Final Cut stalling while importing PNG files?

An addition to the always excellent suggestions from Luis is to use the free Preference Manager from Digital Rebellion. When you reset FCP prefs and then configure these pristine settings the way you like, save them with Prefs Manager. In the future, if you feel like your prefs have become corrupted (so strange to me that they're so brittle), you can use Prefs Manager to overwrite with a known good saved copy.

Regarding Security Updates - Protecting against malware in macOS - Apple Support

Joe Redifer wrote:

Hi Terry thanks for the reply.

I wish there were a way to delete my preferences while still, you know, keeping my settings. It's all very annoying to set back up again. In Final Cut Pro 7 I just kept the 3 preference files in their own folder and if something went wonky I'd take those and overwrite the ones that Final Cut was using, so I wouldn't have to go in and try to set everything back up the way I like it. Someone seriously needs to develop an app that can make a note of how a user's settings differ from the default settings, making it easier and faster for the user to restore the settings in such situations. Amazing that nobody has ever thought of this... unless they have and I missed it?

Well, I suppose we can do this rather easily.

When you delete preferences, a gzipped tar file is created on your Desktop; it is called something like

VideoAppDiagnostics-FinalCut-2024-08-20-115839.tar.gz

(obviously the date will vary).

If you double-click to expand it, a similarly named folder will appear.

Inside are some folders, including a Preferences folder that contains all the files that were removed.

Here is what one can (and is not difficult to automate):

Do the Delete Settings procedure to create this file

Copy the Preferences folder inside to a location of your choice and, optionally rename it - say, "MySavedPreferences"

Quit FCP.

Copy the saved preferences back. This can be done with a single command line, which you can include in a Shortcuts shortcut or Automator Quick Action.

cp ~/Desktop/MySavedPreferences/* ~/Library/Preferences

You can even assign a keyboard shortcut to run this.

Now, every time you need to delete preferences because FCP is misbehaving:

1) Start FCP holding down Command and Option and choose Delete Settings

2) Quit FCP

3) Run your script to replace the defaults just created with your own uncorrupted preferences

4) Start FCP normally.

All this takes far less time than it took me to write this post :-)

I tested the procedure and it worked for me fine.

-No way do I allow Apple to automatically install ANYTHING on my computer. I do them manually. Yikes, I can't imagine letting the computer just do things on its own willy-nilly.

-Time Machine aren't even really true backups, are they? You can't boot from them. I've never used Time Machine. I've always used Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make duplicates of my drives, not weird Time Machine things.

-Thanks for the heads up I'll get rid of that.

-I've done clean installs before, but each time I've done it I've never noticed an improvement. Things that were wonky before stayed wonky. Plus, the resetting of the OS preferences is again a HUGE chore to restore, as the default settings are not fun. Surprised they are what they are.

-I'm not sure what that means, why it's noteworthy, or what to do about it. Looks to be mostly Adobe stuff, but all my adobe apps are running great!

An easy thing to try is to delete FCP Settings. Hold Option and Command while launching FCP and choose Delete Preferences. It will open the default Untitled library. Re-open the library you were working on, set the Preferences back to the way you like them (disable background rendering, reset Import to Leave Files in Place, etc.) and see if the issue has been resolved.

A few things I noticed when viewing your etrecheck report:

• You have security updates disabled. This runs the risk of contracting something unpleasant, even with Malwarebytes.
• Time Machine backups are not configured. Hopefully you have a backup strategy in place.
• Google's keystone software is installed but doesn't appear to be active. I'd still follow the instructions at https://chromeisbad.com to remove all the cruft they install.
• Silverlight is installed which suggests you've been upgrading in place for many years. Might be worthwhile to do a wipe and clean MacOS install. Then install fresh copies of the software you use from the AppStore and 3rd party developers.
• There are a lot of missing files shown in the "Clean up" section.