AE 13.8 Crashes OS X 10.11.6

[popevideo]

Hi,

Since updating to OS X 10.11.6 After Effects crashes and forces my computer to restart every time I launch the app.  I've reinstalled the app, updated graphics driver but still same results. Is anyone else experiencing this problem.

Thanks!

Adam

System info:

Mac Pro 5,1

OS X 10.11.6

Nvidia driver: 346.03.15f01

After Effects 13.8

[alandini]

No problem!

Here's what I'd do to troubleshoot.  It might be worth a shot to prevent rolling back your OS.

1) Reset NVRAM

How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

2) Reset SMC

Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

3) Uninstall CUDA

easy way via terminal:

sudo rm /Library/Frameworks/CUDA.framework /Library/LaunchAgents/com.nvidia.CUDASoftwareUpdate.plist /Library/PreferencePanes/CUDA Preferences.prefPane /usr/local/cuda/lib/libcuda.dylib

sudo rmdir /System/Library/Extensions/CUDA /System/Library/StartupItems/CUDA

4) Uninstall Nvidia Drivers

System Preferences > NVIDIA Driver Manager > Updates > Open Uninstaller

5) Reset NVRAM

6) Reset SMC

7) Install Latest Nvidia Driver

NVIDIA DRIVERS Quadro & GeForce Mac OS X Driver Release 346.03.15

8) Install Latest CUDA Driver

CUDA Drivers for MAC Archive | NVIDIA

9) Reset NVRAM

10) Reset SMC

If your Mac Pro is 5 or so years old, I'd also swap the motherboard battery.  It likely won't be what solves the problem, but it's good maintenance so you're not resetting the motherboard every time you power off.  There are fake batteries on Amazon/Ebay so here's where I got mine...they're listed by Panasonic as an authorized retailer:  BR2032 - PANASONIC BATTERIES - Battery, Lithium Polymer, 190 mAh, 3 V, 2032, 20 mm | Newark element1...

Battery Replacement Instructions

https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA175/en_US/MacPro_Battery_DIY.pdf

You can also try Apple Hardware Test in case it's being cased by another issue.  You might have trouble booting into this using the Nvidia GPU however.

Using Apple Hardware Test - Apple Support

Best of luck!  Rolling back the OS would definitely solve it, but I'd assume with a K5000 you'd be able to get things running just fine on the latest updates.

[Edward Fiebke]

Gonna bookmark this and attempt to follow these directions this weekend (when I'm off from work).

On a positive note, I recently changed the battery this past early winter when I did my yearly "Clean Up the Mac Pro" thing, and remove all of the dust from . . . EVERYTHING inside. LOL!

Thank you for your time and thoughtful input.

[Edward Fiebke]

alandini -

I reset the NVRAM (which I've done before in the past). It seems that the NVIDA K5000 video card and its web driver are functioning as intended. Resetting the NVRAM work.

Thank you!

(I am going to be much more cautious before upgrading the operating system. I usually am cautious except for this past time. UGH!)

[alandini]

Right on!

If the NVRAM seems to be easily corrupted, you can use terminal and type:

nvram -c

Then reboot...it's the same as command-option-p-r.  Easy to do when installing/updating any GPU related software.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Thanks to everyone who sent me system information. I'd like to give an update on this problem and what we're doing to address it.

This problem occurs when After Effects CC 2015.3 (or Premiere Pro or AME) attempt to initialize Metal, Apple's GPU technology. (CC 2015.3 includes our first, initial support for GPU acceleration using Metal. Premiere Pro can utilize Metal for the Mercury Playback Engine, while After Effects uses it only for the new GPU-accelerated effects.)

On macOS 10.11.5, Metal is not enabled for Nvidia cards, as there was an issue that caused a GPU kernel panic, requiring a reboot. Only 10.11.5 and earlier were excluded, as that issue was fixed by Apple in the 10.11.6 update. Thus, on 10.11.6, Metal is automatically available for Nvidia cards. We have successfully tested such hardware.

This new problem with 10.11.6 is a different bug with the same result, a GPU kernel panic. It appears to be limited to certain combinations of Nvidia GPU's and Mac hardware. (We have seen the problem on a range of GPU's, but all cases we have seen so far are on Mac Pro 5,1 towers. We also have 5,1's with Nvidia GPU's that do not experience the problem.)

We have been able to reproduce the problem internally. I'd like to again thank those of you who contacted me with their system information, and particularly a local user with the right combination of hardware who let us examine his machine.

We are planning to release an update soon that will, once again, disable Metal for all Nvidia GPU's on all Mac hardware. You will still be able to use GPU acceleration in Premiere Pro and After Effects, utilizing CUDA (Premiere Pro only) or OpenCL, as is currently available on 10.11.5. We are working with Nvidia to resolve the problem for a future release.

