The Final Cut Pro X CRASH Thread

As soon as your time line opens, zoom in to show just a few shots... one of the crashes in FCP X is the thumbnail manager and it often crashed for me during refresh of an entire time line.

When I zoomed in on the time line, and it refreshed only a few shots, it seemed OK.

I'm not sure if thats it but... if its stable when you are zoomed in, you can go to your project file, under render files, and see a folder of thumbnail media... I think its safe to toss the contents of the thumbnail media file and it will rebuild it... (drag the old media out but keep it until you know it rebuilds...)

also, open your console in utilities and look under crash reports for FCP X, it will show the name of the thread that crashed it - it's a clue...

good luck

You may want to try going into your events folders and moving the Photoshop files into a different folder temporarily. I had a Photoshop file with a lot of vectors, which seemed to throw off Final Cut Pro. When I resaved my Photoshop file in a simpler way, Final Cut Pro was back up and working. You could also simply move all of the files out of your events folder to see if there is a corrupt file in their to begin with.

Thanks,

David

Hi Marc!

So, I’ve tried all your suggestions, but FCP still shuts down everytime I try to open it.

I downloaded a trial version of it in my husband’s work computer, and I was able to open up my folders with the FOOTAGE (none of my PROJECTS are in this new computer, even though I saved everything in a terrabyte).

I imported the footage that I thought was corrupted, and it works just fine (so it’s not corrupted).

For some reason, the FCP in my computer is not working correctly, or maybe it’s corrupting some of my project files.

Do you know of any way I can salvage my projects?

Any other suggestions?

Thank you!!!!

1 of your events or projects might be corrupt. MOve them out of their folders into temp folders and open X. If it opens, then add each event/project 1 by 1 close/open X. Repeat until u see a crash. That's the corrupt file!

Good luck.

reto photography wrote:

Solution:

Keep the project and event library as empty as possible.

I currently have 136 Events in the Browser - and 22 Projects in the Project Library. The average number of clips in each Event is around 40 - some over 200.

Admittedly, I avoid selecting all the Events at once (that makes the Mac's eyes water for a few minutes) but I regularly work for days on end without a crash. Occasionally things go a little strange, but trashing the prefs always seems to fix it.

I work with XDCAM EX and H.264 footage - nothing is Transcoded - I tried Proxy but abandoned it as I didn't see any advantage - and it looks horrible in the Viewer. When I abandoned Proxy, I was able to trash nearly a terrabyte of unwanted files.

I run all this on an early 2009 Mac Pro 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 16GB RAM. OS 10.7.4.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. FCP X is an outstanding application that has saved me hundreds of hours editing, and has enabled me to be far more creative than I could be with FCS (which I used professionally from FCP 3 - and FCE before that).

Andy

For anyone interested in how my ancient MacPro runs FCP X so smoothly, this is my pet checklist for questions regarding FCP X performance - you may have already addressed some of the items but it's worth checking.

Make sure you're using the latest version of the application - FCP X 10.0.5 runs very well on my 2009 MacPro 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 16 GB RAM and ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB. I run it with Lion 10.7.4.

First, check that you have at least 20% free space on your system drive.

For smooth playback without dropping frames, make sure 'Better Performance' is selected in the FCP X Preferences - Playback Tab.

If you have not already done so, move your Projects and Events to a fast (Firewire 800 or faster) external HD. Make sure the drive's formatted OS Extended (journalling's not required for video). You should always keep at least 20% free space on the Hard Drives that your Media, Projects and Events are on.

Check the spec of your Mac against the system requirements:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs/

Check the spec of your graphics card. If it's listed here, it's not suitable:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664

If you are getting crashes, there is some conflict on the OS. Create a new (admin) user account on your system and use FCP X from there - if it runs a lot better, there's a conflict and a clean install of the OS would be recommended.

Keep projects to 20 mins or less. If you have a long project, work on 20 min sections then paste these into a final project for export.

If your playback in FCP X is not good, I strongly recommend you use ProRes 422 Proxy - it edits and plays back like silk because the files are small but lightly compressed (not much packing and unpacking to do) - but remember to select 'Original or Optimised Media' (FCP X Preferences > Playback) just before you export your movie, otherwise it will be exported at low resolution.

The downside of 'Proxy' is that it looks awful. DON'T use Proxy when you're assessing things like video quality - especially focus.

If you have plenty of processor power, for the ultimate editing experience, create Optimised Media - most camera native files are highly compressed and need a great deal of processor power to play back - particularly if you add titles, filters or effects. ProRes 422 takes up much more hard drive space but is very lightly compressed. It edits and plays back superbly.

Personally, I work with XDCAM EX and h.264 from a Canon DSLR. Both of these run fine with my system, but I do transcode multicam clips.

Hide Audio Waveforms at all times when you don't need them (both in Browser and Storyline / Timeline). They take up a lot of processor power. (Use the switch icon at the bottom-right of your timeline to select a format without waveforms if you don't need them at the moment, then switch back when you do).

