FCP 7.0.3 frequent crashes

Ben King Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'll definitely be up to testing things a little
> more nearer Xmas but I too have 3 onlines to get
> finished before next week so won't be doing much
> deliberate crashing!

Oh, yeah, do real work first!



> Will poke Jon Chappell a bit later with the
> Developer Cattle Prod App and see if he can come
> up with a more satisfying reason for overload
> than:
>
> "its MPEG Jim... but not as we know it!"

I bet it's tough to make accurate reports for a lot issues. If he could come up with clear and definitive explanations for everything, Apple would probably hire him to debug/improve FCP...

I guess Apple could always just say that we should just use one of the ProRes codecs and be done with it...


-Dave

For anyone who is technically inclined, the Instruments application that comes with Xcode 3.0, or later ( "Apple's Developer Tools" ), it looks like it can be used to record several aspects of FCP and the system when making it crash (as Ben has been doing purposefully). Here is a bit more info from the first page of the Introduction section of the Instruments manual:

Instruments User Manual

PDF version

Quote

Instruments is an application for dynamically tracing and profiling Mac OS X code. It is a flexible and powerful tool that lets you track one or more processes and examine the collected data. In this way, Instruments helps you understand the behavior of both user programs and the operating system.

With the Instruments application, you use special tools (known as "instruments?) to trace different aspects of a process? behavior. You can also use the application to record a sequence of user interface actions and replay them, using one or more instruments to gather data.

The Instruments application includes the ability to:

• Examine the behavior of one or more processes
• Record a sequence of user actions and replay them, reliably reproducing those events and collecting data over multiple runs
• Create your own custom DTrace instruments to analyze aspects of system and application behavior
• Save user interface recordings and instrument configurations as templates, accessible from Xcode

Using Instruments, you can:

• Track down difficult-to-reproduce problems in your code
• Do performance analysis on your program
• Automate testing of your code
• Stress-test parts of your application
• Perform general system-level troubleshooting
• Gain a deeper understanding of how your code works

So, it seems like one could use Instruments to log/document crash behavior in FCP, which may be useful to Apple to help sort out this issue...

Anyone? Bueller?



-Dave

P.S. - Potential Warning: Looking at the Instruments Manual's first few pages it seems that some, or all, of the functionality of Instruments may not be compatible with Final Cut Pro (due to FCP's use of QuickTime). So, casual use of Instruments could be dangerous... user beware... Update: I tried a few quick tests with Instruments and FCP and the sky didn't fall, so it may be of some use in testing...

I believe it is limited to one instance of FCP. On a busy workday, I have done this simultaneously:

- Encode in Compressor, do a standards conversion in Compressor with Quick Cluster, set FCP to render an edit, make some edit changes on a second instance of FCP. Performance got sluggish on the whole, but it wasn't particularly crashy. Occasionally it would beachball when i scrub through a clip. Activity Monitor indicated that all the CPU was maxed out.



www.strypesinpost.com

Are your drives and firmware all up-to-date for your Xserve raid. I was having a similar issue with FCP 6.0.6 and a CalDigit HDOne.

Note:
Haven't read the whole thread. Apologies if it's already been suggested or fixed.

Thanks for the info on the Raids and for your article, Ben.
AM already set to .5 secs
RT set to ignore dropped frames, will check on dynamic

Another point in favor of it not being the drives is that I was getting the same crash frequency on a different project with a completely different set of drives, these in a SATA raid. (Unless it is my own project, I work with the drives the client sends, which vary considerably.)

The 4000 would have to be way better at almost 3 times the price. Am I right to assume that whether it's the 5870 or the 4000, it needs to be bought off the apple site, as something, say, from Newegg might have different ports/cabling/config?

I can't officially recommend the 4000 until its been thoroughly tested and I've not seen any reviews yet only the manufacturer's claims.

But you can purchase them anywhere as long as they are definitely the Mac versions.

The 5870 is a good card and as far as I'm aware is almost on par with the EVGA GTX285 in most apps but alas EVGA no longer make the 285 for Mac because Nvidia have stopped making their chips and moved on to the next gen Fermi cards - not because there was anything wrong with it but simply ran out of supply!