Until the update that disables Metal for Nvidia GPU's is available, there are a couple of different ways that you can work around this.

If you have installed the Nvidia drivers for macOS, first see if changing the driver setting to the OS X Default Driver (via the Nvidia application in the macOS menu bar) avoids the problem. We have seen this work in at least one case. If you do not need the Nvidia driver installed at all, try uninstalling it.

The other workaround is to remove the Metal folder from the After Effects or Premiere Pro or AME application package, as described earlier in this thread.

Our apologies about the bug.

[GarrettAEvans]

Tempted to update on a 2013 MacPro with AMD FirePro D700, using MercGPUOpenGL.

From what I read, shouldn't be a problem, but what are your thoughts?

[Vinay Dwivedi]

Hi Garrett,

Yes, it is not a problem on AMD GPU's and nothing has been reported yet.

The problem is mainly noticed on 2010 MAC and below with NVidia GPU's.

//Vinay

[PowerMike G5]

Hi Vinay-

I just want to mention that I am experiencing this issue on both my macs with Nvidia GPUs:

• 2010 Mac Pro with Nvidia GTX 980 (PC GPU)
• 2014 Macbook Pro Retina with Nvidia GT 750

[PowerMike G5]

Thank goodness I found this thread!  I never had any issues with the web driver using a GTX 980 in my 2010 Mac Pro.

I've updated to 10.11.6 and the latest driver and I am having the exact same computer freezing/shutdown issues upon launching Premiere Pro (or any CC app for at this point).

Tim - Let me know if there is anything I can forward from my system to help you alleviate this issue (although it sounds like you are working on a solution for this now).

[bsbeamer]

Tim Kurkoski wrote:

This new problem with 10.11.6 is a different bug with the same result, a GPU kernel panic. It appears to be limited to certain combinations of Nvidia GPU's and Mac hardware. (We have seen the problem on a range of GPU's, but all cases we have seen so far are on Mac Pro 5,1 towers. We also have 5,1's with Nvidia GPU's that do not experience the problem.)

If you have installed the Nvidia drivers for macOS, first see if changing the driver setting to the OS X Default Driver (via the Nvidia application in the macOS menu bar) avoids the problem. We have seen this work in at least one case. If you do not need the Nvidia driver installed at all, try uninstalling it.

The other workaround is to remove the Metal folder from the After Effects or Premiere Pro or AME application package, as described earlier in this thread.

The OSX Default Driver is the current "fix" that worked on my MacPro5,1 with GTX 680 (official version).  Noticing several other GPU-related issues with the OSX driver that were not present with the NVIDIA driver.  Really want/need to switch to the NVIDIA driver ASAP to get rid of those issues.

When will a true "fix" be released?

[Archie_01]

I'd like to preface this by saying the following contains excerpts of a conversation over email between myself (Ben Ellis, email@benellis.com) and Al Mooney, an awesome guy, and Senior Product Manger, Professional Video Editing, Adobe Systems:

I have a GTX-680 (Mac Edition) on a 5,1 8 Core Mac Pro and experienced crashes on launch of Premiere, AFX and AME 2015.3 when I upgraded from 10.11.5 to 10.11.6. I ended up rolling back to 10.11.5.

So I'd really like some insight into this one:

AL MOONEY, Senior Product Manager, Professional Video Editing

Adobe Systems, told me to do the following:

"The way to fix this is to uninstall the NVIDIA web driver and install the NVIDIA CUDA driver."

He also said:

"Metal will give you no performance improvements over CUDA on NVIDIA hardware, which is fully supported. In fact CUDA is better and faster. So I’m not sure why you’re keen to use Metal considering it’s just another alternative GPU language?" (this was in response to when I thought CUDA and METAL somehow "worked together" -- He said nothing of deleting or disabling METAL folders.

I did what he said, I re-upgraded to 10.11.6. I uninstalled the Nvidia Web Driver, leaving the latest install of CUDA alone. -- Things seem to work now.

My question, What the hell does the Nvidia Web Driver Do if I don't need it to run CUDA on my card? -- Since I bought the card I've always thought I needed to keep current on both the Nvidia Web Driver AND CUDA. Adobe's senior product manager of Professsional of Professional Video Editing tells me to UNINSTALL the Driver.

-- I'm very confused. I would very much like to upgrade to a beefier, "FLASHED" card. Someone PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME.

