FCP X crashing on export: "Cannot lock focus on image … because it is size zero."

Hi all, I've got a situation that's puzzling me. As I've mentioned in previous posts, one of the projects my business offers is production of baseball games designed to emulate live broadcast. I'll link a sample at the end in case it's somehow helpful.

I'm now encountering a problem where FCP keeps crashing while trying to share a master file. Sometimes it simply fails, reporting that it failed on frame xxxxx with error -1, and other times FCP crashes entirely. I've got at least half a dozen crash reports to look at, but the crashed thread has been 10, 11, and 12, and says

"Cannot lock focus on image <NSImage 0x61000d47ab80 Size={0, 0} Reps=(
)>, because it is size zero.
abort() called"

I'm on OS 10.9.4 and FCP 10.1.3—all current updates—on a Mac Pro 3,1 with 2.8 GHz eight-core, 16 GB RAM, and a recently installed flashed Radeon 7950. The project drive is a little low on space, but I'm exporting to a different drive, and neither are the system drive. (All are internal.)

I've tried trashing prefs, deleting event and project render files, and copying all the material in the project into a new project, but the problem keeps reoccurring. At this point, I'm treading into waters that go deeper than I'm used to. If need be, I'll share the crash reports. Thanks for the help.

" Sometimes it simply fails, reporting that it failed on frame xxxxx with error -1"

Is it the same frame number? If so, one thing to try would be...set the counter to frames in general prefs, locate the frame, delete it and either pull up the cut or simply cut it back in, and try again.

Adding to what plysat wrote:

The 'NSImageCacheException', reason: 'Cannot lock focus on image )>, because it is size zero crash thread is not solely related to FCP X, it is OSX related. I have seen this in crash threads form different apps.

Are you using third-party fonts on your system? If so: disable them and see if the problem persists.
Are you using animations created in After Effects in your Project? If so what is the video codec of these animations?

- Ronny

plysat: The frame number was not always the same.

Ronny: I am using third-party fonts, but none that were any different the last time I exported one of these projects. Same with the transition I created: I set up the animation in AE for its 3D capabilities, exported a .mov of that, then threw that into Motion and masked as necessary. But again, all stuff the system has handled before, so I wonder if an update (or even the new graphics card, though that doesn't make sense to me) isn't getting along with everything else. Regardless, I'll disable the third-party fonts not in use and see if that gets me anywhere. Thanks again.

What has changed since the last time you were able to export successfully? Software updates? The video card? Maybe that's the issue?

If you get the error again that mentions a specific frame, go to that frame a look at everything that is in that general vicinity. I helped someone who was having a similar issue and found that at the point where the render would stop with an error, he had added a dissolve to the beginning of a Motion generator. The generator had an incoming transition built into it and apparently did not like the dissolve being added. When the dissolve was removed everything worked as expected. Look for something weird or different like that.

All right, so I disabled the third-party fonts, and had another failure on the exact frame where one of my score bug generators started. I then repaired permissions and restarted, and after the restart it succeeded (at least, it's playing fine so far).

I'm guessing something between an update and these third-party fonts (or the graphics card, though again, that doesn't make sense to me) is now not sitting right whereas there were no conflicts before. Thankfully, I don't think I'm using any of those now-disabled fonts in any graphics templates for other projects, but if so, let's hope they aren't the source of the trouble.

Thanks again everyone for all your help.

Corrupt or conflicting fonts can crash applications at the OS level. Third-party fonts can get corrupted during an OS update. Repairing Permissions on the system drive, uninstalling and reinstalling or simply disabling the problematic fonts can often cure this.

The export error on a specific frame is a specific issue. As other people have mentioned: when you get this error you have to look at the specified frame to see what could be causing the error. One-frame gap clips, CMYK sills, transitions on certain generators... are probable causes for export errors.

There are so many variables in this problem (third-party fonts, updates, a flashed card, frame errors in the Project...) that it is very difficult to pin-point what is exactly causing these issues on a system that ran fine before. Disabling the fonts seems to have cured this temporarily, and hopefully for good. But if the problems come back you will have to investigate further. Keep us updated.

- Ronny

Yeah I'd suspect the card- FCPX is heavily GPU dependent and you're working with a graphics driver that is unsupported/tested. In general, I prefer the stock configurations for GPU with FCPX- the savings you may realize initially can be eaten right up by precisely this sort of trouble.

Trashing render files may help here too.

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