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. 

[genefama]

My audio is now permanenty muted on the YouTube volume icon in Safari. The Premiere Pro preview pane never refreshes.  I've sat in front of clients trying to show them stuff and embrarrassed myself.  I'm going back to Final Cut Pro.

[Jim Curtis]

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous how buggy Pr CS6 is.  There's one guy on another Ae forum who claims that Pr is rock solid on his system, which is very similar to mine.  No complaints whatsoever. 

I sure wish we could find out what's causing these errors.  I got about six of them yesterday, and about four today, before lunch.  I recovered from all of them and got my jobs out, but there was a lot of rebooting, trashing of caches and prefs, and finally a re-install of the application. 

I'm saving after just about every two or three edits, just to ensure I don't lose any work.

As soon as I get the Serious Error dialog now, I Force Quit, instead of clicking OK.  I get back up and running faster if I don't let the app go through a  pointless attempt at saving a possibly corrupted project.

Adobe, please put this at the top of your list.

[DavRW2012]

I was able to resolve my problems with Premiere crashing on import by booting my machine up off the Mac OS install disc, repairing permissions, then re-installing Premiere. The help system is still completely non-functional however. I found a copy of the manual as a PDF on Adobe' website.

I'm having difficulty now with Premiere not correctly setting the anamorphic flag when I export DVCPRO HD 720p footage: it comes out square instead of 16:9.

[footagehead123]

Wow, been following this crazy thread.  Since my first audio error, somehow fixed that, but then serious errors and crashes and force quits, I've completely abandoned Pr CS5.5 and gone back to FCP7.  Thinking about Avid now, but need to make some money to get that.  Can't allow clients to see this embarrassment, so I can't risk it with Pr CS5.5 OR CS6.  This is craziness. 

[Glitchdog]

I'm currently on location editing with a team using a 17" MacBook Pro. We have CS6 loaded, but decided not to touch Premiere in CS6. We are using 5.5 with no problems and have really not had any problems on our main MacPro back at the office in 5.5. Staying completely away from Premiere 6 till Adobe gets their act together.

[needles27]

I think I'm heading back to FCP 7. I'll keep an eye to this thread to see if anything gets worked out, because I'd like to return. Adobe worked hard to get the FCP switchers, and then screwed it up - not because it's buggy, but because they wont acknowledge any work being done to correct it. A simple word from an engineer here saying they are taking a look would go a long way.

[footagehead123]

Which is what confuses me about this whole debacle.  I'm running CS5.5, however on a Mac Pro 2,1 (last of the 32bit only towers), and I'm getting serious errors, albeit not as often as some of you, but enough to be a PITA so I've "switched" back.  The majority of you are having issues on CS6.  I haven't even gone there yet. 

I found this white paper from Adobe this morning detailing hardware/software configs for optimal use of Production Suite CS6.  I haven't had a chance to look in it yet... but maybe there's something useful?

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/cmg_blogs/story/adobe_hardware_performance_white_paper/

[AudyErel]

I have a group on Facebook called "DSLR Cinematography Indonesia" (http://www.facebook.com/groups/200269766688583/) which consist of 2500+ and growing group members nationwide and many of them are asking how are my experience with the brand new Premiere Pro CS6 for Mac, because I was so enthusiastic about it before.. They are learning students and aspiring young film makers.

What should I say to them now?

[Jim Curtis]

How about telling them the truth?

AudyErel wrote:

What should I say to them now?

[EditorPete]

footagehead123 wrote:

I've completely abandoned Pr CS5.5 and gone back to FCP7.  Thinking about Avid now, but need to make some money to get that.  Can't allow clients to see this embarrassment, so I can't risk it with Pr CS5.5 OR CS6.  This is craziness. 

I personally didn't/haven't experienced any issues with CS5.5 before or after intsalling CS6. I have reverted back to 5.5 for paying clients until Adobe figures out how to make CS6 stable. Going back to FCP7 for me is an option, but I think CS5.5 works way better for me and my style of editing/compositing. What issues are you having with 5.5 that you can't work with clients on?

