Here is the first thing to try if your system starts acting unusual.


If all else fails or perhaps for a quick fix delete these files:

Your Hard Disk>Users>Your User Name>Library>Preferences Folder.
Inside the Preferences folder, com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist (move to trash).
Inside the Preferences folder find the Final Cut Pro folder and delete these two files>Final Cut Pro 4 Preference file and
Final Cut Pro v POA Cache (move to trash)

Now empty your trash. Then go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility and repair permissions on the startup drive. If it reports a lot of files repaired run it two or three times. Restart your computer.

Check your FCP settings, some may have reset to default settings. But they were possibly corrupt and causing your troubles. If this helps please post back.

I hope this helps. If this does not help please post a new topic with specifics as to your OS, version hardware etc.

As a possible stumbling block, I was waiting for a quick time movie to be created and was waiting quite a while with a spinning beach ball. Eventually, I gave up (like 3 or 4 minutes . . . only a 6 minute movie), and I forced a quit. When I came back in to FCP HD, half my movie was corrupted. Luckily, a friend of mine played with the "Restore Project" under File menu, and it was restored. I SUGGEST TO ONLY FORCE QUIT AFTER THE BEACH BALL HAS GONE ON FOR EVER AND EVER!!!!! It turns out the program was running fine, it was just taking a while. Nothing wrong with the mac, I just forced a quit while it was using data I had created, so the files were corrupted . . . bad move.

Just a heads up.

I get the Beach Ball quite often while working in FCPHD.

It usually happens when I'm clicking away and moving clips around quickly, not giving the comp much time in between these 'commands.'
Usually I get the little film reel icon (while it's auto-saving, I think), then the program 'unexpectedly quits' (which gets my nomination for the most annoying, unhelpful description of the error; 'Sorry, Apple. My check has unexpectedly bounced').

Sometimes it happens while I'm saving, though when I open it, it has indeed successfully saved.

Could be a RAM or processor issue. I'm on a G4, dual 867 MHz, 1.5GB DDR SDRAM.

I installed some extra memory (corsair) and have now 1,5 gigs of memory. But ever since I installed it I have had quits on programs. No spinning ball but in FCP or AVID or mediaplayers a sudden freeze where the audio keeps repeating it self but the keyboard not responding to anything forcing me to push the quit button on my mac. But when i restart I dont get anything like you have shut down the computer the wrong way. I have a mac 1.25 gig 1,5 memory.
any idea what?

greetings

David

Have you run the Apple Memory Test CD? If you don't have the CD then remove a stick of ram at a time and check to see if the computer is still freezing.

Jonathan, I've been having lots of FCPHD unexpected Quits. But, I have quite a few plugins installed in FCP. Wonder if there is too many using up too much RAM? I have G4 DP800 768MB ram.

Could this be causing more freq quits?

Thanks Jeff Donald, It worked for my problem.

Not sure how this happened, but... I think I shut down my cam before the program was done doing whatever it was doing after a capture. Well now when I open FCE it will go thru it's startup then seems to lock up at the flash screen, not sure if this is the proper term, but the FCE logo part just before the program is launched. I re-installed the program and it still does the same thing.

Thank you Boyd Ostroff for pointing me to the right place.

Having recently upgraded to FCP HD, I started experiencing the spinning beach ball of death... so I completed the actions above. Seems to have worked out, but I have one question:

I need clarification on the "Preferences" to delete -- I should be deleting the FCP 4 Preferences and not the FCP HD (or 4.5) Preferences, right? I deleted the FCP 4 only this time around.

Thanks

I think the following will answer your questions:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=310257&postcount=6

I've been getting "out of memory", red screens in fcp 5.0. A few months ago, while I was still running 4.0 I started seeing them and upgraded to 1.5 Memory (this on a G5 single processor 1.8), I then upgraded to 5.0 and things have been fine up until today when the program started to bog down again... I tried trashing the pref files and permission repairs. Anything else anyone would suggest?

Check out this article which discusses a free program called FINAL CUT RESCUE. It's a quick app that backs up/trashes/restores your preferences in FCP. I have it and use it, works great!

http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=11213

I used to work solely on a PC and have been using Final Cut Studio with my Imac G5 for quite some time now. One thing I used to have for my pc is optimization notes for professional apps. I haven't seen anything online about optimizing settings for Final Cut to run more efficiently on the Mac. Does anyone know of any optimization techniques for this? Thanks.