Export sparks Kernel Panic
 

I've had a little search about this but come up with nothing for some reason...

Just exporting a finished re-edit for a project, and my sequence begins to write the video, after 4% it stops, and then my entire operating system gives in to a kernal panic and crashes.

What's strange is that it doesn't happen on other projects, only this one.

I'm working HDV 720P on FCP 5.1.4. All my sequences are rendered and playback is absolutely fine.

Any solutions?

Try deleting all of your render files, make a new folder somewhere else on the drive, set FCP to send the render files there, and re-render.

If that don't work, do what I do, drink a bottle of Tequila and curse at the monitor.

tried that....and...no luck i'm afraid!

Re-rendered with render files sent to a new folder. My time-line has a mixture of DV Pal and HDV on, which has rendered for playback fine. Would this contribute to the problem?

It's a bit early for the tequila but it's looking more and more useful as time goes on!

Hope anybody can help!

Cheers

Neil,

There are several things that could potentially be the problem, so you'll need to do some low-level troubleshooting:

- Where are you exporting to? Internal or external drive? Are the drive permissions wrong - do you have read/write access?
- When was the last time you did a global "fix permissions" or other system maintenance? Download and use Onyx for Mac and run all the cleaning/maintenance routines. Several reboots will be required to complete the maintenance.
- Save your project, delete your FCP preferences (trash preferences as it's referred to), restart FCP and reset your settings and see if that helps.
- Try creating a new project, copy over all the assets to the new "test" project (do this ONLY after completing all the maintenance above) re-render and try exporting then.

If none of that helps then it might be a deeper issue requiring serious help.

Kernal panics are almost always hardware related...or the drivers in the system that interface with them. But unlike Windows, the drivers often are rock solid (or at least to the point they don't cause panics) before the end user ever sees them. This is one of the benefits of Apple only having to write drivers for only, say, 10 hardware configs across their whole line-up.

Often the log of the crash will point to what the system was doing on a lower level when it crashed. Was it addressing the video card? Was it going through an odd driver to write the file to the storage device?

Bad RAM will also cause panics...and sometimes bad RAM doesn't manifest itself until you do specific tasks. In fact, faulty RAM is probably the #1 cause of kernal panics.

[edit after thinking some more]
I'd look for a plug in that accesses hardware 4% of the way in on the timeline...like an FX plug that relies on the video card GPU. Or an oddball audio plugin.

When I've had exports go wrong repeatedly at a certain point in the export, I've always been able to trace it to the percentage it was through the timeline...and then it was always a sketchy plug or a corrupt piece of media.

Work off that, and then take your OSX install disk (disc 2 for Tiger I thik) boot off of it by holding down D and you will go through a hardware test.

thank you all for your replies, i'm still trying to figure out the problem, but narrowed it down to software and not hardware which is a relief. It only happens on one project, other exports are completely unaffected. It's due to a plug-in...

Thanks again, advice is always so very helpful in this forum.