtaining enough knowledge to "protect yourself". That starts with the following truism: things break or don't work as promised. Have a "plan B" in place BEFORE you need it.

A professional production company simply can't get a location permit to shoot without "proof of insurance". No one should bet their livelihood on one single computer working all the time. That's just irresponsible.

mark

Did you purchase a support package from ProMax? I did when I bought my system from them about two and a half years ago, and had some of trhe same problems you've got. Their tech support was excellent. They actually sent out a guy to make a house call and he was able to diagnose a problem with the motherboard on my G5, as well as give me a brief DVDSP tutorial.

Very true, a good backup plan is what you need. However in the instance that I'm speaking of, my frustration is a direct result of trying to upgrade my operating system and therefore causing my problem. I have 2 editing systems in case one brakes down, I also backup and check for updates on a regular basis. Now before you knock my technical abilities, by day I'm a mild mannered auto mechanic who deals with troubleshooting issues not only in the digital realm, but also the mechanical. As for Apple, why haven't they warned me about possible issues with upgrading my OS with FCP? Why aren't they making a patch for this problem? Do they want me to upgrade for another $700? I think so. In the auto business we call this planned obsilessence (sp?). I WANT to support apple (an American company) but I also want them to help me do my business, at this point I've gotten more help from this form than from Apple, not that they haven't tried (in fact, I've found everyone I've talked to at Apple to be as helpful as they could be, it's just that in my personal experience I've found a difference between the engineering world and the "real" world that tends to get in the way of progress at times.) Bottom line, I think my Mac's are very cool, they just don't always work the way I need them to. In response to a support pkg from promax, the answer is no, however I consulted with someone who works on macs and was told to upgrade my OS to help with some other issues that I was having. It's not that he was trying to cause a problem for me, he just didn't know. That brings me to the point of when you are in the minority (Mac users) you don't have too many places to go witch can at times be frustrating thus posing the question "can anyone out there make me feel better about owning a Mac?"

<<<As for Apple, why haven't they warned me about possible issues with upgrading my OS with FCP? Why aren't they making a patch for this problem? Do they want me to upgrade for another $700? I think so.>>>

Apple is more or less forced to take a modular approach. No company is going to do all the system testing to make sure that all the software packages work with all the variations for everybody.

People who bring their limping machine in to be tested are stunned to get a completely clean bill of health. What Apple did was insure that the basic machine was in perfect working order--"return to factory specifications." What the user wanted was for Apple to fix their television show--still clearly broken.

Not going to happen. The best they can do is to clean problems and keep advancing the art and at the same time try not to break too many things. There is a clear jump between Panther operating system / Final Cut 4.5, / QuickTime 6, and the next level of Tiger operating system / Final Cut 5 / and Quicktime 7. This wasn't obvious until after the fact and many people who split the versions started having severe system problems. That's when we started warning people not to do that.

I don't know what Apple is recommending.

There is another trouble spot with Final Cut 5.1.x. Many people found they couldn't handle the latest variation of Final Cut and had to back up to an earlier version. That's the boat we're in. We have known good working systems and I'm becoming more and more attentive to doing blind upgrades Just Because It's There.

Now that it's too late, I can tell you that doing upgrades to solve an instability problems almost never works. What that gives you is instability that's impossible to fix.

At the beginning of this forum, we had large numbers of people who were still on OS9. The jump to OSX was mind-bendingly painful for them because all their "shortcuts" dropped dead. "I used to be able to do xxx and now that doesn't work." Yes. OS9 was sloppy about that and OSX isn't.

And so on. Apple tried hard, but they eventually had to drop all the old systems. Something similar is happing now with the Universal Binaries. Now let's design software for two different computers and not break all the old software.

I'm surprised it works as well as it does.

But it doesn't always and that's why this forum needs to be on your speed dial. And it is a dialog. It works both ways. You can drop by and help others having troubles. Guaranteed you know something that somebody else is stuck with.

The forum covers all time zones--no waiting.

Koz

Wow. I knew there would be a few replies but not this many!

<< reply to Koz>>

The fans have never been so loud I wouldn't be able to have a phone conversation. It's been like your other description - "into and out of slightly elevated fan mode on occasion..."

I DO have Photoshop.

On my desktop (or whatever Mac calls it) I have 4 HDD icons. One is called "Final Cut" which is the boot drive. One is called "Video" which is a 250GB internal drive and one is called "ProMAX" which is 1 TB. The 1TB drive is external and is connected to the tower by 4 flat cables. There is a card in the back of the tower with 8 slots in it (2 rows of 4 slots). (I assumed the others were there in case I ever wanted to add another array.) I have the cables plugged into the bottom row of slots. (My thinking was that if I ever did add another HDD, it would be easier to reach the empty top slots, than empty bottom slots.)

