Final Cut Pro X project not opening, greyed out and crashes FCPX

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Level 1

8 points

Final Cut Pro X project not opening, greyed out and crashes FCPX

Hallo,

I'd really appreciate any advice on the following Final Cut Pro X project problem.

I'm running FCPX 10.4.10 on a MacBook Pro running Mojave 10.14.16 with about 400GB available storage space (having deleted project render files earlier in the week).

I've been working on a new project in FCPX over the last three days with the project coming in at just over 42 minutes long.

The project was nearing completion (it's for a class I'm teaching in the coming week, which is why I'd be really grateful for any help!) and I'd just added some video media to the timeline earlier tonight when the trackpad on my MacBook Pro stopped responding and the MacBook crashed to black before rebooting.

When I tried to reopen Final Cut Pro, the app wouldn't open.

After trying various routes, I managed to open FCPX but the project I'd been working on won't open and the thumbnail for the project in the libraries sidebar is blanked out - although it still lists the metadata for the project (time of the last edition of the project - 21/3/2021, 01:36 and its current duration - 00:42:53).

You can see the blanked out project thumbnail in the image below:

All my other projects can still be opened and shared - and the media for the project that is crashing can still be viewed in the event library.

Whenever I try to open the problematic project, FCPX crashes - and FCPX also crashes whenever I try to delete the render files for the project or export XML for the project.

I've tried restarting the MacBook and deleting preferences for FCPX but am still getting the same results with the project - it seems as if whenever I try to do anything with it FCPX crashes.

Any advice on how to access the project again would be *hugely* appreciated - I was ahead of schedule on the project but the prospect of having to start again fills me with dread!

All very best,

David

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 20, 2021 9:52 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

fox_m

Level 6

13,258 points

Mar 20, 2021 10:17 PM in response to Hindscarth

You may have a bad font issue. Open Font Book and validate your fonts (if you can remember which fonts you used, validate those). If you find any problems, disable or remove those fonts. Then try restarting FCPX and opening the project. You can right click on any font in Font Book and choose to Disable or Remove the font from the popup menu.

Bad fonts kill FCPX and Motion faster than anything and fonts can go "bad" any time.

*There is one "minor error" which FCPX seems to tolerate as it is in several of the fonts provided with FCPX and that is an error on the 'htmx' table usability. (Fonts containing this error: Banco Heavy, Coolvetica, Duality, and Franklin Gothic Demibold.)

If you can find "fresh" copies of the fonts you must disable, then remove and replace the old copies (make sure they validate!) If not, you'll have to find some other font to substitute for the bad ones.

If you still cannot open your project after cleaning up your fonts, then you might try right-clicking on your Library file (which, right now looks like it's named Untitled) and selecting Show Package Contents (make sure you have quit out of FCPX before doing this!) Find the file called CurrentVersion.flexolibrary and delete it. Then try restarting FCPX. It will rebuild the flexolibrary file which may have become corrupt at some point (as when FCPX was trying to update it when it crashed.)

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Answer 2

Mar 21, 2021 6:29 AM in response to Hindscarth

There was a similar problem. After the FCPX crash, the attributes of the folder in which the library was located changed. Became read-only. Try to copy the library to a different folder, or better to another drive.

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Answer 3

Hindscarth Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 20, 2021 10:26 PM in response to fox_m

Thanks so much - I'll give that a go now - I have installed some additional fonts so that might be the issue (although the same fonts I'm using on this particular project are in some of my older projects, I think, which I'm still able to open) - I'll let you know how I get on but many thanks for the suggestion and will follow through on the CurrentVersion.flexolibrary advice too!

AVB,

David

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Answer 4

Hindscarth Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 25, 2021 11:02 AM in response to Sergionix

Many thanks Sergionix - am copying to another drive as recommended. I took the plunge and reconstructed the original project (it didn't take as long as I feared as most of the time-consuming creative decisions about selecting and arranging media had already been made) but have since managed to access the original version via a backup copy. The library was reporting as damaged though so I've copied it to another drive as you suggested and so far so good.

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Final Cut Pro X project not opening, greyed out and crashes FCPX

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