[Guest]

The Web Driver is really only applicable for non-mac approved cards. The 680 is a mac approved card which means you can run cuda and there is no need for the web driver. If you upgrade to a beefier card like 780, 980, etc. you will need the web driver to have boot screens and to run cuda. Thankfully the bug in this thread seems to be fixed in the new CC update, so you should be able to run the web driver and cuda with non-approved cards. I haven't had any issues since the update with a 780ti.

[Tim Kurkoski]

The After Effects team has a fix for this problem that we are currently testing.

Because this problem requires a specific hardware configuration (Mac computers with Nvidia GPU's), we want to test the solution with a wider variety of computers. That is to say, we want your help to test the fix.

I will be inviting anyone who has posted on this forum thread to a private prerelease program. Expect an email later today, please check your spam filter if you do not receive it. You are not required to participate in the program. If you do choose to participate, you will be required to agree to a non-disclosure agreement to join the prerelease program. All information in this prerelease program is considered confidential. Do not distribute or discuss the content of this prerelease program with anyone outside the prerelease program.

For those who have not yet posted in this thread but are experiencing the problem and want to help test the fix, please post on this thread or send me a private message, and I will invite you to the prerelease program, too.

[r_m_hall]

As an FYI - I also experience the kernel panic with all 3 apps (Premiere, AE and Media Encoder), on the following configuration:

Mac OS 10.11.6

Mac Pro 3,1 (Early 2008 dual quad core 3.2ghz Xeons)

Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 (2GB) with latest Nvidia 346.03.15f01 driver for 10.11.6 and CUDA 7.5.30

Can confirm that removing the metal folders allowed the apps to load without causing the kernel panic.

[Guest]

Same problem with AE and AME.

Mac Pro 5,1

OSX 10.11.6

CC 2015.5

Nvidia 780ti with Nvidia Web Drivers 346.03.15f01

[alandini]

You can remove the "Metal" folder from AE and AME as well.  Same process as Premiere but with those app contents instead.

[jtreist]

I also experience the kernel panic with all 3 apps (latest CC versions of Premiere, AE and Media Encoder), on the following configuration:

Mac OS 10.11.6

Mac Pro 3,1 (Early 2008 8-core 2.8ghz Xeons)

Flashed Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 (4GB) with latest Nvidia 346.03.15f01 driver for 10.11.6 and CUDA 7.5.30

also experienced the issue with flashed Nvidia GeForce GTX 980ti (6GB).

[alandini]

New version of the Nvidia driver released today.

NVIDIA DRIVERS Quadro & GeForce Mac OS X Driver Release 346.03.15

[Archie_01]

So... what's the word on the street with this driver? I know Adobe's working on their side with updates as well.

[bsbeamer]

Archie_01 wrote:

So... what's the word on the street with this driver? I know Adobe's working on their side with updates as well.

Working fine for me so far.  However, I went through the removing/disabling METAL folders fixes via Show Package Contents in the .app files after experiencing glitches with the OSX Default Driver in OSX 10.11.6. 

[Guest]

I used alandini's removal tip -(Thank You!!!)

Delete the folder:

/Applications/Adobe\ After\ Effects\ CC\ 2015.3/Adobe\ After\ Effects\ CC\ 2015.app/Contents/PTX/Metal

And everything will work again.  The "Metal" libraries are forcing GPUSniffer.app to panic.  You don't need them.

After doing that and installing the new web drivers NVIDIA DRIVERS Quadro & GeForce Mac OS X Driver Release 346.03.15 there have been no panics and everything seems to be working fine. Currently using AE and AME for as project, so I'l check back in if anything comes up.

Mac Pro 5,1 2.93ghz 12-core

Nvidia 780ti + Nvidia GT120

OS X 10.11.6

CC 2015.3

[Tim Kurkoski · Accepted solution]

This issue is fixed in the After Effects CC 2015.3 (13.8.1) bug-fix update. This update, available now, can be installed using the Creative Cloud desktop application, or by choosing Help > Updates inside any Adobe application.

[Archie_01]

So, with these updates, should I install the latest Nvidia Web Driver - or not. That was the basis of my post.

Thank you.

[Tim Kurkoski]

So, with these updates, should I install the latest Nvidia Web Driver - or not. That was the basis of my post.

For After Effects, you do not need to install the Nvidia web driver. If you have other applications that need it, you can now safely install it.

The After Effects CC 2015.3 (13.8.1) update fixes a problem where the Nvidia web drivers caused a kernel panic when After Effects initialized support for Apple's Metal technology, on certain combinations of Mac computers and Nvidia GPU's.

[Archie_01]

I realize that this thread originated as an After Effects centric post, however It's now kinda mutated into a Premiere / After FX / Media Encoder hub for those looking for answers - this particular thread is referenced on other threads as well as other sites.