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. 

[Guest]

I'll admit, FCPX has gotten me through all of my projects for the last month no problem. I have work that needs doing, and Adobe isn't doing it. I had to get online every 2 minutes at first to figure how to do things but at least I dont get shut down as soon as the program opens! I must say though, I'm not much a fan of FCPX... there are a few things that are enjoyable (background rendering and the basic functions of the inspector interface ((although that tends to get in my way as well))) but the rest is quite a hassle to "work around".

[AudyErel]

Seconded.

FCPX 10.0.5 turns out to be fun

And gets the job done!

I only use CS6 for After Effects and the Audition until further update from Adobe, or maybe, until Premiere Pro CS7?

[Guest]

Has anyone installed the CSXS Infrastructure CS6 update?  Wondering if that has helped anyone with the "Serious Error" i'm getting one every hour or so now. Completely frustrated. 

[BGPictures]

Hello RBemendo. I installed the CSXS update yesterday. Still no problems since my clean install. Have you had a chance to give it a try? Hope it works for you.

I also did a test with SuperDuper: Booted from my cloned external system/app drive and cloned over my resident system/app drive. No problems! So I know that even if the dreaded errors and crashes return, I can be up and running in the 10-15 minutes it takes SuperDuper to refresh my drive.

cheers,

Benjamin

[needles27]

I installed it and with my 15 minutes of trying, I wasn't able to get a Serious Error.  However, like all of you know, there is no one thing that always causes it so I can't confirm anything.  I have had stretches like this before without errors. 
I hate to be pessimistic, but I am guessing I will post again later with an account of an error.  Fingers crossed, though... 

[Guest]

@Benjamin Goldman, great to hear you're still having success, I was hopeful to do a rebuild yesterday, but production schedules got in the way.  I'm hoping to give it a shot soon, as it seams like it may work, thanks for your continued updates.

@needles27, I'll try installing the update and see it it helps, I have the same experience as you, i've gone on stretches without crashes, and then i'll get like 10 a day.  Thanks for your continued feedback as well.

[needles27]

I'm curious about the crash reports that people are getting with the Serious Error.  I know crash reports are discouraged in the forums, but I will just paste in the thread that is crashing for me.  Does anyone else get this same report?  Does anyone know what this means?

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

0   libsystem_kernel.dylib                  0x00007fff8e360ce2 __pthread_kill + 10

1   libsystem_c.dylib                       0x00007fff90a3d7d2 pthread_kill + 95

2   libsystem_c.dylib                       0x00007fff90a2ea7a abort + 143

3   com.adobe.premiere.frontend             0x000000010c7217d1 UnixInterruptSignal(int) + 49

4   com.adobe.dvacore.framework             0x0000000100279b35 _ZN12_GLOBAL__N_1L13SignalHandlerEiP9__siginfoPv + 261

5   libsystem_c.dylib                       0x00007fff90a8fcfa _sigtramp + 26

6   libobjc.A.dylib                         0x00007fff94a86390 objc_msgSend_vtable14 + 16

7   libdispatch.dylib                       0x00007fff9980ca86 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 18

8   libdispatch.dylib                       0x00007fff9980e8f6 _dispatch_main_queue_callback_4CF + 308

9   com.apple.CoreFoundation                0x00007fff95021e7c __CFRunLoopRun + 1724

10  com.apple.CoreFoundation                0x00007fff95021486 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 230

11  com.apple.HIToolbox                     0x00007fff8db9e4d3 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 277

12  com.apple.HIToolbox                     0x00007fff8dba56d3 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 181

13  com.apple.HIToolbox                     0x00007fff8dba560e BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 62

14  com.apple.AppKit                        0x00007fff8f277e31 _DPSNextEvent + 659

15  com.apple.AppKit                        0x00007fff8f277735 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 135

16  com.apple.AppKit                        0x00007fff8f274071 -[NSApplication run] + 470

17  com.adobe.premiere.frontend             0x000000010c720cd4 FE::MacApplication::RunSelf() + 44

18  com.adobe.premiere.frontend             0x000000010c6cb4df FE::Application::Run(std::basic_string<unsigned short, std::char_traits<unsigned short>, dvacore::utility::SmallBlockAllocator::STLAllocator<unsigned short> > const&) + 5681

19  com.adobe.premiere.frontend             0x000000010c72224c AppMain + 380

20  com.adobe.premiere.startup              0x000000010c8921d7 Run + 247

21  com.adobe.AdobePremierePro              0x00000001000038b7 main + 647

22  com.adobe.AdobePremierePro              0x000000010000361c start + 52

[benwinter]

I believe the serious error is gone for me. I have three monitors, two are Dell compter monitors and the third is a Panasonic TV hooked up via HDMI to MiniDisplayPort. I have two graphics cards, an ATI Radeon 5770 and an Nvidia GT 120. Previously, the ATI card was driving one Dell monitor and the Panasonic TV, and the Nvidia handled the other Dell monitor. Since switching both Dell monitors to the ATI card, and the Panasonic to the GT 120, I've not had any serious errors.