[footagehead123]

@ EditorPete It seems I'm a special case as most people on this thread are having issues with CS6.  My problems such as the serious error and force quits/crashes are random.  I am not getting it as bad as others, more like once every day or other day.  Honestly, I haven't had a serious error for a couple weeks now because I'm back to FCP7

It's not debilitating for sure, but it is certainly a pain and concerning, and after one embarrassing moment with a client I've decided to just skip it for now. 

This could be stemming from my system in general too, I realize, but I don't have time to troubleshoot software/hardware compatibilities right now.  I do plan on giving Pr a solid shot, but when I find some downtime and a small project.  In the meantime, I'm keeping an eye on this thread.  Keep trucking y'all!

[jasonvp]

I suspect this thread is going to be locked or trimmed or something.  Read this and see if you draw the same conclusion...

jas

[Kurrykid-jzpfVq]

I am actually shocked that someone from Adobe would post that! It is evident there is a problem with PPro. I have NOT been able to use CS6 because of the immediate crash I get. Adobe hasn't addressed me or my issues. Trust me Kevin, it's not a user or machine issue. Can you tell me how just scrubbing a video is a user issue?

I really hope they get on top of this and soon.

Just my 2 cents.

[needles27]

I am infuriated by that post by Kevin M. Lock this thread?  How about trying to help?  If it's user error (what misguided click by a user should ever cause a program to hang?) then help those users get it right. If it is misconfigured systems (like those that are clean out of the box with nothing on it except CS6?) then post the right configurations and known 3rd party incompatibilities. Or help us try to track down what could be incompatible.

But lock the thread and sweep it under the door so you can trick more people into thinking CS6 runs great on their new Mac with all software/hardware listed ad compatible with Adobe?! Bad PR move and even worse way to treat your customers.

I realize this thread does contain a lot of different issues, but we feel like we need a thread with 17000 views to get any attention. Obviously we need more - unless you sweep us away.

You already have people giving up and switching away. Make a little effort to communicating with those of us who still have some goodwill and motivation to use your product and maybe even evangelize it if things get better.

[Strillogy]

These comments make me worry that they won't  address our issues at all.

I had a few crashes today where I lost my progress on the project even though I'd been saving every 2-3 edits/adjustments I made.  It's getting incredibly annoying and I feel like I'm wasting more time worrying about what will happen rather than focusing on just editing.

Two of the crashes today happened right after I finished saving... but after I rebooted and opened the latest save state, the project had reverted back to a previous state.  I'm not sure how this happened because I saw the save progress bar finish and close..so I assumed that meant it was saved. Guess not.

This is becoming a never ending battle and I still have yet to hear anything back from the support team.

[tclark513]

Jason Van Patten wrote:

I suspect this thread is going to be locked or trimmed or something.  Read this and see if you draw the same conclusion...

jas

Wow Kevin M!  That is ridiculous!!  It's very obvious that something is wrong here!  I really suggest you read all these posts again because you don't know what you are talking about!  I don't even work on a Mac and can understand why all these people are upset!

[Kevin-Monahan]

tclark513 wrote:

Jason Van Patten wrote:

I suspect this thread is going to be locked or trimmed or something.  Read this and see if you draw the same conclusion...

jas

Wow Kevin M!  That is ridiculous!!  It's very obvious that something is wrong here!  I really suggest you read all these posts again because you don't know what you are talking about!  I don't even work on a Mac and can understand why all these people are upset!

No, it's not ridiculous and I do know what I'm talking about. The post contains so many issues that it is hard to focus in on the actual problems. We need a compiled list of issues and make sure a bug report is filed for each one. Makes sense, right? BTW, I am a Mac user through and through, so I want to make sure we are addressing the actual issues.

[ExactImage]

Issues that I am personally having (and know others are having).

1) Premiere Pro Crashes a Lot !      It could be for a number of reasons, but, disabling CUDA support helps a LOT.   This is on both a MacPro (3,1) with a GTX 285 card AND a brand new 17" MBP with 6770 right out of the box with nothing but CS6 installed.   I have since added Colorista II and Neat video, but the problem happened before they were added.  