I'd wait until the new year and check out the option then.

I would also suggest you check one of the offending projects on another Mac with either similar or better specs if possible so that you can compare.

I do think you ought to get a decent RAID and simply transfer client work onto it for the duration of the edit which is what I do. You can easily transfer the data from an external whilst continuing to work on the RAID on another project so your data-wrangling need not stop your flow. The plus sides as outlined in the article mean that everything is just that bit more responsive and is many cases much faster and you can easily calculate the time/money saving over a few weeks if you are a busy editor.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Ben King Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I do think you ought to get a decent RAID and
> simply transfer client work onto it for the
> duration of the edit which is what I do.

Good idea.

You should also plan to backup any extra files you create in the edit to the clients disks at the end of the day providing a modicum of safety.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Dear Steve Jobs,

instead of telling us the next update of FCP 'will be awesome' how about making the £5000 system I currently own bloody work properly?

Oh, that's right, you've got all your coders working on the new iArse. Stick your head up it and pretend your a tech guru to your friends and family, only £666 for the 500meg version with a scaling price for useful capacity versions that make our bottom line go THROUGH THE ROOF!!!!

The only solace i've derived from this current sorry FCP debacle is that I badgered the Apple store into giving me a new Mac because the other crashed all the time. Still crashes, though not quite as much, but at least it cost Apple something.

I too currently wish I had picked Premier or Avid and a bespoke PC, though only over the last year. 5 years everything was great... looks like the iArse revolution put paid to that though.

Still, the next version will be awesome, so, there we go.

Most of the people running FCP don't crash all the time. Before you start taking a swing at Apple, you might want to have an experienced troubleshooter look at your system. If you have eight 2TB external drives at 99 per cent full hooked up to your system, or you've been sending 100GB of render files into the FCP application package itself (a problem you saw two months ago), then no Apple expert will be able to make your system not crash until you correct the mistake. Ninety per cent of user problems come from human error.


www.derekmok.com

Seems like a few have exactly the same issues though.

I am small fry. I use one internal 1TB hard drive for my rushes and it always has more than 10% space on it. I don't send 100GB of render files into anything. Everything worked fine till FCP 7.

I stand by my swipe. Make it work properly, that's what I paid for. And no, it isn't the (comparative) force it was before iArse came along. Apple is now a toy shop.

By the way, you del with multiple crashes on a weekly (and sometimes daily) basis, then you try and keep your cool when discussing the direction Apple has taken. I may be small fry, but i still work my arse off and don't take too kindly to not being able to click on clip in the timeline in order to tweak a parameter, and it crashes.

Click the same click next time, it's fine.

If you don't have these issues, count your blessings. I'm sure FCPAwesome will drag a few of you towards the dark side... I think the only person left working on it is the janitor, after he's finished his rounds.

Keep the thread on track eyeseesound. This is a solution oriented troubleshooting forum. Rants don't solve the problem.

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

Christoph Vonrhein Wrote:

> The CoreMelt plugins are Quartz Composer files.
> Unfortunately there are some issues with Snow
> Leopard's Quartz Composer engine in combination
> with FCP. There are no issues with Leopard
> (10.5.x). It only affects Snow Leopard (10.6.x).
> For some reason Quartz Composer crashes FCP under
> Snow Leopard.

Hi, this is Roger from CoreMelt. There was an issue last year with a Library we included with an earlier version of our plugins. This was fixed way back in August. With the latest version we are not aware of Snow Leopard specific crashes on our plugins. Please make sure you have the latest version from here:
[www.coremelt.com]

We are a working post production studio as well as a plugin developer, all our systems obviously have the full set of CoreMelt plugins installed and also have Black Magic, Matrox MXO or Kona boards. We don't get regular crashes on our production systems and if you do please contact us and send us crash logs and systems profiles so we can investigate.

We always look into all crash reports as high priority.

Roger
CoreMelt

Thanks for the info Roger.


Jules:

Quote

I use one internal 1TB hard drive for my rushes and it always has more than 10% space on it.