The cables connecting the TB drive to the tower have this printed on them:
ESATA 26AWG E17343-D AWM Style 2725

(The fourth drive is called "Backup," which ProMax installed in case the "Final Cut" drive ever failed or got corrupted. You copy the "Backup" drive over the "Final Cut" drive to restore the machine to its original settings when it left ProMax.)

<<reply to others>>

Mike D - Thanks, I'll look into Disk Warrior tomorrow (I guess I should say "later today."

Ken, I will definitely try the hardware test, too. I found in the User's Guide how to do that with the install disk.

Michael H, you mentioned "periodic maintenance," but what do you mean? So far all I have found regarding maintenance is that the machine does its own, or something like "make sure your system is up-to-date." I would totally feel better if there was some task I could actually perform routinely to keep this system singing. My DVD SP settings are SD 4:3, 2 pass VBR 4 min. 7 max, Best motion smoothing (? something like that, the system is currently tied up.) But like I said, I've tried several different setting with similar results.

And Mark, you're right about a backup. The funny thing for me is the FCP is supposed to be my backup. After 6 years of scraping and scrimping my company finally started making money. I knew I'd have to get a second system for that reason. When I started researching and found out how much sweeter a system I would have, the FCP became my primary. But I've only been using it a few months, so I thought I had a little time to relax and settle in before I had any dilemmas.

And Dean, I used ProMax tech support a couple weeks ago. They were very helpful with that particular problem. But thanks to this thread I now know that what is occurring is NOT natural and I do have an actual problem. So once I've had a chance to exhaust some of these suggestions, they will definitely get a call. Unless, of course, the suggestions work!

My tests are going to have wait until Monday evening. I teach TV production at a local university on Mondays, so my day is shot.

Thanks again to all who replied and please don't hesitate to offer any other suggestions.

Good night for now (it's late here on the east coast)!

~Rob

<<<I get a lot of programs that quit unexpectedly. Just today FCP quit and I had to reset all my preferences and keyboard shortcuts. I only use this machine for editing. >>>

So it's not just Final Cut. Ever had Photoshop dump on you? iTunes?

I think there may be a number of things I would try before Disk Warrior. DW is the carpet bomb solution to digital corruption.

I don't think you ever said the English words: "I have at least 10% free capacity on all my drives." Can you say that? ***All your drives?*** Even that little one in the corner?

Run the memory test that up until now I didn't know existed. That's why I wanted to know if you had Photoshop. I was designing a way to stress the memory.

Put the Install CD in the machine and boot to it (Hold "C" while the machine starts). Run Disk Utilities. Verify Disk and Verify Permissions. This is non-destructive testing. Those two tests should not fill up the screen with errors. Permissions do wander off from time to time so normal machines do present some listings. If you feel lucky, repair them. Restart the machine without the C key and it will start normally.

Can you force the machine to fail? "If I do this, the machine croaks--every time."


There have been people who have not cleared machine problems before they started to fix software problems. Those are the people who show up here announcing they reinstalled the Operating System and all the applications multiple times over days and days and it didn't help.

We want to avoid that.

Borrow a little AC line tester...

[www.shop.com]
[www.amazon.com]

...and plug it into all your outlets one at a time. Make sure the right lights come on. My last two houses had wiring errors inside the walls. This can cause all sorts of problems with electronics.

Koz

I have had Digital Juice Juicer 2 quit unexpectedly. I have had Quick Time quit & DVD SP. I don't think Photoshop has ever quit on me yet, but it could have. It's mostly been with FCP, but of course that is the program I use most.

I think I have 10% free, but I'm not sure how to tell how big my "Final Cut" drive is. So far I've only been able to find out how much space is free.

This house was being built when we bought it. I told the electrician to put at least three outlets in the office that each had their own circuit breaker. (He said he would, but only did that with two.) So the outlet the tower is plugged into is on its own breaker and the wiring is new. (But I guess it still could be bad.)

All of the "unexpected quits" have been random as far as I have noticed. I can't recall anything that has done it everytime. But the most common thing that forces a quit with FCP is when I have the capture screen open and I am fast forwarding or rewinding video in my deck. Not even during a capture. Just when it's sitting there watching the video go by. When it quit on me this morning I was double-clicking several clips to load them into the viewer so I could remove a filter I had added.

