Some strange bugs suddenly appearing.

Some new oddities showed up in the past couple of days . First, the audio on a particular clip stopped working although the waveforms were visible. The clip with audio had been playing normally but then suddenly it went wonky. Had to restart FCPX to sort that one.

Second, while selecting a colour for some text I made the selection but then my cursor disappeared. I've had this happen once before and was able to get it back by using the keyboard to get out of FCPX to another program (seems any will do). Then my cursor reappeared and I could go back to FCPX and continue.

I've also had the odd time when I can't get out of skimming in the event browser on a second monitor. That one seems to respond to reverting to the original layout and then moving the events to the second monitor.

Also yesterday I hit CMD F accidentally and that brought up the Roles menu. The menu was blank and the search field was blinking as if it was expecting input. The only way I could clear that and close the menu was by terminating FCPX and restarting. I tried this just now by clicking on the icon (lower left) and the same thing happens: no clips or roles show up and the search field is empty & won't respond and I can't close it.

I did do the usual trash preferences and reboot routines but this stuff showed up after doing that for another problem. What I find odd is that 10.1.1 has been relatively stable until the past few days. Are any of you having these or other unpredictable oddities show up too? Any idea why?

So far most of mine have not been repeatable.

Hey Ed,

It is a public secret that 10.1 and later have some intermittent UI issues. I have a hunch many of these will be dealt with in the coming update.

- Ronny

Hi Ronny,

I hope your hunch is right.

Some of these UI issues are a nuisance I can work around for now. Not so easy to work with is that FCPX didn't save some work I did yesterday. Fortunately I only did a little and could reproduce it but it does make me wonder if this is another glitch that's growing. The part of this that doesn't make sense is what's changed?

I' ve only downloaded some OSX updates during the time this has been happening: iTunes, Safari and Camera Raw. I've been assuming none of these is behind all this - possibly a wrong assumption.

Today I'll explore setting up a new user and possibly doing a complete reinstall of FCPX. As I recall there's an app called something like FCPX Uninstaller - do you know it and anyone who's used it successfully? The last thing I want to do is create more issues. Periodically this is coming close to trying my sweet disposition. :ohmy:

"FCS Remover" is what it is called, free from Digital Rebellion (dot com). It is very safe to use. I've used it lots.

Thanks Ben.

My new user experiment seems to get around some of the issues I've been having - haven't had time to test them all. And I still don't understand the source of the problems. I'll have a look at FCS Remover.

Ed

After all the threads regarding these UI issues I think it is safe to say that in most cases FCP X UI problems are caused by conflicting or locked preferences in the existing user account. Some people have been able to solve these problems by simply cleaning their user account using Onyx, a free cleaning utility for Mavericks: www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php

In other cases doing a fresh install of the boot drive or creating a new admin user account has been the solution. Performing a fresh install or creating a new user account does take some time, but you win it back the moment you start editing again because FCP X also runs much snappier on a fresh install. Once you have established a good-working setup you can clone your boot drive and do a fresh re-install from the clone anytime you wish without having to re-enter all your settings.

- Ronny

Thanks Ronny,

I'm downloading Onyx and keeping my fingers crossed. Creating a new Admin account is something I've been hoping to avoid just because of the time it takes to recreate all the little changes I've accumulated over time. (As a kid I was taught this approach is also known as lazy :silly: )

I really appreciate all the helpful suggestion you take the time to offer on FCP.co.

Hey Ed,

I know re-entering all your user preferences is a drag, so if you can avoid this with Onyx that would be a good thing. I hope it will work for you.

- Ronny

Here's an update on my progress (or lack of it).

Following the suggestions from Ronny & Ben I Used FCS Remover and tried 3 fresh installs of FCPX. With Onyx I cleaned up everything I could. I also created a couple of new users. That included resetting all my preferences which was a bit of a pain. I also created some new projects with fresh clips I had just shot and downloaded. None of these steps fixed my problems and in fact at least one new one has shown up.

My timeline index still won't work. If I click on it the display comes up but it doesn't list any clips, roles or effects. To close that display I still have to restart FCPX.

A new bug (for want of a better description) is now when I select a clip in any project and open the inspector the app always defaults to the Info window with Extended view. I have to select video for every clip to get at the usual editing options. The only time this doesn't happen is if I'm in the Colour Board when I select a different clip - then it stays put in the Colour Board. This all remains very puzzling.

Does FCPX have some caches or does it create other folders where these corrupted settings might be? If so, is there a safe way to find and delete them to reset everything?

I really appreciate any help or suggestions you might have to offer. I'm stumped and hope I don't have to wait for the next version to be released before I can have everything restored to how it used to be.

Thanks.

The bottom line is that FCPX has some bad and sloppy code here and there that they didn't test thoroughly before releasing it. Let's hope they clean it up in the next update.

In my experience I think you can say that about every single piece of advanced software in existence.

Tom Wolsky wrote: In my experience I think you can say that about every single piece of advanced software in existence.

Absolutely true!

The problem with beta testing is you can't test on every possible combination of hardware and software that will effect the app. Physically impossible. And since this is a bug not everyone gets, there is some unique combination of things that didn't come up in beta. Thus, now reported (and I hope you did), the dev team will fix it in the next release.

Check the forums for other NLEs to see what their bugs and issues are and you find that FCPX isn't doing too badly.

Ed,

Reading back your initial post I have noticed that you are working with dual monitors.

So just an test: disconnect your second monitor and see if you still have these UI issues when you only work with one monitor.

- Ronny

Hi Ronny,

Thanks for the idea. I tried restarting without the 2nd monitor and a fresh install of FCPX and the exact same problems are still there.

Is there any chance all this might be caused by Mavericks (10.9.3)? If so, is there a way I could do a remove & replace without getting deeper in trouble? I'm not a very advanced user.

Ben,

I did report it. Hopefully someone at Apple will read it and do something about it though I don't know how we'd ever know.

Trust me, Apple does in fact read and track those feedback forms.

When I do a clean install of the app my plugins (like SliceX, TrackX, TKY 4-way, Alex 4D USM etc) reappear automatically. Presumably that means those files aren't removed when I use FCS Remover. I was thinking of removing them from FCPXs sight by renaming and then reinstalling them one at a time to see if any of them caused the problems I'm having.

Q 1: Is there any reason why that wouldn't work?
Q 2: Are there any other files I should also try that with?

I was working on my MBP yesterday that doesn't have those files and FCPX works fine there. It really is a much nicer app without all the weird bugs!

Update: removed FCPX and Motion, followed the instruction posted by Tim Moyle to delete com.apple.FinalCut[host ID string].plist from ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost folder and restarting and emptying the trash. Installed 10.1.2 and still had all the bugs.

So then I reinstalled OSX and then FCPX and Motion and all my weird bugs have finally gone. The app is working again (properly) and my functions are back. To me this suggests OSX was part of if not the entire problem.

Just one more story about my really weird problems. In Inspector, after I switched from the ever-present Info/Extended View my Transform, Crop and Distort menus were all closed and only offered the Hide option. None would open. Then I stumbled on a work around: if I wanted Transform for example, if I selected either Crop or Distort and deleted it the other 2 menus would open. I've never before encountered deleting one function to make another work.

Now all seems well and working properly. Thanks to those of you who tried to help.

Hey Ed,

Good to hear you got everything sorted out. A lean and clean system is always a great thing to start with.

Happy editing.

- Ronny