It would be helpful to us all in helping to diagnose the problem if the Serious Error dialog actually gave more information, i.e. Serious Error - CUDA, or Serious Error Audio etc.    I've had projects that would crash the instant you tried to drag the CTI with CUDA enabled, but work perfectly with CUDA disabled.

2) Audio crashes.   With audio tracks expanded to see the wave forms.  Keep the tracks closed and it crashes less (Serious Error).

3) Audio becomes muted.   After a Premiere Pro crash the system audio could become perminently muted.  While this could easily be a Lion problem, it's caused by Premiere Pro crashing.  Obviously if we can fix the crash it wouldn't happen, but if you can recreate it then it would be useful to try to undo what ever went wrong as you recover from it.

4) Problems where the audio would continue to play but the monitor would be black and the keyboard and mouse become unresponsive.   The only way to recover it is to hard reboot.

For me, if we could get the CUDA & Audio Waveform crashes fixed, I'd be  much happier. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks for the start of this compilation of issues Exactimage, and genefama. Add your issues and I'll add it to the list. Then we'll make sure a bug get filed for each one. Though the title of the thread is the "Serious Error" thread, it's become the "All problems related to Mac," so here are the ones I've found so far in this thread:

• Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS (Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion) crashes sometimes with CUDA enabled on MacPro (3,1 and 4,1) and GTX 285: User reports, "It could be for a number of reasons, but, disabling CUDA support helps a LOT. This is on both a MacPro (3,1) with a GTX 285. With the Mercury Playback Engine in software mode, crashes do not regularly occur." Other user with MacPro 4,1 and GTX 285 reporting many more crashes on OS X 10.8, than in OS X 10.7. Reported "black screen" in Program Monitor, and problems with ray traced 3D rendering in After Effects. However, these problems are not evident in software mode. User reverted to OS X 10.7. Bug Filed?
• Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS crashes sometimes with CUDA enabled on MacPro and Quadro 4000: Same reasons as above. Some report Serious Error warning without doing anything particularly taxing for the app. With the Mercury Playback Engine in software mode, crashes do not regularly occur. Bug Filed?
• Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS (Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion) project crashes sometimes with CUDA enabled on MacPro upon reopening project after crash: Users have a problem where CUDA was enabled and Pr crashed.  When ever the user would try to re-open the project it immediately crashes again before the user gets a chance to disable CUDA. The only way to recover the project is to create a NEW project with CUDA disabled, then import the old project in to the new one. Bug Filed?
• Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS (Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion) crashes sometimes with OpenCL enabled on MacBook Pro with AMD 6770: This is with brand new 17" MBP with 6770 right out of the box with nothing but CS6 installed. Bug Filed?
• Premiere Pro CS6 has slow performance and SBOD (Spinning Beachball Of Death) with CUDA enabled on MacPro and Quadro 4000: Sometimes moving and trimming clips gives slow performance, or enables the SBOD (Spinning Beachball Of Death). Bug Filed?
• Serious Error Message Too Cryptic in Premiere Pro CS6: It would be helpful to us all in helping to diagnose the problem if the Serious Error dialog actually gave more information, i.e. Serious Error - CUDA, or Serious Error Audio etc. Bug filed? Yes, a bug has ben filed.
• Expanding audio tracks crashes Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS: When audio tracks are expanded to see the wave forms.  Keep the tracks closed and it crashes less (with the Serious Error warning). Bug filed?
• Audio becomes muted after crash in Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS: After a Premiere Pro crash the system audio could become perminently muted.  While this could easily be a Lion problem, it's caused by Premiere Pro crashing. A temporary fix for the issue was found by a user. Bug filed?
• In Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS, sometimes audio continues to play with no picture, keyboard and mouse becomes unresponsive: The only way to recover it is to hard reboot. The latest update alleviates this problem somewhat. Bug filed?
• Audio gets killed systemwide sometimes on Mac OS in Premiere Pro CS6: Bug filed?
• Kernel panics/crashes and hanging exports on Premiere Pro CS6 with Mac OS: Bug filed?
