large compound clip crashes project at every start - HELP NEEDED!

hey guys,

i ran across this forum during the search for my problem:

i've been working on a 90min project on my mountain lion mbp late 2011 (fcpx 10.0.5) but since a few days ago, it crashes as soon as a try to open the project.

reading from some posts here, one of my last actions before the first crash (making the "main" video a compound clip for clarity reasons) might be the cause of the constant crash at startup.

i really need to finish this project asap (2 months of work). fcpx starts and works perfect when i remove the crashing project to a new folder, but of course it's missing then in the programm.

i tried double-clicking the backup-file but that crashes fcpx, too.

any help & ideas would be greatly appreciated.

thx in advance.

That is very unfortunate, I have been editing all kinds of things, features, shorts, docs, commercials fro the past year and never ran into a corrupted project. My suggestion is to run the Project repair in the Pro Maintenance Tools from digital rebellion. Did you try duplicating the project? The other possibility is to contact apple support on your problem, they might be able to dig into the code of the project file and fix it too.

thx for your input,

i'll try the project repair tool ...

what do you exactly mean by duplicating the project? copying it within the finder? since i can't open the project at all, i can't choose duplicate project from the fcpx menue ...

i also posted this on the apple support communities, hope they can help there.

further ideas anyone?

IF the project crashes the project library window, then you can't duplicate, damn.

extactly ...

right now giving project repair from digitalrebellion a try as i type ... i'm pretty nervous as it's been running for a few minutes now ...

after using project repair i still get the beach ball upon start-up ...

Never double click a project to launch the application. Try replacing currentversion.fcpproject with the backup. The application will try to open the top project in the currentversion location.

thx for your insight tom!

tried it your way, still i get the beachball of death upon start-up ...

What exactly do you see when it's beachballing? If you have a 90 minute project in one compound clip you will probably have to wait long, long time for it open.

Have you tried Digital Rebellion's Pro Maintenance tools. You should also look at getting DR's Pro Versioner to create an autosave vault.

this is a screenshot from the scenerio ... i already thought about the compound clip lenght needing more time to open, but getting the "no reaction" in the task manager is not a good sign, is it?!?

i already tried project repair from the pro maintenace tools, will also give corrupt file finder and crash analyzer a try ...

for the future, the pro versioner will be a must-have, so much for sure ... but that won't help me right now ...

hmmm ... the screenshot won't upload as an attachement ... here's a link:
www.file-upload.net/download-6653739/1.tiff.html

You won't see anything in the Task Manager while the project is loading. That's not a render task.

Leave it sit for a long time with no other ops on the computer.

just to make sure ... i meant the osx task manager ... as you can see in the screenshot, it shows "does not react" behind final cut pro x just a few seconds in the opening process ...

is there nevertheless a chance of the project fully loading?
if so, i'll let it ran overnight 2nite.

Can't seem to download your screen shot, anyway, if you bring up the activity monitor, if FCP X is is using more than 1% of your CPU it is still loading the project. I sometimes switch from optimized to proxy quite a bit with large projects and it can take 10minute + to switch over. So you are getting the beach ball not the crash window?

yes, i get the beach ball, not the crash window ... the activity monitor says fcpx not reacting but using 200% of the cpu ...

so there's hope, right?

Do you have any third party effects/plugins installed and being used in your project? I have come across this problem before. Same problem as you. As it turns out FxFactory was causing the problem, and I uninstalled it and my project opened up again. So one of my suggestions would be to check any conflicts with third party effects, especially any used in your current project.

There's definite hope if FCP X is 200% of your CPU. let it run for a while, possible a day.

C

okay ... so may it be ... *fingerscrossed*

p.s.: @ driventv thx for your input, but i have no 3rd party plugins installed / used

Sorry to hear this; I hope it works out for you. Keep us posted on any developments.

I'm going to be working on a feature length movie next year and was hoping to use FCPX to do it. It would be good if we could get guidelines for the best workflow for large projects (in fact I'm going to start a thread on this).

okay ... so here's an update ...

thx to the advice i got over here i let my mbp fight with the beachball for almost 13h (!!!) ... et voila ... the project was open ....


BUT (and that's a j-lo type butt) ... my 1st action was trying to convert the 90 min compound clip that seemed to cause the problem back to it's original files. it is not yet finished, so i could not just export the project (which of course would have been the "safe way").

now guess what ... simply by trying to select (= highlight) the big compound clip to achieve this, i GET THE BEACHBALL AGAIN !!! ...

the activity monitor says my cpu is runnin' at 100% on fcpx and the memory at 3,43 gb ...
task manager says "fcpx doesn't react" and the beachball keeps rollin' and rollin' (4 about 20 min now) ...

do you guys think it'll recover if i keep runnin' it like that overnight again or is there another way of converting the compound clip without selecting it?

thx in adavance for your input ...