Here we go - I have another thread that I started the other day, but thought I'd continue this here. I just did an extensive test. Fred, you may be on to something here. I'm beginning to think some of this is only happening if you are:
(a) running the Trial version
(b) Motion is NOT installed
(c) and it may be that the 10.0.1 update has created this problem, although surely Tom and Andy are running that update...
...or some combination of the above. Anyway...
New iMac i5 quad-core 12mb RAM - new machine with total stock config - only Apple software except for Office 2011.
FCP X Trial version, Motion is not installed
I've tried a variety of clips, but to eliminate variables, for this test I just used clips from a Canon 60D. They were imported from the card and converted to ProRes by FCP X.
Again, these crashes only relate to using the Inspector with certain Effects. If the Inspector is closed, I can apply these Effects and they play back flawlessly. However, once I've applied them and selected the clip, clicking the Inspector button causes an immediate Quit of FCP. And, if the Inspector is already open, just applying the Effect to any clip causes an immediate Quit.
These are the Effects that cause the crash (for me) by category:
Blur - Radial, Zoom
Distortion - Earthquake, Fisheye, Fun House, Glass Block, Mirror, Scrape, Water Pane
Keying - Image Mask
Lighting - Highlights, Side Lights, Spot
Looks - amazingly enough, all work except for Glory
Stylize - Censor, Halftone, Line Screen, Photo Recall, Pixellate, Vignette
Tiling - Kaleidoscope, Kaleidotile, Perspective Tile (but strangely just plain "Tile" DOES work)
So, this is approximately half of the supplied Effects. Interestingly, there is not a single category in which ALL of them work, nor one in which NONE of them work. And, by the way, doing this gave me a chance to check out every Effect - wow are there some cool ones I can't wait to work with. And, I got into this routine of highlight clip, make sure Inspector was open, double-click Effect, if no crash just CMD-z and repeat. I threw a lot of changes at it in quick succession and it handled it beautifully, except for the list above.
There is also a third party free effect from Alex4D called Smooth Move. It looks fantastic! It allows Ken Burns-like scaling which somewhat alleviates the weird animation that results if you scale and move at the same time with keyframes, BUT it allows the flexibility to NOT have the move span the entire clip like Ken Burns does. Oops, sorry, that Effect ALSO crashes the Inspector, so I can't access the controls. And, to keep this test pristine, I didn't try the Alex4D Effect on this test iMac, just on my Mac Pro on a clean system install.
Now, if Apple said (or says later) oh, wait, in the Trial version some of the Effects are not adjustable, but they are flawless in the paid version, I'd be fine with that. And, if you guys with the paid version and/or Motion installed say it works fine for you, I believe you :-). It's just that several of us were excited to get the Trial. I've been using FCP since 2003 and LOVE this new version. But, until you figure out that you can't use the Inspector with half of the Effects if you are using the Trial version, it just seems like the thing is unusable and crashes constantly - because it does.
Now that I know this, I don't think I've had a SINGLE crash otherwise - even on my "wrong" install on my MacPro with FCP7 and FCPX both on the boot drive.
David