• Kernel panic when editing with Premiere Pro CS6 on iMac, MacPro and MacBook Pro on Mac OS: Kernel panic occures when trimming video, scrubbing timeline, moving a clip, etc. Bug filed?
• Dynamic Link bug with Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS: After Effects clips getting unlinked from Premiere timelines. Dynamic link appears to "lose track" of certain clips, especially when reopening the program. Sometimes takes a long time to link all files, some just show as offline. Bug filed?
• 2GB file limit on AFP servers with Premiere Pro CS6 and earlier and Mac OS: There is a file size limit for video files shared on an AFP servers. This is a known issue, but please file a bug if you have this limitation. Bug filed?
• Premiere Pro CS6 can't render certain files that CS5.5 and earlier could: Compiling errors sometimes occurs when rendering certain types of footage (possibly related to Video Co-Pilot plug-in, Video Co-Pilot acknowledges a problem. Problem could occur for AE comps dynamically linked into Premiere Pro). Bug filed?
• Lag, or stuttering between picture and audio when playing, or scrubbing the Timeline or Program Monitor in Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS: When scrubbing, or placing the playhead to another place in the Timeline or Program Monitor, there is sometimes a lag in time between picture and sound. Some users having this issue have a lot of RAM. Please check to see if you have a bad stick. Bug filed?
• Clicking around Timeline while Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS is rendering sometimes causes the app to crash: User reports on a case that is open right now. Bug filed?
• After some time has passed while rendering, Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS can sometimes crash: User reports crash on an all-night render. Bug filed?
• Adobe should release more precise documentation about the exact configurations of hardware, drivers, and software for each Mac, and Mac OS version for Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS: Users wish to know the ideal settings and hardware to have minimal problems. This is a known issue, and something we are working on right now. Bug filed?
• Users report Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS crashing with certain third party plug-ins, or with drivers for hardware devices installed: After users install certain third party plug-ins, or hardware drivers, Premiere Pro CS6 crashes, or is more prone to crashing. Bug filed?
• Serious Error sometimes occurs with simple editing tasks with Premiere Pro CS6 and Mac OS: Sometimes, simple editing tasks, such as, marking an In point with the I key, modifying volume, or duplicating a sequence will cause the Serious Error warning to occur. Bug filed?
• System locks up sometimes occurs with simple editing tasks with Premiere Pro CS6 and Mac OS: Sometimes, simple editing tasks, such as, trimming, or moving a clip can cause the system to freeze up. A restart is necessary after this occurs. Bug filed?
• Sluggish behavior with large projects in Premiere Pro CS6 and Mac OS: User reports, after media cache is created and the program is reopened, if existing media cache has not completely loaded, draging across a thumbnail in the Timeline could cause the app to crash. Bug filed?
• Scrubbing footage in the Preview Monitor sometimes causes a kernel panic Premiere Pro CS6 on Mac OS: A user reports that scrubbing footage in the Preview Monitor will sometimes cause a kernel panic. Bug filed?

Jim Simon reports of a possible fix for the warning. He said, "I don't know if this will work for everybody (and I'd love to find out), but I was getting repeated Serious Errors yesterday shortly after opening an existing project.  I was getting them for different reasons, like double-clicking a clip in the project tab and invoking a file>import from a keyboard shortcut.  I deleted my prefs and media cache, and have able to work without errors since then.  May be a coincidence.  But, that seems to be a temp fix that's been working for me so far."

If your problems have not been addressed in the latest update, we apologize. Let's work together to file bugs to make sure that engineering knows about all your issues. The more bugs that are filed, the more attention an issue will likely receive. If you have filed a bug on any issue, please know that we read each and every one of them.

Users have reported that uninstalling and reinstalling the software, and/or zapping PRAM, and deleting Preferences has stopped the Serious Error warning from occurring. You may want to try these things first.

Keep in mind that employee participation is voluntary on this forum. If you don't see a response addressing your particular problem, it does not mean that we don't care or aren't fixing issues. Thanks!

