Motion 5.05 crashes and is totally unusable

Some people have solved the 2nd monitor problem by going to User>Library>Application Support>Motion and deleting the Layouts folder. As to your other issues, create a new user and see if Motion will launch. Perhaps there is some conflict in your Home directory.

struggling for quiet some time to get Motion 5.0.5 to start up and already very desperate ...

now I tried your advice to use a different user ... and Motion started up without crashing !?!?!!

what could be the conflict in my home-directory that Motion 5.0.5 keeps crashing?

your help will be highly appreciated!

Well it's a start to know that Motion runs okay with a new admin user. As you say seems likely that there is a software conflict in your home Library folder. Trying to find the problem is a dicey task that usually involves trial and error removal and sustitution of files and checking after each move to see if the issue is resolved. There is also the option to replace folders one by one from your user library to the new user library until you get a failure and then drill down into the problem folder file by file. Another option is to move all your files to the new user and work with it. None of this is very attractive to do.

An easier approach is to check some common culprits. Fonts can cause problems so use font book and check your fonts for errors. Audio conflicts sometimes occur so check the audio folder in your library and selectively remove files and see if you can isolate the problem file. Run pref manager again. Empty cache files. Repair permissions. Have you added any software or plugins to Motion or FCP. Do you have any legacy FCP studio programs. Have you looked at the activity log to see what it says when the crash occurs? Sometimes it tells you something more understandable than the crash log. I looked at your crash report in your other post, but didn't see anything unusual. It appears that Motion launches okay and then crashes. Is that the case? Can you start to use it or does it crash before you touch anything? Wish I could be more definitive but it really is a detective type problem to work out.

First of all BIG thanks Jim for your time you put in your answer and trying to help me out!

I was already afraid that there will be no easy sorting out of the user-home folder conflict with its contents and what in particular are causing the crashing of Motion.

by the way: Motion launches okay and shows the "Project Browser" window for a couple of seconds and then crashes and is not usable at all.

also the Console crash-report file from the DiagnosticReports shows basically the same information then the Problem Report ... unfortunately no traces in there for more specific possibilities what to look for in the home-directory.

basically I delete the preference file before each try and have checked the fonts and all are ok, permissions are fixed (although I am not big fan of letting them repair: generally causing more problems then solutions), cache files cleaned, deleted all Motion and FCP add-ons (oh i am desperate) and not sure how to identify legacy FCP studio programs and where to look for them ... same as for audio-folders other then ~/Music/

well no culprits identified so far.

/Library/Application Support/ProApps is another folder I am not sure what kind of content it should include. I "cleaned" it already a while ago down to:

/Library/Application Support/ProApps/Internal Plug-Ins/BrowserKit/FileSystem.bkplugin

/Library/Application Support/ProApps/Internal Plug-Ins/BrowserKit/iLife.bkplugin

I guess the only solution is as you recommended going folder by folder, file by file ... omg!

but honestly: I don't think i'll find the time to do this.

what I am still curious to find out is: why was Motion 5.0.4 working flawlessly and since the update to 5.0.5 it became unusable? also downgrading didn't work for me? what did happen during the update? what was changed and/or modified to get Motion unusable? all other apps are working perfectly (including FCPX) so there can't be a serious conflict in the user-folder?

The audio I was refering to is the Audio Folder in your user library. It contains apple loops, any vst or other plugins etc. I would just move the folders inside the Audio folder to the desktop one by one to see if that helps. If you have any version of FCP Studio apps they should be in a seperate folder called old fcp or whatever. I woulld not worry about pro tools as they are in startup drive root level library, not your user library.

Sorry you are having such great difficulty. Perhaps the latest update 10.0.7 will help or you can just move your files to a new user.

THANKS Jim for getting back with more helpful informations!

well ... I had high hopes for the update of Motion to 5.0.6 ... but ...

same thing with the same crash-report!

moved all the content out of the ~/Library/Audio folder and checked/cleaned all FCP legacy products. didn't help either!

after 25 years behind a mac running a 5 year old Mac Pro (because there is no significant update) and professional software that gets useless after an update ... I wonder if this is a strategy to get rid of those loyal professional Mac users .... sorry but here is only very big disappointment!

Well I am out of ideas, but one thing you might try is dragging your entire preferences folder (~/Library/Preferences) to the desktop and restart your computer and see if Motion launches. If no, then just drag the folder back into the Library and select replace when OSX says there are newer files. If Motion is okay, then start putting the preferences back in the Library and checking to see if Motion fails. You can do this one by one which takes forever or drag in groups at a time to find the culprit. Not fun either way but it has solved problems in the past. If this doesn't work then, if it were me, I would just make the new admin user my main login and move all my files, movies, docs etc to the new user.

Thanks again Jim for all your help, patience and useful inputs!!!!!

I followed your suggestions and the only way to narrow down my problem was a copy of my user folder and start deleting files and/or folders until Motion would probably start up.

I promise this is the very last time I would go through all of this and after endless hours&hours&hours&hours spent to find that culprit .... I got him!!!

it was a single smart font collection I created a while ago with Font-Book ... just this one particular deleted and Motion 5.0.6 started up again and seems so far useable again ... hallelujah!!!!

so if anybody has a similar problem, start looking for a culprit here:

~/Library/FontCollections/

start deleting one after the other either through Font-Book or in that folder to get that loved Motion back to do its job (and I hope it will stay that way!)

Very good to hear that you solved your problem! Perseverance is a virtue although tedious. Thanks for sharing.

For a couple of minutes I beleived in Santaclaus but no, it is not true. I deleted all my font collections but it did not solve my problem, it remain impossible to open Motion 5.0.6.

Thanks for sharing anyway.