However, this problem still persists for me: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4519408#4519408

[benwinter]

I think I've identified the problem on my machine, and it is in fact the configuration of my display monitors. I posted before that I played musical chairs with my monitor connections between my two graphics cards. Today I tried switching them back to their original configuration and Premiere crashed instantly. Can anyone get Premiere to stay opena and not crash if you leave it running while switching montor connections around?

[Jim Curtis]

After weeks of only getting two Serious Errors, all of a sudden yesterday, six or eight hours into a session, I started getting them after one simple operation, such as moving the CTI, playing a clip in the Source tab, moving a parameter on a VST audio plug in, etc.  I got about eight in a row, between relaunches of Pr.

So, I did the Full Monty on my system: Disk Warrior, Repair Permissions, un/reinstall of Pr, Trash Prefs, scan media for corruption using Digital Rebellion's Corrupt Clip Finder (no corruption found).  That seems to have vanquished them enough to finish my project, which took another hour or two, without more errors.  And haven't had one since.  I'm mostly using Pr to "offline."  Sending the clips to Ae to composite, render and return to Pr for a final audio mix and master.  IOW, I'm not doing heavy duty work in Pr.

A lot of people on this thread are doing some athletic conclusion jumping as to the cause of this error.  Personally, I'm not seeing a trend.  I'm starting to think that Serious Error is just a general, non-specific message we see any time there's an application crash.  It could refer to any number of errors.  Viewing the crash logs that have been posted so far seems to be evidence for this.  If there was a specific trigger, my rudimentary experience with crash logs tells me that there would be some similarities in the first ten lines or so.  I'm not seeing that.  If some smarter Adobe engineering type person knows differently, please enlighten all of us.

[craney]

When I first installed Pr CS6 it was unusable due to frequent "serious error" crashes during editing, after reading this and other forums I decided to put my original GT120 card back into the MacPro (4.1, OS lion) alongside the GTX285 card, and use only the GT120 as  monitor feeds, and this seems to work, no more crashes so far. This is not much help to those using a MBP but might be worth a try for editors using the MacPro.

[Jim Curtis]

I have a new theory now, that I'd like some others to test.  This is based on the fact that I'm not seeing what we in the Serious Error Club have in common, as far as hardware and software.  But, one thing most if not all of us do have in common is that we generate Preview Files.

Next time you get a serious error, delete all your Preview Files.  Then see what happens.

This might be a tough pill to swallow for those with long projects and time invested in rendering Previews, but when I ran Corrupt Clip Finder the other day, the only corruption it found was in Preview Files.  Worth a shot, maybe.

[ExactImage]

Jim, while that's a semi-reasonable things to try, I've had the error within a couple of minutes of starting a new project and no render files exist.

Also, if you delete your render files and you don't get another serious error for a while, does that mean it 'was' the render file or just something else that caused it that didn't happen again anyway ?

[BGPictures]

I erased my preview files along with my prefs. after every crash. I described this as well as how I became crash free earlier in this thread. Mac pro 5,1. still no crash or error.

[Jim Curtis]

Software troubleshooting is often a case of eliminating the usual suspects. 

Another possibility is corrupted cache files or preferences.  I've also started deleting them on a regular basis as well.  Since they include the .pek files, this can make projects take longer to open, but it beats the alternative of constant crashing.  I worked on Ae and Pr for about six hours since my last post (Full Monty, above), and haven't experienced another SE crash so far.  I failed to mention that I deleted my Previews and Caches in the meantime.

FWIW, DiskGenius hasn't found my Pr prefs to be corrupt, but that doesn't mean they're not causing problems.  Corrupt Prefs are one of the most common causes of application misbehavior.

[ExactImage]

Benjamin Goldman wrote:

@Exactimage, which model MacBook 17" are you using? What OS did it ship with? I ask because Apple doesn't make 17" laptops anymore and only some of the existing ones work with 16GB of ram.

Late 2011 Model - Purchased from the Apple Refurb Store last week.

• 2.5Ghz Core i7

• HD 6770M

• 750GB HDD

• Shipped with Lion

[Crapule_Création]

I'll use Timemachine go get my Mac configuration before installing CS6 to see if it's really the problem.