[muehlemann]

I have a Macbook Pro Retina, with CS6, OSX 10.8.2, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M... My main Problems are the Following:

1. Often in Premiere i get a black program monitor... without any reason, i have to reboot premiere pro everytime.

2. In after effects, with GPU activated for the ray traced 3d renderer, when i choose quick draft (open GL) everything looks fine, except for the quality... when i choose final quality all my 3D objects (layers with 3D mode enabled...) disappear... and i didnt found any reason for that... maybe its not a bug maybe it is i ask for help here cause i couldnt find any answer...

Cheers Mike!!!

[genefama]

The three biggies seem to be

1) audio getting killed systemwide;

2) kernel panics/crashes and hanging exports; and

3) Dynamic Link bugs (After Effects clips getting unlinked from Premiere timelines etc.). 

Some of us regularly experience all three.

Virtually every post is a variation on these three problems. If it seems endless, unfocused, and meandering it's because the problems haven't been addressed, much less fixed.  And many of us have sent bug reports to no avail.

[Strillogy]

I'd be happy if the one big issue I have was at least addressed & fixed.

• I get a Kernel Panic without fail at least 2-3+ times a day now. It happens when I'm trimming video, scrubbing timeline, moving a clip, etc.  All basic little edits end up killing the entire system.  I wish it were just the Premiere app crashing, but it locks the entire system.  I can recreate it on a 2011 & 2012 Macbook Pro (Lion), a 2011 iMac (Lion), and a 2008 MacPro (Snow Leopard).

If someone from Adobe would like to see it happen, I would be more than happy to film the entire process (since screen captures won't work when the kernel panic happens).  I submit crash reports every time it happens, so there should be a nice big list under my license (assuming they store it that way?)

[Kevin-Monahan]

Strillogy wrote:

I'd be happy if the one big issue I have was at least addressed & fixed.

• I get a Kernel Panic without fail at least 2-3+ times a day now. It happens when I'm trimming video, scrubbing timeline, moving a clip, etc.  All basic little edits end up killing the entire system.  I wish it were just the Premiere app crashing, but it locks the entire system.  I can recreate it on a 2011 & 2012 Macbook Pro (Lion), a 2011 iMac (Lion), and a 2008 MacPro (Snow Leopard).

If someone from Adobe would like to see it happen, I would be more than happy to film the entire process (since screen captures won't work when the kernel panic happens).  I submit crash reports every time it happens, so there should be a nice big list under my license (assuming they store it that way?)

I added your issue to the list. A bug report is different than a crash report. A bug report contains much more info. Please file a bug report for the issue: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

[needles27]

1.  Like others, lots of "Serious Errors."  This is hard to pin down, because it happens at random times, under random circumstances, with no discernable settings, codecs, or parameters. Sometimes, it is simply opening a project and moving the playhead, sometimes while trimming.  Turning the GPU acceleration off does seem to help, but not 100%.  I have crash logs I can PM if that helps. (I posted one a few pages back with just the crashed thread.)

That's the only problem I have concerning this thread.

System:

MacPro 4,1

32GB RAM

GTX285 (latest drivers, latest CUDA)

Lion 10.7.4

All software updated

[Kevin-Monahan]

needles27 wrote:

1.  Like others, lots of "Serious Errors."  This is hard to pin down, because it happens at random times, under random circumstances, with no discernable settings, codecs, or parameters. Sometimes, it is simply opening a project and moving the playhead, sometimes while trimming.  Turning the GPU acceleration off does seem to help, but not 100%.  I have crash logs I can PM if that helps. (I posted one a few pages back with just the crashed thread.)

That's the only problem I have concerning this thread.

System:

MacPro 4,1

32GB RAM

GTX285 (latest drivers, latest CUDA)

Lion 10.7.4

All software updated

The issues "System Error too cryptic," might be helpful to diagnose your system, please file a bug.

The issue: "Premiere Pro crashed a lot with GTX 285" should definitely be filed on an official bug report:

http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

If someone else files a bug, you should probably file one too. The more bug reports on any one issue, the more attention it is likely to get.