The Final Cut Pro X CRASH Thread

I tried through App Store to update my FCPX from 10.0.0 to 10.0.1 and then 10.0.2 only to be told each time my software was up to date. Today I bit the bullet and trashed my copy of 10.0.0 and was able to successfully install 10.0.2. I now find that all my previous work on 10.0.0 has totally vanished and the update has no memory of the projects i was previously working on. Hours of work lost and back to the drawing board again. At least I will find out whether the update allows me to import from iMovie which is where my old problems began!

10.0.2 will not fix iMovie importing.

Is your old work on your computer? Where exactly is it?

I'm not a real technical person, I just use products and if they work, great! I would think Im more in line with what a typical user would be. After one week of almost continuous editing on two projects, I finally had to set FCPX aside and finish the second video in Sony Vegas. I'm fairly new to MAC so Vegas was my last PC software I was holding onto. FCPX Finally gave me the iMovie "pro" version I needed to leave the Windows world behind forever. In my own non-technical terms here is what I experienced. The first video was pretty much flawless. It was a one layer project where I chopped up some movie clips and put background music behind it. The second video was a nightmare. I had SD video I filmed mixed with HD someone else had filmed as I would preview clips it continuously crashed. I've never had an app crash so much. But I worked through that and got to the point of render and my output file had audio clicks and pops. I started reading around and re-rendered my source clips with uncompressed audio formats like several blogs suggested only to find out that I couldn't simply replace the source clips and retain all my edits. I'm now sitting in a project with red strips and yellow exclamation marks everywhere I used that footage. Oh, I forgot that I also had a memory leak problem as well. As I rendered my free memory would drop from 10 to 1.5 and wouldn't release the memory until I rebooted. I installed FCPX on a new snow leopard machine and the memory leak went away but the audio popping did not.

welcome to the club😕

Second that. My conclusion on FCPX: not ready for prime time, but interesting. Ping me when it's ready.

For those of you who remember or have used what is now called "legacy" final cut, you can make the new version act like old FCP when you need it and it decreases the spinny ball of death hitting you in the middle of a project. First change you timeline by flipping the switch in the lower left corner. Sure you lose the pictures on your timeline that make it look all cool & such, but it will help decrease the slowdown. Next, go to the edit tab in the preferences menu and turn off background rendering. Now you won't see your project in real time, but you weren't seeing it in real time anyway, you were seeing the spinny ball of death telling you that it can't layer video or do anything too complicated while it is background rendering. Then if you need to see a section of your video in 'real time' - highlight that section and go to the modify menu at the top and Render the Selection. It will work like good old Final Cut. Hopefully they will figure out how to background render without having the spinny ball crash your computer, but I run a mac lab with 24 computers and high school students who like to click a lot, so crashes are common. This has helped. Hope it helps you out.

A few days ago I transferred an iMovie project to FCPX, unsuccessfully, because when trying to shut down the computer I was told that FCPX could not be shut down while redering was in progress. After waiting 36 hours !! and seeing no activity on drives or processors I forced FCPX to quit. Ever since FCPX crashes on startup.

Question is, can I revert to last week, before all of this, using Time Machine? FCPX has been time machined, but all video files arel on 6 Gigs of external drives which are not part of TM. If so, what files should I bring forward?

Thanks.

The one time I tried to salvage an FCP X project with Time Machine it didn't work for me.

I guess theoretically, it should. TM saves files once an hour. So perhaps you could recover and FCP X Project or Event file. Or perhaps recover the folder containing either one? Keep both and rename each (remove "copy" from one folder and add "copy" to the other) and see what happens.

If you do test it out, let us know. I would be interested in seeing if TM can resolve issues like this.

Time Machine works perfectly for me with Events and Projects.

But Captain Rocky's issue is with the application itself. You might as well get it a shot, Captain Rocky. If that doesn't work, delete it and reinstall from the App Store.

oops. 6 TB of externals.

The externals don't need to be touched. The problem is either with the Project file (which is small) or the application itself, or the preferences/app-related system stuff.

Captain Rocky wrote:

A few days ago I transferred an iMovie project to FCPX, unsuccessfully, because when trying to shut down the computer I was told that FCPX could not be shut down while redering was in progress. After waiting 36 hours !! and seeing no activity on drives or processors I forced FCPX to quit. Ever since FCPX crashes on startup.

It's crashing because (as you surmised) the current project you were working on is now corrupt, your FCPX preference files may have problems as well. If you move the current project out of the folder FCPX is using the program will open.

What causes so many of our project to be corrpt (I know I'm selling them wacky weed)?

It must something that many users of FCPX are doing. I know when I became of the pixel limitation for still pics and video format limitations and plist trashing, I was crashing much less.

joelmarcia wrote:

What causes so many of our project to be corrpt (I know I'm selling them wacky weed)?

It must something that many users of FCPX are doing. I know when I became of the pixel limitation for still pics and video format limitations and plist trashing, I was crashing much less.

Many programs re-save their preference files each time the program closes, if FCPX has to be force quit or the Mac is shut off with some part of FPCX still running there's a chance for the preferences to be corrupted.

Same with the project file I imagine, if for some reason the program crashes during an auto-save or if auto-save stops working the chances of a corrupted project increase. Unfortunately, there's several other issues that can cause crashing, these include memory leaks and the ability of FCPX to gracefully deal with an error, whether user or internal.

In short, the program is fragile, like fine china, you have to handle it just right or there is a chance of breakage.

Great solution! FCP starts again. Now to see which folders, if any can be re-inserted into the projects folder.

Thanks!