Final Cut Crash after loading project window

Hey guys, I've been working with Final Cut for years and all of a sudden things have gotten messy. I've uninstalled and reinstalled about 3 times now. But it continuously crashes right after the project loading window during startup. The crash report is giving me this. Any help is so much greatly appreciated as I have a project on a deadline! Thanks!!

Process: Final Cut Pro [2650]
Path: /Applications/Final Cut Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/Final Cut Pro
Identifier: com.apple.FinalCut
Version: 10.0.8 (221398)
Build Info: ProEditor-22139008018000000~1
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [246]

Date/Time: 2013-11-28 09:08:54.012 -0700
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Report Version: 6

Interval Since Last Report: 651738 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 11
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 99047 sec
Anonymous UUID: 91AF3D32-2827-496E-B48A-D3D4D95DC39D

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 5 Dispatch queue: com.apple.root.default-priority

Application Specific Information:
abort() called

First trash preferences. You may be lucky and find that's all you need to do.

Nest, move your projects and events to new Hidden Projects and Hidden Event folders so the app won't try to open them at launch. If Final Cut then launches, start moving the projects and events sequentially back to their original location until, by process of elimination, you find the problem file.

Also, you probably should update to 10.0.9.

Good luck,

Russ

Use Digital Rebellion's free "Preference Manager" to trash your Preference files. Also, throw all Render folders into the trash.

Thanks for the replies guys. I did move the Project Folder and it opened back up with no issues. What's weird that all started this is while I was working my screen completely blacked out and the playback started skipping and I was forced to do a hard shut down. When I restarted and opened Final Cut, that's when I got the error report and it would crash. That could be a hardware issue I assume? Anyway with the temporary fix of moving the project folder is there anyway to salvage my work from that project or am I out of luck?

How much space do you have on the drive where this project is stored? And how much space do you have left on your system drive?

- Ronny

The external that I normally use has a good terabyte left if not more. My system has roughly 60GB left. I'm beginning to worry that this may be a videocard issue which scares me because it's built into the logic board. That's going to be a pricey fix...

If you can open other projects on this system it's not really a hardware issue. So first thing you should try is to open another project and see if this works correctly. If it does it's not your system or your graphics card.

The log you have sent shows your system hangs on thread 5 and you get wait_semaphore_traps in the following threads. This is a low-level locking function. A thread that is blocked in wait_semaphore_trap is waiting for something to become available. So what does that tell us?

When you open the problematic project FCPX waits for data for it to launch and when it doesn't get the data it quits after awhile. The reason why the data don't come can either be a wonky drive or corrupt files in the project. This is what you do:

1. If you can open and play other projects from the same drive this means the drive is okay, go to step 2. If you cannot open and play other projects from the same drive you must check the drive. Disk Warrior is a very good utility for checking and repairing wonky drives. If the drive is okay and you still get crashes when you open the problematic project:

2. Go to the problematic FCPX Project folder, open the Render Files folder inside and manually trash the contents of both the Peaks Data and the Thumbnail Media folders. Then make sure FCPX can see the Project again (put the project folder back inside the Final Cut Projects folder) and launch FCPX. If it launches your project is okay, if it doesn't post back here.

- Ronny

I did step 2 and trashed both folders contents and moved them back. Now when I open final cut, it hangs at loading the project.

"My system has roughly 60GB left."

That's not much for any size drive. That could be causing odd behaviors in your system. What is the total capacity of this system drive? I'd clear that puppy off first and foremost before trying anything else. A 1TB drive needs a minimum of 150 GB free space. So only 60 GB on any size drive is asking for trouble.

It's only a 500GB hard drive. But I'm running out of room all around on different externals. I moved the project again and opened Final Cut and started a new project. After about 10 minutes of work. The same thing happened. Screen goes black, audio starts skipping... Did a hard shut down. At restart I get this error dialogue box: Interval Since Last Panic Report: 7342 sec
Panics Since Last Report: 1

You are getting kernel panics, that's not good. Can you confirm the following:

1. Are there any USB2 drives connected to your system? If so, are they connected over a USB2 hub?
2. Where do you keep your FCPX Events and Projects stored?

- Ronny

No USB drives connected and my events and projects are stored under user/myname/movies/

Okay, that's a good thing (no USB2, I mean).

You really, really need to make space on your system drive. As Ben said: 60 GB drive space left is barely enough. Especially if you are keeping your FCPX Events and Projects on this drive, which is never a good idea. I don't think you have lost anything at this point, nor do you have any hardware issues. Your system drive just cannot cope anymore, that's why you get the -wait errors and finally the kernel panics. But if you don't relieve this drive very quickly you may be in for a fatal drive crash. So what can you do?

1. You should move ALL your FCPX Events and Projects to a decent and big enough external drive. You have a 2010 MBP, so this will be a FireWire drive (never use USB2 for editing). As you are not able to launch FCPX anymore without causing kernel panics you will have to manually move both your Final Cut Events and Final Cut Projects folders from the Movies folder on your system drive to the root level of the external drive. When the folders have been moved you can delete the original folders from your system drive. Do not forget to empty the trash after this operation.

2. Now you will have much more space left on your system drive. Before doing anything else, use Disk Utility to check your system drive and perform a Repair Permissions on that drive.

3. When your system drive is checked and permissions are repaired you can launch FCPX and see if your problematic Project opens. I think it will. Then first thing you do is delete all your render files for this project from within FCPX (select the Projects and choose Files > Delete Project Render files). Now you have a clean project you can continue working on it.

4. In the future do NOT create any Events or Projects on your system drive anymore. This is too stressing for your system drive.

Try the above, and if anything unexpected happens in the process post back and we will assist you.

- Ronny

This plus moving the FCP project folder did the trick for me.