Firstly there is a problem right there - you shouldn't fill your HDDs past 50% to 70% if you want them to perform properly for video editing with 80% as a maximum for ANY application. If you are at 10% free (90% full) you are running your disk at a crazy level and you are lucky not to have lost your data.

Don't get me wrong I understand your crash frustration (having worked on Avid for 16 years crashes are VERY common with the last Avid PC project I worked on crashing upward of 10 times a day!) but as many of the guys mentioned - FCP crashes are actually pretty rare unless you don't do proper installation and/or maintenance of your system or you don't have a system that is physically capable of what you are asking of it or indeed if you install third-party plugins that you don't check compatibility or keep up-to-date with!

As with any "open" system like FCP you have a number of problems - the first is that the basic hardware you can use to run FCP does not mean you can run any kind of FCP project without specific hardware or software and because is no "standard" suite setup there are millions of potential problems even outside of hardware failure. You must bear this in mind when setting up an FCP suite and do your research so you know that your system will handle what you throw at it. If you can't afford what you want; then you really have no grounds to complain. I personally want my car to be able to fly; but I can't afford the equipment and certainly don't have the time to get my pilots licence, so I should complain to the manufacturer?

My biggest bugbear is I really don't know where the mindset came from that expects single HDD, stock card Macs to do things that $$$$$K Avid hardware still struggles to do without rendering!

Even "small fry" should be able to afford a simple internal 2TB software RAID 0 with 2x 1TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 @ $49 each. May I suggest $98 of your next project should be allotted to upgrade your system.

[Please note that you always need backup. RAID 0, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are NOT backups; even though the latter provide a degree of redundancy.]

Quote

i still work my arse off and don't take too kindly to not being able to click on clip in the timeline in order to tweak a parameter, and it crashes.

Good to know that your career has left you without buttocks - but instead of venting ambiguous information how about describing your problem in detail along with your workflow and system set-up so we might suggest possible routes to help?


After all thats what we have lost our buttocks doing here at LAFCPUG alongside running out own careers; both small fry and big beer-battered cod alike.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

I have never been a big fan of the iArse, considering the advances Apple has made with the iTush, such as advanced backside illumination and built-in noise suppression.

A minor update for those in the thread (Mike) looking at new GPUs.

Rob over at BareFeats has the first part of the Nvidia 4000 for Mac review up - its not conclusive just yet - simply a first look - but you may want to bookmark it.

[barefeats.com]

I chatted with Rob and he's doing a full test with the Pro Apps from Apple and Adobe CS5 amongst others.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

And there's an Adobe coder answering questions about Cuda, AE/Premiere, GPUs and other issues on the RED user forum. Lots of people there testing out card combos.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Just a note to let you know I solved all my crashing issues when i prepared for FCP X. Ha! I installed a new 2 TB system drive and partitioned it in preparation for FCP X. What i found that after i cloned my system drive to the new partition on the new drive. All, as in all of my crashing problems went away. Plus and I don't exactly understand why...my slow mo and other speed changes like reverse are all working. I had to take them to Motion before.

The partition is 500GB and my previous system drive was 250, but with well over 15% room left. Whatever the case I'm thrilled. On the other hand FCP X definitely needs some work before I start using it.

thx...jw

Here's a refresher on stills imports:

Rich scans under 4000 pixels on any side.

TIFF, PSD recommend, 8-bit, RGB only.

JPEG will import, but animation uncovers compression artifacts.

Animate, render, export out and reimport the export; store the original "factory clip" in a bin, or even a separate Stills project file.

- - -

The most common file bloat factor does NOT come from rich scanned stills, as they are not stored inside the project file, only linked, like any underlying media. Believe me, I tested this in FCP7.

Bloat usually comes from many sequences in your project each with lots and lots of cuts. Every single one of those cuts in every single one of those stored sequences needs to be defined in the Project file: head, tail, timecode, format, etc. It adds up.

- Loren
Photo scan rates demystified!
ScanGuide? Pro compact reference now at
www.neotrondesign.com