The Mac CS6 "Serious Error" thread

[needles27]

It looks like there are 4-6 disjointed threads about some big problems Mac users are finding with CS6 (and 6.0.1)  To give us a better place to figure out solutions and for others to find with a search, maybe we can post a discussion here.

The Adobe engineers are participating and receiving crash logs, and hopefully a pattern can develop.

I'm on a MacPro 4,1, Lion 10.7.4, CS6.0.1, 32GB RAM, GTX 285 with the latest nVidia and CUDA drivers.  I am seeing 2 primary issues:

Lots of Serious Error crashes.  This happens without any noticeable pattern - sometimes with the title tool, trim monitor, or simply just scrubbing the timeline.  It seems to happen more frequently with Dynamic Links in the timeline.  Also, I believe it is happening more often (or maybe exclusively)  with the MPE GPU option enabled.  I think in Software Only mode, it may not be present, although further testing required.

Also, I am having an issue where Pr will display black only in the source and program monitors, unless I click around the timeline and will get flashes of images.  This is remedied by changing over to Software Only for the MPE.  It seems to be worse if Safari is running.

Wil - an Adobe engineer - has taken a look at my crash logs and seems to think something is funky with the graphcs drivers in both cases, but crash logs from other users seem to not agree. 

CS6 on the mac - for  me and a few others - is incredibly flaky.  If you are having issues, can you post and explain what you are seeing and what your hardware/driver config is.  Any patterns we can find will help the engineers troubleshoot and get this taken care of. 

[ExactImage]

I can vouch for that.  I'm current;y staring at a windows screen while my MacPro sits idle (web & email!) because PP hasn't crashed on the PC at all - not once, while the Mac crashes several times a day. 

I'm a little concerned that even the Adobe employees who pop in from time to time have nothing much to say about whther Adobe have even managed to recreate the problem, which is of course the first thing needed before they can even begin to fix it.  Perhaps if they could give us that much feedback at least, then we can know they are working on it and not just ignoring us.

[Kurrykid-jzpfVq]

I would be willing to help them resolve it as well by sending my crash reports, testing new settings...whatever is needed to get this bug resolved quickly. I haven't seen a request for any information from anyone at this point. In post #105, Kevin (from Adobe) says he'll pass it on but he's not seeing the isue. Based on his specs though, he's not using Lion which off course could be a factor.

[ExactImage]

Kurrykid wrote:

In post #105, Kevin (from Adobe) says he'll pass it on but he's not seeing the isue. Based on his specs though, he's not using Lion which off course could be a factor.

I'm seeing it on Snow Leopard (MacPro) as well, so it's not limited to Lion.

[Glitchdog]

Again, although we've only done two test edits now on our new MacBook Pro 17" (Lion) mobile unit, I'm not seeing the issue yet. This one is the A1297 which uses the AMD 6770M and the i7 processor is 2.4 ghz. Will be having some real world editing soon overseas in a few weeks, I'll post when I get back. But wouldn't it be cool if Adobe fixes it first.

Last night I loaded Premiere 5.5, but will start our editing on CS6 to see if the issue occurs +we need Prelude. I do really like the CS6 interface/workflow, its getting there.

[benwinter]

The 10.7.4 update disabled my audio. Audio MIDI setup would crash on loading and I couldn't access my device settings or 'unmute' as others have observed. Also, Finder would "hang" for about 30 seconds at the beginning of startup while the sound icon and a few other icons went missing from the menu bar. This is why I've rolled back and continue to work on 10.7.3. I thought it was just an incompatibility between my Focusrite audio device, and the OS. Possibly related to this?

[Jim Curtis]

RBemendo wrote:

@ Jim Curtis,  since you have not experienced the "serious error" until just recently, can you comment on the drive space availability of you media drive. 

I kinda' doubt that's it.  I have 2.8 TB free of a 3.5 TB partition on the project that gave me the error.  But, progress is made when we rule things out.

I worked on the same project for a couple of hours yesterday, and didn't get any serious errors.  The sync is wacky, but I addressed that in a separate post.

