FCP Thumbnails Cause Crashing

[John Godwin]

I'm still trying to resolve a big issue. I'd appreciate it if anyone can tell me if they have issues with FCP crashing when opening bins with thumbnails...?

[Andy Wilkinson]

Just a suggestion but if you REALLY want some help from the good people on here you will have to give them a lot more information than that! Otherwise most will simply ignore such a vague request.

What Mac, what version of OS and what version of FCP etc. etc???......

[John Godwin]

Sorry. Mac OS X 10.5.5, FCP 6.04. Done all the latest updates, except 10.5.6 on the OS, per the recommendation of my vendor. Hardware: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro3,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 12 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Bus Speed: 1.6 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP31.006C.B05
SMC Version: 1.25f4

Thanks...

[Andy Mees]

I'm not seeing any such issue John. Though I do not have the same set up I would guess that the problem is not more widespread as it would almost certainly have been talked about before now. With that in mind I'd recommend "the usual" ... with FCP, generally speaking the most efficacious procedure for dealing with bizarre variations from expected behavior is to trash the application's preferences. You can do it manually:

Delete the User Preferences
You can resolve many issues by restoring Final Cut Pro back to its original settings. This will not impact your project files, but you should verify your Scratch Disk location setting after doing this. To reset your Final Cut Pro user preference settings to their original state, do the following:

In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences—the tilde (~) represents your Home folder.
Remove the "com.apple.finalcutpro.plist" file from the Preferences folder.
Remove the "Final Cut Pro User Data" folder from the Preferences folder.

... but there are many utilities out there to make the job quite quick and painless and at the same time add some value added features, such as backing up and restoring preference sets: my current favourite is Digital Rebellion's (free) Preference Manager
Preference Manager for Final Cut Studio - Trash Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro Preferences - Restore and backup

Good luck
Andy

[John Godwin]

Andy,

Thanks for the reply. I really should have appended this to the other thread I started but I was in a rush get an answer. I'm having this problem only on my Mac Pro and only with the Kona 3 card installed. I have the latest software for the Kona 3. Someone locally working on the problem told me, basically, no one uses the thumbnails in the bins, just list view, and that seems highly unlikely to me.

Most of the material I work on I get soundbites with timecode, and have a fair amount of b-roll, but nothing timecoded or labeled, so it's essential to use thumbnails to find b-roll. Hence the question.

I will certainly try your suggestions and thanks for the reply.

[Andy Mees]

Someone locally working on the problem told me, basically, no one uses the thumbnails in the bins, just list view, and that seems highly unlikely to me.

You're absolutely right, thats complete hogwash. Those view modes are there for a very good reason and most if not all users will have cause to use each of them at one time or another.

Another thing you might want to try is simply to delete your existing thumbnail cache directory ... that will cause FCP to rebuild all the thumbnails which might hopefully fix the issue. The current thumbnail cache directory is shown (and set) in FCP's System Preferences window > Scratch Disks tab.

The only other thing I can think of that might be a cause would be if you had a physically corrupted clip which FCP was stumbling on when trying to build its thumbnail ... if thats the case then it would stand to reason that FCP would only crash when trying to display a specific bin (the bin that contained such a corrupted clip) in icon view. You should be able to test the theory pretty easily by isolating a few clips into separate bins and then seeing if those bins will display in icon view without crashing.

[John Godwin]

Andy,

Nothing has worked yet, except removing the Kona 3card and software. Then everything works normally.

Thanks for the suggestions, though...

Best,
John

[Carl Crum]

I am having this exact same problem. It has been going on for months I have a similar setup with the Kona3. After FCP loads about 100 browser icon thumbnails, it will beach ball then crash. It must be a prob with the Kona3. I have tried every possible software solution I know of...

[Bill Davis]

Not sure if this is relevant, but after 2 years of consistent crash free operation, my system started crashing when I asked it to load complex scenes, particularly those with embeded still photos - kinda like thumbnails, I guess.

Hardware Test showed nothing wrong with my system. And software updates didn't help.

I had a Radeon 1900XT card with quite a few miles on it in my MacPro - and after some searching - read around the net that others had had trouble with crashing after one of the Mac OS updates a few months back with that same Radeon cards.

I ordered a $129 video card replacement/upgrade and INSTANTLY every crashing problem was resolved.

Again, the Mac System Profiler and Hardware tests didn't show any issues - but the card was clearly the culprit.

For what it's worth.

[Carl Crum]

Thanks for the info, but it seems to be a problem with the Kona3 card. I have found several threads online that detail the same problem I have, and ALL of them have the Kona3. I see lots of ideas but no solutions anywhere. I hate to have to pull a card I paid a LOT of money for... :-)

[John Godwin]

Carl,

Two things seem to have finally cleared up my problems. One was to move the Kona3 card to another slot. (I knew from previous systems that slot order could be an issue with windows machines, and evidently the same is true with macs.) It works much more consistently in slot 3 than in slot 4.

After considerable time my systems vendor finally checked out the RAID they sold me with the system, and it had a bad drive (one of the 8 drives). I didn't know how to check it myself - I do now. It is very possible that the RAID had a bad drive from the start.

In any case, those two things combined seem to have been the major causes of my problems. I'd suggest you pull the Kona card out entirely and see if the thumbnail crashes stop. If so then try it in another slot.

I really hope this helps 'cause I limped along for months dealing with these issues and would surely have preferred not to.

[Carl Crum]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have had the Kona3 in slot 3 since the start. The raid drives all check out as well. I thought it might be a problem with RAM. I had 8gb of OWC RAM installed. I pulled it out and replaced it with the original 2gb Apple RAM. The system worked great for two days, then started crashing every 15 min. again. I have 16gb of RAM on order. Hopefully it's a bad RAM or not enough RAM problem.

[Michael Dalton]

Well, I am going to kill you kona theory. I have a Matrox MX02 and get the same thing. Like a previous poster, I did not have this problem before when I did not have a output card.

I'll try moving my card on the next crash. But it is seriously frustrating, as it take minutes to re-load my projects. 6-10 time a day is a lot of wasted time, and in some cased lost work.

I think I may have a similar set up to the first poster.

I also run a proavio raid. Which did have a bad drive and caused a lot of problems, but now I'm using a simple 2 bay one, and still problems.

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 7 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B04
SMC Version (system): 1.7f8