Why is Final Cut Pro suddenly using all my RAM, and crashing? I know this is a common issue right now, but so far I haven't seen any kind of workaround.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
Etrecheck was written by a longtime member here to help diagnose ProApp issues. It generates an anonymized text report that helps the group here to get a baseline of info on the hardware and software. If you do any kind of search here, you'll find it's the most common request to help someone diagnose their problem. Have a look at their text output to see someone else's anonymized report.
Since we don't have this baseline, we'll need to ask and you'll need to answer many questions so the hivemind here can try to help you.
Was your new iMac setup by migrating User data *and* Applications from another Mac? This can often be a problem due to very old and conflicting software being migrated. Etrecheck can sometimes show that.
Have you tried creating a new admin user, logging in as that user and creating a test project to see if the problem follows?
Was any type of "App Cleaner" like CleanMyMac ever used? CMM does fundamental damage to the system files which can cause FCP to be very unhappy and is generally considered to be malware around these parts. Etrecheck specifically looks for this.
Was Chrome ever installed on this machine? The keystone daemons that Google installs break the videotoolbox and after a complete removal following the instructions from https://chromeisbad.com (just trashing the app is not enough) FCP must be reinstalled. Etrecheck reports on the existence of the keystone daemons.
You didn't say what version of FCP you're running (Etrecheck reports this). If you recently upgraded FCP (Etrecheck reports this), there are some plugins that also need to be updated.
Etrecheck was written by a longtime member here to help diagnose ProApp issues. It generates an anonymized text report that helps the group here to get a baseline of info on the hardware and software. If you do any kind of search here, you'll find it's the most common request to help someone diagnose their problem. Have a look at their text output to see someone else's anonymized report.
Since we don't have this baseline, we'll need to ask and you'll need to answer many questions so the hivemind here can try to help you.
Was your new iMac setup by migrating User data *and* Applications from another Mac? This can often be a problem due to very old and conflicting software being migrated. Etrecheck can sometimes show that.
Have you tried creating a new admin user, logging in as that user and creating a test project to see if the problem follows?
Was any type of "App Cleaner" like CleanMyMac ever used? CMM does fundamental damage to the system files which can cause FCP to be very unhappy and is generally considered to be malware around these parts. Etrecheck specifically looks for this.
Was Chrome ever installed on this machine? The keystone daemons that Google installs break the videotoolbox and after a complete removal following the instructions from https://chromeisbad.com (just trashing the app is not enough) FCP must be reinstalled. Etrecheck reports on the existence of the keystone daemons.
You didn't say what version of FCP you're running (Etrecheck reports this). If you recently upgraded FCP (Etrecheck reports this), there are some plugins that also need to be updated.
We're going to need a lot more details to help you figure out what might be going on. Which Mac? Which macOS? What version of FCP?
An easy place to start whenever FCP starts misbehaving is to reset the preferences. Hold option and command while launching FCP. It will open the default Untitled library. Re-open the library you were working on, set the prefs the way you like (disable background rendering, etc.) and see if the issue has been resolved.
If not, paste an Etrecheck report https://etrecheck.com using the "Additional text" button in your reply. Give Etrecheck Full Disk Access in System Preferences.
Resetting prefs is always the old standby. I've done it, and afterwards got this.
You want to know about my system?
• Brand new 8-core i7 iMac which came pre-loaded with Big Sur
• 64 GBs of Ram
• 16 GBs of video RAM
I'll need to ask IT if they'll allow me to download a piece of software off the web before pulling down Etrecheck. They understandably take a dim view of that
"Your system has run out of memory" error message and ensuing crash
