FCP Freezes; but continues to work in background. Please help; I'm tearing my hair out.

Please help me troubleshoot my error. It is driving me up the wall.

FCPX is freezing on me. I'm running the latest version. I am running the 10.12.4 public beta but I only upgraded to that in the hope that it might fix my issue.

• Final Cut Pro periodically freezes on me.
• However it still functions in the background. I.e if I was playing a sequence at the time of it freezing, it continues to play and I cannot stop it.
• I am using the trackpad, not a mouse.
• After moving to a touchbar Mac I noticed that the touchbar has an effect on final cut pro. I.e it's just the trackpad and keyboard that don't work on it.
• Finder sees it as an app in the app switcher but doesn't switch to it when I select it in the app switcher.
• The only way to get it to work is to force quit it.

Things I've tried;


• New user account
*uninstalling launch daemons
* quitting other apps
* taken out all external plugins
• deleting prefs
• reinstalling FCP


Please help. I have spindumps from several times it's happened; I am at my wit's end. Literally about to move to premiere once this project is over if I can't resolve it.

I've had that happen maybe 3 or 4 times throughout the years. Everything freezes but you can still hear the audio playing, nothing you can do to stop it. It's pretty rare, though. However I vaguely recall one of those times I just let it play the entire sequence and it once it got to a certain point the entire OS crashed and I had to hard-reboot. I don't have a trackpad or a touch bar. I have a normal Apple keyboard and a Logitech mouse.

william.caversham wrote: ...FCPX is freezing on me. I'm running the latest version....The only way to get it to work is to force quit it....

Your best bet is evaluate the problem history and try to narrow down the circumstances causing it. E.g, did it happen suddenly when going to a certain version, or after importing a lot of data, or installing a new plugin?

Is it reproducible in any way or totally random? Is it more often when doing certain editing steps? Have you imported any bare AVCHD .MTS files? Those can cause various problems.

Does it happen only in one library or can you make it happen in a test library?

In general problems like these are rare but they can happen with any software. I have had similar things happen on both Premiere and FCPX. It is most often caused by some corrupt data or malfunctioning hardware or disk drives.

I'd also suggest you run Disk Utility First Aid on all drives, also Apple Hardware Diagnostics: support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

If your media is on an external drive try to reproduce it using a different drive or the internal boot drive using a reduced data set.

… meant as an addendum:
the User Diagnostics and Crash Reports in the Console (Apps/Utilities) can be helpful - IF you can read it :blink:

In some cases, the 'Crashed Thread' gives info to narrow down bad guys (hombres?) , such as exotic plugins & extensions...

Karsten Schlüter wrote: In some cases, the 'Crashed Thread' gives info to narrow down bad guys (hombres?) , such as exotic plugins & extensions...

Note in this case it's not a crash but an indefinite application hang, thus a crash log may not be generated. The OP has invoked the spindump diagnostic utility which takes a snapshot of each thread state. It is probably pretty big so I'd suggest not posting it in line on the forum but maybe as an attachment or give a URL to a Google Drive location.

Without access to source code or without having debugging symbols on the target machine it is often not very productive to try and analyze crash logs or spin dumps. Usually the best approach is iteratively narrowing down the problem with a goal of a portable replication scenario. That will often reveal a workaround plus provide a concise scenario which can be forwarded to Apple.

Here is Apple's information on crash logs (not spin dumps): developer.apple.com/library/content/tech...s/tn2004/tn2123.html

Manual page on the spindump utility: developer.apple.com/legacy/library/docum...man8/spindump.8.html

Hi there,

I've tried it on two computers, multiple projects and new installs of the OS and app. It's definitely not the drive, app, installs.

I believe it *must* be a conflict between FCP and an app that's running in the background. I am gradually working my way through them trying to rule them out but it's hard since I have a bunch I run on a regular basis.

thank you. I've narrowed it down a bit; I believe it may be to do with better touch tool. But I'm still not sure.

thank you `

I'd never run a beta, even a public beta of an OS for paying work.
I'd uninstall Better Touch Tool (and all third party utilities) ASAP. Then if it runs better, re-install them one at a time, until you find the offending app.

FCPX.guru wrote: … I'd uninstall Better Touch Tool (and all third party utilities) ASAP. ….

For a quick test, launching the Mac in Safe-Mode is an option (instead of deinstalling all stuff).
Switch off Mac.
Switch on.
Wait for the Chime.
THEN click & hold the shift key.