FCPX 10.4.8 hangs when Modifying Library Storage Locations

Hello everyone,

I've been having this new issue recently where FCPX crashes when I create a new library and modify the storage locations, for example:


When I try to create a new Backup folder and click ok then FPC hangs (but doesn't show as not responding in the force quit dialogue.

I have plenty of space on my SSD and every single time when I force quite FCPX and redo the same operation it works with no issues.

Has anybody experienced this behaviour? Is this a known bug? I realized it happened after the latest MacOS updates for Catalina.

Many thanks!

Domscillator wrote: I've been having this new issue recently where FCPX crashes when I create a new library and modify the storage locations...it happened after the latest MacOS updates for Catalina...

Yes I have seen this. It is unique to Catalina and is apparently permissions-related. If you first create the folder in Finder, then do CMD+I and change permissions to read/write for "Everyone", then click the gear icon and pick "apply to enclosed items", then assign that location in FCPX, the problem does not happen.

Thank you so much for confirming.

Yes, it seems many weird bugs have arisen with Catalina. Most common one is that when you download files from your browser or when you do screenshots the file doesn't appear on the finder. it's well documented on the Apple forums but even with the latest update it seems it's still there.
It's quite worrying to get issues like this in the file management level of the OS.

Domscillator wrote: ...It's quite worrying to get issues like this in the file management level of the OS.

Maybe not a Catalina file management issue per se but an FCPX bug which is triggered by Catalina.

In Finder or other apps, Catalina will often cause a pop-up about "enable permission to access folder?" Within FCPX something like this may be happening at the API level. FCPX is not properly checking for the return code from the file system API call, and instead of indicating that to the user, the entire process hangs. There may be an FCPX code path which is not properly protected by try/catch exception handling and is causing a thread to hang on some synchronization object. It will almost certainly be fixed in the next FCPX update.

Obviously FCPX 10.4.8 was released long before Catalina and could not have been tested on that. However lots of other older apps handle this OK.

It is frustrating if you use FCPX modify storage locations frequently but at least there's an easy workaround.

I don’t think the pro apps team have an excuse on this one 4.7 was released Oct 7, the same day as the Catalina release, which had been in beta since June. 4.8 was released Dec. 11.

You are correct, the problem is not unique to 10.4.7 or 10.4.8 but also happens on 10.4.6 on Catalina (at least current versions). It's apparently an FCPX bug which has long been here but is triggered by Catalina. It doesn't seem intermittent but happens 100% of the time on the systems I've tested, and is not unique to HFS+ or APFS.

It is in a very common UI action, so testing should always catch things like this. In a previous job, my development manager would have had our hide if we let something like this through. Maybe there is some explanation like a frequently-used plugin, but I don't think so. I don't see anything like that in a spindump of the hung process.