crashing

has anyone had a problem with fcpx crashing and project files going bad? i have a brand new macbook pro and the latest version, but twice i have completed or nearly completed a project, and the program crashes, and the only way i can re-start it is to erase the project files, which final cut says is corrupt.

There could be a lot of reasons FCPX is crashing but more information on your setup is needed to point you in a good direction. What are the specs on your MBP? What OS version? How much RAM? What media drive are you using? If you're using the internal drive that your OS is on, that will be problematic. If your using slow external drives, that will be a problem. You can try trashing your preference files in fcpx and that may help. You may also have too many projects and events open, which will be a burden on fcpx.

Give us some more information when you can.

EDIT: also check this troubleshooting guide from Apple.

www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/768-apple-...-for-final-cut-pro-x

EDIT AGAIN: also check out Ken Stone's troubleshooting guide.
www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/troublesho...fcp_x_03_taylor.html

the computer is brand new, so it has the latest os and software updates (2.4Ghz intel core i5, os version 10.7.3) ...the ram is at 8GB now. i partitioned the main drive to create a separate media drive, but i don't have a external for the mac yet. i haven't loaded it down real hard, just one relatively small multimedia project.

thanks for the reply.

Using your system drive, even with a partition, for media is probably the main source of your problem. Loaded down or not, accessing media from there is not recommended. Depending on your media format, 1080 HD, 480 DV, etc. you will get differing results and HD will for sure induce sluggish performance and potential crashes.

Read through the links I supplied and familiarize yourself with the recommended setups. You will definitely need to get yourself an external fast drive for media, and then we can go from there.

A "media drive" needs to be a physically separate drive on it's own data bus. The reason is that all the audio and video streams from your media will fill up a single hard drive's data bandwidth quickly. We don't want that shared with the data bandwidth the OS and apps need to do their job, also. Too much for one physical drive. Thus, a partition doesn't help. And since partitioned drives are not as efficient, read/write slower, that puts more of a crimp in your system. This is the first thing you have to correct before going any further. UN-Partition that internal drive, get an FW800 drive. Or at least, put your media on the internal drive, but do NOT partition it. How much RAM will that iMac hold total?