~Rob

Well, don't put too much weight on the Juicer 2 unexpectedly quitting.

It became unstable with an OS update sometime before OSX 10.4.9. Digital Juice didn't put any resources into it because they were on the cusp of releasing Juicer 3.

I spoke with a CSR about a month ago because the Juicer 2 would quit if I did something as benign as attempt to resize a window.

I installed the Juicer 3 over the weekend. It's a whole new architecture, it's free, and it will allow you to migrate your existing catalogs. You might consider installing it once you've unravelled the rest of your issues.

deb

Juicer 2 was useless. The batch lists didn't work (couldn't apply export settings universally...which completely defeated the point of having a batch list), the interface was buggy. I wrote Digital Juice about it and was given instructions on upgrading to Juicer 3. It's a little tricky, but it worked, and Juicer 3 is vastly superior. I'd e-mail Digital Juice and get that upgrade.


www.derekmok.com

<<<I think I have 10% free, but I'm not sure how to tell how big my "Final Cut" drive is. So far I've only been able to find out how much space is free. >>>

Does your festival of drives not appear on the desktop as separate drive icons? I'm beginning to suspect that some of your "drives" are really one drive partitioned into pieces and caused to *look* like separate drives.

I'm not next to my machine with partitions, but I believe when you launch Disk Utilities, it should show you the tree with all the physical drives down the left and then branches if one or more drives is split into chunks. For this test, you don't need to start the machine from the CD. Drill down: Applications, Utilities, Disk Utility. All the drives you have connected and working should appear on that illustration.

Koz

To find out how big your drive is and how much space is free, click once on your drive, then from the finder menu choose File > Get info, or press apple - i. This will bring up a box with a bunch of information about the drive, including the capacity - which is the total size, the available size, and the used amount.

I just did this to test the path and found I'm up to 5 gig off ninety percent. Whoops. Bloody Warcraft updates!

Koz, you da man. You predicted a RAM issue.

I just ran the hardware test. First pass told me I have a memory error. I was instructed to write down the error code and run the test again to see if the results were the same. So that's what happening now.

Error Code
2MEM/1/4: DIMM3/J14

Thanks to Jude I now know that my system drive ("Final Cut" has a capacity of 116.32 GB and 47.45 GB available, so I can state that I have at least 10% available on all drives. But now that I know it's a RAM issue, I guess that's irrelevant.

Now I'm wondering if I should use this opportunity (apple-tunity?) as an excuse to add more RAM. I'm at 2.5Gb now. How much more would I have to add (or have total) to make an appreciable difference?

Thanks again to everyone who's weighed in. We're closin' in on the killer . . .

<<<Koz, you da man. You predicted a RAM issue. >>>

No. I blamed your memory. Ken Stone predicted a RAM issue.

Koz

<<<to make an appreciable difference? >>>

After you get past the minimum system requirements, it's roughly half and double.

Koz

D'OH!

Sorry Ken! You da man!

Koz, I guess you'll have to be da man for some other reason. ;-P

Yeah, you already know this now, but any time multiple applications just quit in OS X, 95 percent of the time it's because of a bad stick of RAM.

A deeper test of memory (which takes a few hours to run) is a command-line piece of freeware called Memtest. If you have any flaws in your installed memory, it'll find 'em. You can download it at versiontracker.com.

A musician buddy of mine (and Mac user) told me to go to:

About This Mac
More Info ...
Memory

When I did, it said:

DIMM3/J14:

Size: 1 GB
Type: DDR SDRAM
Speed: PC3200U-30330
Status: OK

The hardware test error message was:

2MEM/1/4: DIMM3/J14

That seems odd to me. Isn't learning the hard way fun?

The good part is, once you cleanse yourself of that bad stick of RAM, I think you'll be loving the incredible stability of your Mac.

My Windows NT-based Avid Adrenaline at work crashes minimum three times a day. I just cut a short in HD on my home G5 Final Cut system, not one crash the whole time. Didn't even RESTART once. Mind-boggling.

I purchased two more GB of RAM today. The chips are on their way. They should be here tomorrow. The chip that went bad was Viking, which I'm told, has a lifetime warranty. So if the company honors that and replaces the bad chip I'll have a total of 4.5 GB when it's all said and done.

I can't wait.

My enthusiasm has successfully been restored.

I hate to sound like a broken record but, THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SPOKE UP! I am aware of so much more now and that's a great boost to the confidence.

What a great community!

Just remember that ram sticks need to be installed in pairs.

--ken