[EditorPete]

Well its almost the weekend in my parts....so far, after uninstlling/reinstalling CS6 on my MacPro a few days ago, no weird crashes or bug reports. Did reinstalling CS6 on top of 10.7.4, instead of 10.7.4 on top of CS6 do the trick??? FYI, I also did all of my Nvidia card and Cuda driver updates prior to reinstalling CS6.

I am going to run my MBP over the weekend without CS6 installed, since my reinstall today of OS 10.7.4 seems to have gotten rid of my grayed out audio problem (see my earlier post on this thread). Then if all good on Monday, I will reinstall CS6 on top of 10.7.4 here as well. Testing away.....

Pete

[genefama]

By the way, I found a routine and (so-far) reliable fix for the permanently-muted audio problem, if anyone still struggles with that.

[ExactImage]

I GIVE UP !!!!!

OK - I've spent way too much time crashing, restarting, rebooting, crashing, restarting/rebooting and repeat.....

CS6 on Mac is simply not stable for me on EITHER Lion or Snow Leapard, yet it works flawlessly on my Windows 7 System.  So, guess which monitor I'm going to have to sit in front of to deliver the 5 projects we have on the go?

Come Adobe...... let's get a fix for this soon please?     Feel free to add me to a beta tester's list if it helps.......

[Guest]

Back at post 111 genefama says a solution to the mutred audio problem has been found....Please share the answer, as what little hair I have left is falling out trying to figure this out.

I have not had consistent serious errors (just 1 so far), but PP certainly seems not ready for prime time on my Mac Pro yet, ...love CS6, just wish PPro could be STABLE, it has plenty of features already, don't need more, just stability and smooth operation!! As always YMMV

[genefama]

I tried everything to fix the muted audio.  This is what worked, though the last time I tried it the gray icon stuck around.  In general it works though. 

You have to run the script every time you restart your computer.  Save it to your dock for easy access.

1. Go to Applications and open Utilities.

2. Open Applescript Editor.

3. Copy the following and paste it at the top half of the editor (copy everything below with the quotes in place):

do shell script "launchctl stop com.apple.audio.coreaudiod" password "your_password" with administrator privileges

4. Replace "your_password" with your login password. For example, if your login password is ILOVEMYSON2012 then it should look like this:

do shell script "launchctl stop com.apple.audio.coreaudiod" password "ILOVEMYSON2012" with administrator privileges

5. Now go to File > Save As (in the Applescript Editor menu bar).

After "Save As" choose a name for the file. I called mine "AudioFix."

Under "File Format" choose "Application."

Save it to your Applications folder or wherever you like, and drag it to your dock.

Run it whenever you restart your computer. You could even put it in the list of programs that open on start-up.

If your problem is the same as mine, the volume indicator will pop on within a few seconds to half a minute after you run the script.

Good luck!

Gene

[Kurrykid-jzpfVq]

@genefama (Is there no way to quote a previous post???): I wasn't aware there was a script that could be run. I actually complained to Apple a month or so ago because of this problem. They ended up replacing my motherboard as they couldn't fix the issue. It would work when they loaded in a fresh OS (off an external drive) so they thought it was a software issue but after reloading the OS, then flattening the drive and starting from scratch, the problem still came back. Since having the motherboard replaced (which took some time for me to get everything back to how it was), I haven't had any issues.

Thanks.

[genefama]

Kurrykid,

I tried everything.  This worked fairly well until yesterday when my computer crashed and I had to do a cold boot. Haven't been able to unmute since then. My computer's slowed way down too.  It's making me uneasy.  Through all this, Premiere Pro audio has worked via the "internal speaker," which on a Mac Pro is a joke. I'm fed up with computers.

[jwffvm]

I have my media on a 2 TB drive and there are 743.31 GB of space left.

I just posted a crash report today so it's at the end of this thread.

thx...jw

[benwinter]

I'd like to add that I am getting the "Serious error" whenever I try to submit a clip for speech analysis.