Create folders in the Project and Events libraries and put any projects you are not working on currently, in those folders. This will help a lot. There's a great application for this, called Event Manager X - for the tiny cost it's an invaluable application.

http://assistedediting.intelligentassistance.com/EventManagerX/

Unless you cannot edit and playback without it, turn off Background Rendering in Preferences (under Playback) - this will help general performance and you can always render when you need to by selecting the clip (or clips) and pressing Ctrl+R.

The biggest single improvement I saw in performance was when I upgraded the RAM from 8 GB to 16.

Andy

Hey,

I was having the exact same problem. I fixed by doing this:

1. Moved all projects and events out of the default event/project folder and put on desktop temporarily.

2. Open FCPX and created a new project, tested to see if everything worked. It did. Close FCPX

3. Put projects and events back in the new folders created by default when starting the new project. Open FCPX.

4. Opened my problem project and was able to select all and copy

5. Close FCPX. Go back to your default folder and remove the trouble project.

6. Open FCPX and copy the project into a new project.

7. From here I was able to work in the project and discover which files where causing trouble.

Turns out after deleting some text with fancy fonts, colors etc it worked fine. I am back and running smooth!

Today I managed to make things much worse for myself. In the process of trying to figure out why FCPX was rendering so slowly and only using one core, I ran ML Cache Cleaner, and did a deep cleaning (all System and User caches). Oops. Now FCPX crashes on export for all Projects, unless I am exporting to YouTube.

I've used Prefs Manager to delete prefs, rebooted, repaired disk permissions, deleted render files, re-installed FCP, etc. Nothing works, so far 😟

Interestingly, if I move all of my Projects and Events so that FCPX doesn't see them, then import a file and create a new project, I *can* export it...

I

nterestingly, if I move all of my Projects and Events so that FCPX doesn't see them, then import a file and create a new project, I *can* export it...

Ouch, sounds like it took out some critical (invisable) files within the Projects/Event folders?? guessing...

some-ting stinks in that directory. You might want to test an external drive with a NEW fcpx directory.

I would try and salvage as much of your 'Projects' as possible, since they have your cuts and edits. Duplicate timeline onto a new Project on external drive. Create new Event on external drive, import media and reconnect. Its a nightmare, but you can piece things back together....once reconnected you can duplicate Project/Event back to the original....I tink.

pls keep us informed.

good luck

I seem to have fixed my problem with some voodoo: I copied one of my smaller projects (Event and Project folders) over to my internal drive, deleted them from the original drive, and tried an export to my desktop. It worked! I copied back to the original drive and exported to the disk I was trying originally. It worked! And not only that, but my other projects now export without crashes as well. Hope this bit of weirdness helps someone.

Brougnt Home my drive from work with my projects and events, as always, Only had to do some tweaks over the weekend, Project would crash FCPX on start up. After some trial and error, I realized I had a MOTION generator that was Modified at Work, At home the motion generator had the same name, but it was a month older. VPN into work Copy the Motion Generator to Home machine, Replaced the older MOTION GENERATOR.

--- Project Came right up.

This helped a lot! Thank you 🙂

I ended up doing this:

- When FCP was closed, I went into the FCP Projects and created a new folder.

- I took the problem project (the only that made FCP crash) and put in inside the new folder

- Opened FCP and it worked!

I have been trying many of the fixes listed in this thread, but can't seem to solve my crash problem. I have narrowed the issue down to one project. I can take the project out of my Final Cut Projects folder and the program seems to run fine. So I either have a corrupt project or a corrupt file (the crash thread I am getting is FFThumbnailRequestManager). I am running 10.8.6 and FCPX 10.0.7. I tried downloading the trial of Pro Maintenance Tools and attempted repairing the project and clearing various caches and this didn't help. Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can salvage the project?

Thank you.

Wow, that's a tough one, I don't have the time to read this entire thread, but I'll assume you've deleted and re-installed FCPX? Trashed Plists, which usually doesn't do much for this situation. This may sound stupid, but I would drag both the event and project folders to an external drive and take that to your closest Apple store. See if it crashes there, if not, then it's something else within your system. Maybe even try booting that project from an entirely different drive. Stuff lie this is a painful process of elimination. I'll also assume you've tried booting that project directly from the backup project file on your external drive?

Hi

Media is:

The media are from a Panasonic HS700 camera. I rewrap them to the m4v format.

I do this process for 2 years and the files work without any problem in iMovie on my new iMac.

I tried smaller files as well - same problem.

or older projects:

Media is on external firewire 800 harddrive connected over Thunderbold/FW800 adapter.

I did the same test on with media on internal Fusion drive > Same result :-(

Got the same error FFThumbnailRequestManager in the crash thread.

FCPX on my older iMac 9,1 core duo has no problem.

Thank you for any advise to solve this.