# Final Cut Pro 3.02 crashes and I am unhappy overall



## karavite (Oct 20, 2002)

Apple - take note, I am the spitting image of one of your target customers regarding digital hubs and desktop video and I took the bait in a big way ($3700 and counting in the past month).

I have spent more money the last two months than my wife would ever believe - camcorder, awesome tripod and fluid head, G4 DP 1 GHz, external firewire drive and FCP 3. Even on the brand new super hot Mac running OS X 10.2.1 FCP 3.0 crashes so often, I feel forced to do a save every two minutes. Now with the upgrade it seems to crash just as much, most often when rendering a simple dissolve or a still image. I know I have a lot to learn about FCP, but I am not happy - MS Office crashes less than this ie. - pun intended - almost never.

Also, I have to say that although FCP is a product for professionals, its UI and usability is often a little too silly. Sure iMovie and Premiere are not "pro" products, but they let you do simple things simply. If Apple wants us all making home movies, they need something in between iMovie and FCP - price, features and performance - gee, how about Premiere? Probably not - you have to own a suite of $400 Adobe prodcuts to do anything these days.

Another thing I do not understand is real time effects - I often have clips pop up in the canvas saying "Unrendered." I'm sure I will find the reason for this somewhere in one of the ten $60 books at Borders on FCP, but it seems a little shaky to me - I watched all the Apple site movies where various pros were just gushing over the real time effects and here I am with the second fastest Mac there is and it seems to be a well hidden feature. Rendering time is pretty amazing on this machine, so I can live with this.

I tell you, for an intense home user like me I really don't see the advantage to FCP over Premiere or even iMovie! I'm just doing a lot of simple things, capturing, editing and titles (isn't that about 99% of what I am supposed to be doing?) - I know exactly what I want to do, but FCP doesn't make it easy to find out how to do it. 

FCP reminds me of Adobe and Macromedia products way more than an Apple product - over complication of simple things all in the name of being a professional. Then again, this isn't a surprise, FCP came from Macromedia (I think), makers of Nightmare Weaver. 

I'd like to see Apple do what it does best and create a really fantastic UI for FCP or something new for the video "rest of us." Something that allows novice users to work without a manual and let more sophisticated users find all they need as well. Perhaps if they make it too easy, people will not think it is professional? After all, being a pro means making everything 10x as complicated as it needs to be!

I'm sure I'll feel better in the morning and/or if FCP did not crash so often, but I bought the hype with my wallet, but I am not buying it with my satisfaction or again any time soon. I gave up my alt.mac.application newsgroup ways some time ago, but now I'm wishing I would have tried it one more time for FCP.


----------



## plastic (Oct 20, 2002)

For the simplified video editing work, there is always iMovie for you and iDVD to impress your friends that you can author your own DVD. 

FCP3 crashing like no tomorrow? Hmm... as a video post facility owner, I want to say this... you are the first person I have come across who said this. FCP3 has outgunned AVID even, according to my video editors, and thus, something must be wrong somewhere. 

Possibilities that you might want to look into : 
1. Preference settings.
2. Sequence settings.
3. Hardware configurations.
4. Render mode. 
and the list goes on.

If you were not prepared to take on the higher end of the video editing work, you should consider going back to iMovie. It is really fast and simple to use. 

FYI, I have editing for broadcast programmes on FCP and I have yet to touch the manuals. Everything was intuitive and it works better than a $50k AVID system. Not to mention with FCP3, I get color correction which is a life saver. 

RT Effects. I hardly have to worry about them, but that is from an editor. 

I think you have some serious hardware problems causing the crashes. The first place I would look at : RAM. I maxed out my RAM, and also, because of the intensity of video editing work, I use nothing but Cruicial ECC RAM. They cost a bomb to buy, but a real joy when you realise it is money well spent.

Your Mac might have other issues that I do not know of, better to send it back to the Apple Centre and get a techie to check it. 

No one I know who worked on FCP3 ever complained of the issues you talked about, and  FCP is taking the broadcast market by STORM! It is one of the best things in life that ever happened to video editors is FCP. Motion Graphics, Color Correction, Offline/Online editing, RT effects, multi layers of graphics and audio, etc... there is simply too many things I can list here... 

You made the right choice my friend. Just need to get someone to help you set it up. 

it is the system integration that is the pain when it comes to professional systems. After that... you will be flying through edits and thanking yourself. 

Crashes? The last one that happened to me was back in 2000. On FCP1.25. It was THAT long ago...

I am not a Mac fanatic, just a techie who wants things that works.


----------



## karavite (Oct 20, 2002)

Hi Plastic,

Like I said, I knew I would feel better in the morning! Forgive my ranting, I was just mainly upset about a $1000 program crashing. I do not want to use iMovie or Premiere, and I think that using iMovie too much has effected my initial opinions about FCP - I have done a lot more editing with FCP and I am really getting the hang of it. I promise to be more patient and take the time to learn about FCP. Still, what I think is funny about FCP is it is not like Apple software - you can tell it has roots outside of Apple.

Regarding my crashes, I have a real hard time accepting the premise that there is something wrong with my G4 DP 1 GHz. No other program crashes - ever and I run all kinds of things all the time - lots of audio stuff, other video apps (such as iMovie and Premiere) and zero zero zero application crashes. I have 768 MB of big bucks Apple DDR RAM and 57 GB of free disk space, plus another 80 GB firewire drive I can hook up which would seem to be more than enough. Do you have any advice on what exactly to look for and/or change? My preferences are pretty much what FCP set up out of the box. 

The 3.02 upgrade notice refers to "performance and reliability issues" as well as updated real-time enablers for the new DP machines. Do you think there are any issues with the new DP machines that may be at the root of these crashes? Do you know anyone with DP 1 or 1.25 GHz who are running 10.2.1 and FCP 3.02? My crashes seem to only happen while rendering. I may be new to digital video, but I have been around long enough to smell a bug.

Thanks


----------



## karavite (Oct 20, 2002)

Good old Sherlock to the rescue - look at this one from Apple Care db (I'll try it out soon run 3.01 then 3.02):



> Symptom
> 
> The Final Cut Pro application unexpectedly quits after installing the 3.0.2 update.
> 
> ...



Maybe that is the problem these guys at http://www.b-roll.net/products/fcp3.html were having:



> Several of my colleagues who have been running FCP in X have had some trouble batch capturing (capturing a group of designated clips in one session). The program has, on occasion and without warning, shut down. An OS X bonus: only the program crashes, not the entire system. Rebooting works to restore the program, but that is a hassle.



Still, 3.0 crashed and I'm betting it is a bug with something between FCP, new DP Macs and 10.2.


----------



## karavite (Nov 14, 2002)

FYI, it was the upgrade path - have to run 3.01 then 3.02.


----------