JW the Adobe people don't like when you post crash reports here, it clutters up the thread and isn't the best way to get it to the engineers who are the only ones who understand it anyway. If you want to submit the crash report go to the bug report page and attach it as a file there.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

[jwffvm]

Thanks Ben,

I didn't know.  Will do so next time.

thx...jw

[Kevin-Monahan]

I'll try and get someone from Premiere Pro engineering to look at the "Serious Error" problem. I'm not experiencing this problem, so I can't speculate what the cause might be.

I'm on a MacBook Pro

NVIDIA 330M
8GB RAM

OS X 10.6.8

I'm not going to comment on any of the off topic stuff (Less love for Mac vs. PC, etc.). You guys have some pretty wild speculations, though!

[EditorPete]

Thanks Kevin...I PM'd you as well.

Pete

[Guest]

Thanks for posting Kevin.  Hopefully they can reproduce the error and start working on a fix.

[Glitchdog]

Thanks Kevin for posting and your assistance. Yes, I read too many spy novels

So far in this post we have one MacBook Pro user with this problem. Yours is OK and our 17" MBP is fine so far except for one file going offline, but I was concerned reading these posts since we will soon be editing with it in a developing country with no real support available.

MacBook Pro 17" 2.4 i7 QC, ATI, 16 GB RAM, Model # A1297, Lion

[jasonvp]

Jim Curtis wrote:

I was hoping not to join this club. 

It seems I've finally(?) joined this club as well.  While working on my usual 2xAVCHD camera project, I ran into a problem where Premiere Pro couldn't play back the combined PiP'd video in the program monitor.  I'd get the 2 camera angles synced, then scale camera 2 down by 50%, flip it horizontally, and crop the bottom 1/3 off.  But PPro just couldn't play that combined video properly in the program monitor without losing sync between the 2 camera angles, or randomly play camera 2's video from different points.

Every so often, camera 2's video would become green.

There are no effects in my videos that should require CPU-based rendering, but with this particular combined video, the export required a re-render.  I can't fathom why that's the case as none of my other vids required that, and the inputs, effects, and export settings are all the same.

And finally, I started seeing the "Serious Error" dialogs.  It happened 2 or 3 times to me today.  I can't actually finish editing my second sequence because PPro has become unusable for me.  I'm actually considering re-installing CS5.5 to see if it improves my editing...

jas

[jasonvp]

Jason Van Patten wrote:

I'm actually considering re-installing CS5.5 to see if it improves my editing...

jas

For what it's worth, I re-installed CS5.5 and updated it to the latest version.  It took me 1/4 the time to edit the same project in CS5.5.1.  I guess for the time being I'll leave CS6 installed and unused until someone can figure out Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is going on here...

jas

[Kurrykid-jzpfVq]

I'm also getting serious crashes in CS6 to the point that it is unusable (I have to reboot my ystem). It happens whenever I try to preview (in the preview window) or when I try to render the timeline (it is very choppy in the Preview window...it has never done that before which is why I'm trying to render). In the time I've owned this laptop (over a year), this is the first time I've ever seen these type of messages (being forced to reboot).

I hope we can get a resolution soon because this is MY video editing software and I need it.

Thanks.

Dave

MacBook Pro (15")

i7 - 2.3Ghz

8 GB RAM

SSD drive (256GB)

[Guest]

Just an update for those of you thinking about reinstalling from scratch.  I just got my first "serious error" after a fresh install of OSX 10.7.4 and then installed CS6 and then updated to 6.0.1.  Granted it took 4 days before I received the error, which is pretty good. But at least for me, installing from scratch has not fixed this problem.

[benwinter]

Hi,

I wanted to add my voice to the fray—I have gotten the "serious error" message multiple times and at random intervals, often in the middle of an edit doing a variety of tasks, i.e. there's no one action that I can identify causes the error to pop up. Additionally, Premiere will suddenly stop scrubbing the video, i.e. I can press the play/stop button but nothing will play. At this point I have to Force Quit Premiere, which is when the "serious error" dialog finally appears. I am on Mac 10.7.3. I strongly believe this is an audio driver issue. I am using a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP connected through Firewire and when this error occurs I lose audio for a bit and have to power cycle the device. I recently updated to Mix Control 3.0 and have not had the error since.