[Guest]

@neeles27, I've been thinking this as well, We have almost 9000 views on this thread and 177 replies, which is the most in the first 5 pages of the Premiere Forum (i'm sure it goes further, I just stopped there)  I will be trying Benjamin's advice with the reinstall with crossed fingers that I get the same result.  But there is definitely a problem, and from your noticed lack of communication with the Adobe Engineers, its seams as though we may be on our own to find a solution.  Which hopefully Benjamin has found.  I'll report my findings with my new install when i've had some time to test it.

On an additional note, i've been seeing a lot of Memory Page Outs, (requiring a restart) when multiple CS applications are running, and most noticeably when the "serious error" occurs.  Not sure if it means anything to finding a solution to our errors, but thought it was worth mentioning.

[Lewiz]

needles27 wrote:

Well, not to give too much weight to your post, but Pr is a professional editing app. It just isn't working on a mac at the moment very well. 

iMovie is an amateur app.

To all Mac users, maybe it's comforting to know that on a PC the CS6 version of Premiere is also causing lots of headaches.

Indeed, Premiere is supposed to be a professional editing tool, which I love to work with by the way, but some Adobe decisions I will never understand.

Probably due to the worldwide economic crisis, Adobe users are invited to pay monthly amounts to insure the income of the Adobe software writers (Creative Cloud), but this means that new versions of the Creative Suite HAVE TO APPEAR at last on an annual basis, even if there is nothing to improve or innovate. This leads to faulty software that was too rapidly put together, resulting in crashes and driver conflicts. Anyone ever tried Premiere CS6 on an NVidia Quadro 4000 who DID get the Mercury Playback Engine to work? I'd love to hear so.

No, I just spent a small fortune on the CS6 upgrade but after days of installing and de-installing drivers, software, Windows components etc etc. I am now finally back to CS5, which STILL WORKS regardless of all these changes I made to my PC.

We must take this problem out of the forum and post it seriously to Adobe or nothing is going to change. (Except the looks and interface of their apps, waste of time if you ask me).

[jvon42]

I suppose I'll chime in on this sad little discussion. I just installed Premiere Pro CS6 yesterday and started using it on a trial basis. Unfortunately, I don't have a video card that supports GPU acceleration with PPCS6, so I'm just using software rendering. After working with it for a few hours, trying out many of the features and really pushing the realtime playback capabilities, I had not a single issue. This morning, I updated to 6.0.1 and encountered a "serious error" very quickly. I can duplicate the issue with the same sequence of events: 1) Open the same project I was working on yesterday, 2) Create a new DSLR preset sequence, 3) Try to add a merged clip to that sequence. The initial error message points to this as the problem:

"[/Volumes/BuildDisk/builds/tightykilt/shared/adobe/MediaCore/Backend/Make/Mac/../../Src/Sequence/TrackItem.cpp-189]"

My plan now is to uninstall and try to reinstall 6.0.0 to see if that fixes anything.

Hardware/Software Setup:

Mac Pro

2 x 2.66 Ghz 6-Core Intel Xeon

24GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 5870

NVidia Geforce GT120

1 TB Boot Drive with 700GB free

750GB Scratch Disk with 500GB free

OS 10.7.4

CS 5.5 Master Collection Installed

CS 6 Premiere Pro, Bridge and Extension Manager Installed

[needles27]

I'll be curious to see if you still get the errors with 6.0.  I tried going back to 6.0, but still got them.  I had lost track of what had changed at that time, since I upgraded to 10.7.4, CUDA drivers, nVidia drivers, AJA drivers, 6.01 all at the same time... Probably dumb to do all of that at once, but that was before I had any clue about what lay ahead.  Interesting that you are getting them and you don't have the GPU acceleration option as a variable. 

[Jim Curtis]

needles27 wrote:

I'll be curious to see if you still get the errors with 6.0. 

I have gotten them in 5.5.

[footagehead123]

I'm still getting them in Pr CS5.5.  Solved my other issue, which was the waveforms in timeline clips, but now that's not the problem anymore.  Never updated to CS6.0.  Still on OSX 10.6.8.  Just keeping an eye on this forum to see what you all figure out.  In the meantime, I went back to FCP7 because it works. 

[jvon42]

Now I'm really confused. You got the "serious error" message in CS5.5? Regularly? I can understand encountering that every now and then on a fluke — what software doesn't have it's glitches? FCP7 crashes all the time, but I can't usually duplicate the problem.

[Jim Curtis]

jvon42 wrote:

Now I'm really confused. You got the "serious error" message in CS5.5? Regularly?

Not regularly... occasionally.  CS5.5 is pretty solid on Mac.  My main complaint with it was the lack of a real external monitoring solution, and scrubbing the CTI is very unresponsive and frame droppy.  Otherwise, I got a lot of work done with it.