'Out of application memory' problem

I've been finishing off a project that's about 25 minutes long and has several titles, dissolves & fades. My GUI suddenly started to get unresponsive and even my cursor wouldn't respond normally. Typical was that the cursor would respond to a move about 5 seconds after I'd moved the mouse. Memory Clean started having to do its thing repeatedly. Then my screen went strange (see screen shot), the error message that my computer was out of application memory appeared and FCPX hung. Only the beach ball was moving.

Had Safari and Mail open as well as iTunes (which I wasn't using). I used force quit to close those 3 apps and was able to reopen Safari so I could log in here and post this question. FCPX is still hung with the spinning beach ball and the distorted timeline display.

Not sure what to do now so I thought I'd ask before shutting down & rebooting. I don't understand the error message as I've been working on this project for a while now (months) and never had this happen before. I really appreciate any help & suggestions.

iMac 3.4 GHz i7 late 2012, 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GTX 680 MX 2048 MB, OSX 10.9.5 (Mavericks), 2.73 TB free (3.11 TB) on Mac HD, 3.6 TB free (of 6 TB) on the external drive

Thanks,

Ed

Replying to subscribe- this happened to me today too on a late-2013 Mac Pro with 16GB running 10.9.5. 15min 720p project with 720p video and 2592x1936 stills with some simple cross dissolves, all compound clipped together before export to YouTube.

I had Safari and a few other apps open. I got it to succeed finally by quitting everything but FCPX (but had to force quit that first because it was beachballed).

FCP X desperately needs a preference where you can set a maximum allocated memory percentage for the application, just like Motion 5 has. Or it should at least allow you to set a maximum number of Undo's, because the unlimited Undo Cache can easily eat up any amount of RAM you have. Titles and oversized stills are also extremely RAM-hungry.

This said, whenever you get a message like this you just shut down your computer and restart it. This will automatically clear your Undo Cache and make unused RAM available.

- Ronny

Vimanaboy - Thanks. That's how I ended up dealing with it too. The unfortunate aspect (other than the nuisance factor) is that it brings me no closer to understanding why this occurred and how I might avoid it in future.

Ronny. Thank you too. I did restart and that cleared it up but very soon the GUI started to slow down again. I have Memory Clean set with the threshold at 5000MB. That keeps me running but not really acceptably as the GUI gets unresponsive but I run it in the hopes that it will prevent a crash and possible loss (w/o backup) of what I'm working on. That has happened before.

I understand and agree with you that a preference setting for memory allocation is definitely needed. I'm not so clear about the Undo Cache. It records every action you take no matter how big or small (in processing power requirements) doesn't it? If that's correct and there' s no way to clear the cache how is it possible for FCPX to keep working for long periods without this error and mandatory restart?

If you duplicate your project and then switch over and continue to edit in that copy would that give you a clean undo cache and be a workaround to have the effect of purging the cache? Probably I'm grasping at straws...

I would really appreciate you, or anyone else, helping me understand why I don't consistently get this error. Any workaround ideas would help too.

Ed

I've had similar problems, but just when I queue up a bunch of exports. I had seven five-minute rough cuts exporting to my Google Drive folder. I had all my other applications closed, even stuff in the tool bar that I wasn't using.

Make sure all drivers/plug-ins are updated and double check that any fonts you are using aren't corrupt. I had this happen to me last week and discovered it was because I was using LUT utility and had an older version that had a bad memory leak (since been fixed). I was going mad trying to figure it out, but updating the utility solved all the problems for me.

Is there any chance you have added pictures or graphics in CMYK format? I believe that has sometimes caused this error. I would also use Font Book to verify all fonts.

I had this exact issue on a brand new rMBP and was totally pulling my hair out. I went into Home>Movies>Motion Templates and temporarily moved everything out of that folder and it solved the problem. So that means it was one of my extensions. Then I started the annoying task of putting them back in a few at a time until the problem resurfaced.

