Constant crashing with FCP, even when it starts up

I am experiencing a recurring issue with FCP that has been getting worse and worse with time. I will be working and either I try to do something with the timeline and when I PLAY it will only play a few frames before freezing (audio keeps playing though) or I drag an effect on a clip and it gives me a warning about how it can't be done, no more info is available... even standard built-in Apple effects like Gaussian Blur. I quit FCP because it won't work until I restart it. Sometimes it will crash... just completely disappear. Every time I try to start it it will appear for a second or two and then disappear again. This will happen multiple times a day as I'm editing.


Mac Studio M1 Ultra 64GB o' RAM

Library running on WD_BLACK SN850X 4TB NVMe SSD inside Acasis enclosure via Thunderbolt 4

FCP 11, though this affected 10.8.x as well

Mac OS 15.1.1, though this affected me in Mac OS 14 as well.


Here's what I have tried:

-DELETING PREFERENCES - This works. For a while. Maybe 45 minutes if I'm lucky.


-RESTORING PREFERENCES with PREFERENCE MANAGER - This does not work. I restore them and FCP will still crash right away, even though the preferences that were saved with Preference Manager were super clean after I had just set them up, before I used FCP in any way. If I delete the "settings" by holding OPTION at startup, go through the song and dance of dismissing the iPad FCP thing (why is that there?) and dismissing the plug-ins that don't work (that I have zero clue how to remove), I can then quit FCP, restore the preferences with Preference Manager and it works. Again for about 45 minutes of editing if I'm lucky.


-ETRE CHECK - No major issues found other than a few unsigned things like my Logitech mouse software (reinstalled that anyway). Also I have automatic security updates off and it didn't like that. There was other nonsense like "No time machine backup" which would have zero influence on FCP crashing.


-MALWAREBYTES - Scanned with the latest version. All clean.


-REINSTALLING FCP FROM THE APP STORE - Makes no difference.


-Don't have CHROME.


Obviously it has something to do with the preferences, but something outside of what Preference Manager saves and restores. Only fully deleting the preferences with the built-in method will fix it for a while. I could have some bad plugins maybe. I'd like to go through one by one to remove some of them but again I don't know where they are and I don't have uninstallers for them all. So I guess my first question would be is... what does resetting FCP do besides delete the preferences that Preference Manager backs up? Whatever that is, is my issue.


Mac Studio

Posted on Nov 24, 2024 9:53 PM

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Posted on Nov 26, 2024 10:08 AM

I studied closely the crash at 2024-11-24 02:24:31.7253 -0700, but they are all similar.


Thread 44 crashed in OZFxPlug_GetFlexoInputNode due to dereferencing a null pointer. OZ=Ozone, the FCP private framework that implements the Motion runtime engine and effects processing.


This crash appears to be a complex interaction between FCP's effect system, background processing, and resource management. The root cause may be a synchronization loophole (e.g, race condition) between effect processing and thumbnail generation.


However if we look earlier in the stack trace (around frame 77) we see an an exception occurred in the background task. Instead of properly handling it, the code continued execution, apparently without cleanup or (maybe) not even logging it.

This led to corrupted state that caused the scheduling system to enter an infinite recursion.

Finally, after corrupting the stack, it attempted to access an invalid pointer and crashed.


The effects thumbnail generation logic is complex. There is a background task queue ("effectLibraryThumbnailGenerator") for processing. It has both a memory cache (FFObjectCache) and disk cache (FFSegmentStoreRef).


An obvious question is why now, and why only on your machine? Unknown. Because of the track record of CoreMelt causing problems, and the failure of their uninstall tool to fully work, I suggest you manually remove all traces of that (as a temporary test). They have a support page with the procedure: https://support.coremelt.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360013189594-Where-are-files-from-CoreMelt-installed-How-to-manually-uninstall


If you have any other third-party Fx, especially those from Pixel Film Studios, please list those.


If that doesn't help, the next time the crash happens run the following terminal command which gathers FCP-specific logging info, then upload that so I can examine it.


log show --info --debug --predicate 'processImagePath CONTAINS "Final Cut Pro"' --last 1h > ~/Documents/Redifer_FCP_Log.txt 






Similar questions

46 replies

Nov 25, 2024 5:32 PM in response to terryb

The only thing is the crash logs that stands out to me (and I am no expert) is:

Crashed Thread: 14 BGTask: FFEffectLibraryThumbnailRequestManager


That tells me that one of the effects has a bad thumbnail, which is true. It's not an effect I use super often, but it is in my Favorites section and I access my Favorites often, so that lack of thumbnail may have caused issues somehow? I went ahead and resaved the effect and it has a thumbnail now, so we'll see.

Nov 26, 2024 5:33 PM in response to Joe Redifer

Start XCode, then use menu XCode>Settings>Locations, and if the drop-down menu "Command Line Tools" is blank, pick a version (XCode 16.1 is the latest). If it already shows that, de-select it then re-select it. Then shut down the XCode app, start a new terminal window and see if xctrace will run. If that doesn't work, reboot the machine and try it.

Dec 14, 2024 9:32 AM in response to Joe Redifer

Joe, despite the references in the call stack to "FFFxPlugEffect", I believe those are also used for FCP built-in effects. Also on Apple Silicon it should be impossible to run third-party effects "in process", IOW inside the FCP address space as was currently done. This tends to somewhat reduce (but not eliminate) possible problems with third-party effects.


That said, due to the difficulty of this problem and how much time we've already spent troubleshooting it, if you are not using FCPX Artist Brush or BCCFxPlugx_x64, you might consider fully removing those.

Nov 25, 2024 2:41 PM in response to joema

To answer one question: This has affected multiple libraries and projects living on different SSDs. I used the Coremelt uninstaller to try to uninstall their stuff but it still appears in FCP under the C2 category. Launching their app says I have nothing of theirs installed yet there it is.


Joe -

I went ahead and deleted all generated files and I'll see how that goes this evening. I went ahead and did the other steps anyway. Nothing needed repair during the repair and verify. My FCP Crash Logs for the past 24 hours or so


Upon importing the XML into a blank Library, I was greeted with this error screen (I didn't try to edit with it):


[Edited by Moderator]

Nov 26, 2024 4:30 PM in response to terryb

I haven't, they are generally very, very good drives. However I do have two of them, one 2TB and one 4TB. I usually create a new Library on the one that has the most available space at the time as that gives me a non-urgent window to backup the Library to a spinny drive. I transferred this particular Library from the 4TB to the 2TB the other day just to see if it would make a difference, and it didn't. I don't really have any other places to put the Libraries except the main drive. And this current Library is 850+GB. I could get away with it for testing I suppose since i have over 2TB of free space.

Nov 27, 2024 2:12 PM in response to joema

Activity Monitor reports "Apple" for kind in regards to FCP, and I'm currently using a single monitor. It's a current gen Apple Studio Display connected via Thunderbolt. I don't have any audio things connected except an analog out cable (RCA 1/8" minijack) that takes the audio to my AVR.


The apps I usually have running concurrently with FCP as I work are:

Firefox

MicroSoft Edge

Mail

Messenger

Messages

Discord


Sometimes I'll open Photoshop


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Constant crashing with FCP, even when it starts up

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