When doing this, I also had Activity Monitor open and watched the memory readouts. I usually didn't even have to wait for the entire system to freeze before I could tell it was going to. Every time it would go fine to a certain percentage complete and then immediately start grabbing more and more memory.

For me, the offending plugin ended up being mVintage. Which is strange because I have it installed on another machine as well and it exports the same Project with no problems. I uninstalled the plugin, reinstalled, repaired permissions in-between, reset PRAM, sacrificed a goat, nothing seems to fix it.

I also followed up with MotionVFX support but they weren't able to figure it out either. I'm hesitant to throw it completely under the bus because as I said it works flawlessly on my other system, but at least on this computer it's definitely mVintage causing the problem. Perhaps it's relying on a system resource somewhere and that's what's corrupted? I just don't know.

I'm actually about to take the plunge to Yosemite (like within the hour) and I'm going to take the opportunity to zero out my drive while doing so, here's to hoping that solves the issue.

In any case, I'd try the diagnostic steps I mentioned above. It's slow and annoying but may help narrow down the issue if it's plugin related.

did you guys ever solve this problem? I've got it. I'm trying to export a 55 min timeline and it always goes to 'out of application memory' at about 51%. I reinstalled FCPX, made no difference. Reinstalled OS X - made no difference. Clean installed everything with bare minimum apps - still no difference.

I am very frustrated and clients are waiting....

any luck with the source of this?

Before I did the clean format there was a kernel file that grew and grew until I got the error. But now after the clean install I get the Compressed memory of FCPX that reaches 60GB until it finally conks out as well to the error message.

Hey Bill,

This is an old thread, a lot has changed since then.

Are you running the latest updates of FCP X and Yosemite?
Did you update all your FCP X plugins to the latest versions?
Are you using any oversized stills on your timeline?

- Ronny

Since updating to 10.2 and 10.10.3 I've had no further issues. Never did figure out why it happened though.

Ronny,

Yosemite and everything is completely updated.
No oversized stills.
...and I'm on a very lean and freshly formatted system.
Installed Coremelt and one other plugin.

Solution, uninstalled Coremelt and everything works beautifully.

(This all just happened - interim message typing) xaxaxaxaxa :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

Happy to hear you have figured this out. Roger has updated the Coremelt plugins specifically for 10.2. Install the latest versions and I'm pretty sure all your issues will be solved.

- Ronny

I agree, Roger, is amazing and on top of his game. I love Coremelt.

But as I said in my previous post "everything is completely updated"

Thanks for the feedback.

Ill give you some positive Karma

Ah, I see. I would be interested to get to the bottom of this. When your project is exported, could you delete your FCP X preferences and then install Coremelt again to see if you still have any memory issues? That would be very helpful.

- Ronny

Ronny, my man!

I installed core melt on a freshly fully formatted hard drive, freshly downloaded and updated Yosemite and FCPX, I didn't touch the preferences, all I did was immediately share.

So your experiment has already been performed.

My bad, I forgot you started with a formatted drive. Which products from Coremelt did you install?

- Ronny

SliceXTrackX and LockandLoad



Also, I've been speaking to them and they say they are working on it.

Thanks a bunch, Bill. Very useful!

- Ronny

Running Catalina 10.15.7 and FCPX 10.5.2. Been using FCP for years. Last week did a project, no problem. Today, in a brand new library, I imported first from camera and since the problem  started happening then I saw a comment it's better to copy off the camera card to disk, and then import. I've done both types in past, no issue.  Today, either way, I get the out of application memory problem. It is a ~3.8GB MP4 off of my Sony A7iii. 10 wish minutes long, not huge. No titles. No still images, just a brand new library and a fresh file import. Watching Activity Monitor put insane memory pressure, and even after the file is imported, FCP is chugging (I can hear the harddrives) while the application memory continues to float higher and higher. So, I have to force quit FCP and it says something like "cancelling background tasks", but when whatever they are, they're not displaying in the background processor... all I see is a nice checkmark in the circle. Not sure what you call that icon. What else can I try??

Thanks so much!!!!