The Mac CS6 "Serious Error" thread

Report · Jun 03, 2012

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.

Report · Oct 02, 2012

For whatever its worth I get this exact issue with 10.7.4 and Ppro 6.0.2 and the newest CUDA Driver Version: 5.0.24

Report · Oct 02, 2012

We know that the new CUDA drivers and Mountain Lion 10.8.2 definitely fixes a couple of repeatable bugs. Up to you whether that's good enough reason to upgrade or not.

Seastage wrote:
Second that. I'm not upgrading Mountain Lion until I know it's better or the same as 10.8.1. Please let us know how it's working out. I've got a gtx 570 and I don't think it's ever going to work stable with CUDA 😞

Report · Oct 03, 2012

Don't forget to update the driver for the Cuda engine as well as the card itself. I would have missed this normally, but for some reason I read all the instructions this time. Wondering if this is the reason for some of the problems still existing with people that have upgraded? Can the ones that updated respond if they did the Cuda update as well and if they are still experiencing issues? This cuda update is also on the GTX285, which is what I have.

Report · Oct 03, 2012

There was a weird thing on this last update (GTX 285 as well) where I looked on the CUDA pref pane and it said that the CUDA driver was up to date, but there was also a warning on the GPU driver that CUDA was out of date...and the updater didn't work automatically. So, I did have to go to the nVidia site and manually update CUDA. So it looks like the latest drivers are:

CUDA Driver Version: 5.0.36

GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)

I am hopeful with these. I have some editing to do over the next few days, and will report back.

Report · Oct 03, 2012

needles27 wrote:
There was a weird thing on this last update (GTX 285 as well) where I looked on the CUDA pref pane and it said that the CUDA driver was up to date, but there was also a warning on the GPU driver that CUDA was out of date...and the updater didn't work automatically. So, I did have to go to the nVidia site and manually update CUDA. So it looks like the latest drivers are:
CUDA Driver Version: 5.0.36
GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)
I am hopeful with these. I have some editing to do over the next few days, and will report back.

I had this problem as well. Premiere was recognizing the Cuda drivers but AE said that my GTX 285 was incompatible. I did a reinstal of Lion and now AE says the GTX 285 is fine. I still have the serious crashes in PP though.

MacPro early 2008

Processor 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Memory 24 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB

Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G56)

CUDA Driver Version: 5.0.36

After Effects 11.0.1.12

Premiere 6.0.2

Report · Oct 03, 2012

EditorPete wrote:
Don't forget to update the driver for the Cuda engine as well as the card itself. I would have missed this normally, but for some reason I read all the instructions this time. Wondering if this is the reason for some of the problems still existing with people that have upgraded? Can the ones that updated respond if they did the Cuda update as well and if they are still experiencing issues? This cuda update is also on the GTX285, which is what I have.

Thanks for pointing this out.

Report · Oct 04, 2012

Thanks Kevin for chimming in here as you have for a bit! We do appreciate the updates and hard work behind the scenes. Oh how I'd love to be a bug on the wall at Adobe on the Mac side of things

I'm just about finished with a short doco in CS6 on our mobile MacBook Pro 8,3, 16 gig ram, Lion, 6.0.2 with CUDA 5.0.24/GPU 7.18.18 270.05.25f01 (not the absolute latest I know), eSATA RAID... So about 45 hours or so of editing (using HDV, AVCHD and GoPro). I'm still a little gunshy to update our main MacPro, but may give it a try once this edit is complete...depending on posts here. BTW, thanks for posting updates to all that are taking the time to do that. Very much appreciated!!

I"ve had no crashes since this update, but I did have to turn off MPE as it was just so sluggish scrubbing/playing the timeline, etc (even before the update). Got tired of having to reboot the system a few times a day to get the MPE to work better. This system works like I"ve enabled MPE with it off. Timeline continues to play flawlessly with red and yellow bars, with colour correction filters, lower thirds...with video set to "full" rez. We are using no Dynamic Link items or nested sequences. Only 5 layers of video in places and 7 audio tracks, so pretty simple. Motion graphics have been saved in ProRes 4444.

I'm really, really liking some of the new features in CS6 Premiere especially scrubbing footage in bins w/whatever viewing size I prefer. Still lots of work to do of course and we trust Mac will get better beta testing in the future. I think you mentioned that somewhere Kevin.

Report · Oct 04, 2012

Lots of error issues today with a new project. I'm still on Lion 10.7.4. Updated to newest Nvidia driver 270.00.00f06 as well as CUDA 5.0.36. We shall see.

MacPro5,1

Processor 2 x 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

Memory 24 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC

Graphics NVIDIA Quadro 4000

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4

Report · Oct 04, 2012

After the updates that I did above I only got one serious error crash. Before that I couldn't edit for more than a few minutes before error and crash occurred.

Next week I will test further but the issue isn't gone however much better.

Report · Oct 05, 2012

My Editing experience in Pr is consistent with the above reports with needles27, Bob Ramage, and Erik Naso.

@Needles27, thanks for sharing your experience with the latest updates and drivers, I agree Dynamic links do work much better with the recent updates.

@Bob Ramage, I'm experiencing Media Encoder errors globally for any project with a sequence that has GPU acceleration turned on. Regardless of dynamic links to AE or not, sending a GPU accelerated sequence to Media encoder and rendering causes a crash every time.

*Adobe if it heps I get the sheep bah everytime it crashes (submitting bug report)

I see both Bob Ramage and Needles27 have GTX 285, and I have the quadro 4000 for mac, wondering if that is the issue? I've gone through the Digital Rebellion's Preference Manager, Deleted Media Encoder preferences, reset pRAM, repaired permissions, and I still get the same crash regardless of dynamic linked projects, or simple one edit sequences. I reverted back to CUDA drivers 5.0.24 and exported through Media Encoder again and got fast accurate results using GPU accelerated timelines. Thinking something might have happened during auto updater in system preferences I re-downloaded the drivers directly from Nvidia website and manually install of the CUDA 5.0.36 drivers. No luck. Still have the same exact crashes trying to encode from Media Encoder.

For now I will be staying with the CUDA 5.0.24 driver, I will continue to update my experience here. Anyone else running a Nvidia 4000 for Mac that can replicate this issue would be appreciated.

Report · Oct 05, 2012

Another serious error-free day of editing. I'm not going to check in every day, but maybe in a week or so I'll have enough diverse editing tasks under my belt that I'll be able to feel confident that this was solved with the latest drivers. I know this thread grew to include a lot of different types of problems, but for me so far the original topic of "Serious Error" dialog boxes and related CUDA problems have subsided. Hoping to not return with a "spoke too soon" post...

Report · Oct 08, 2012

Thanks needles27 for posting and keeping us updated. I think I'm taking the plunge today, myslef. Going to upgrade to ML, then update my Nvidia and Cuda drivers, than do my CS6 updates (PrP 6.0.2), in that order. Does this sound like a correct order?

thanks,

Pete

Report · Oct 08, 2012

Hi,

My buddy is getitng a serious error issue from premiere pro cs6 as well. When ever he tries keyframing the program will crash. I'm trying to research this for him and help him out. He's done: a fresh install of OSX, reinstalled ppro twice, disk premission repair, clear cache, and turned off graphic switching.

computer info:

Processor 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1024 MB / Intel HD Graphics 3000

Software OS X 10.8.2 (12C60)

Report · Oct 08, 2012

mogpersons wrote:
Hi,
My buddy is getitng a serious error issue from premiere pro cs6 as well. When ever he tries keyframing the program will crash. I'm trying to research this for him and help him out. He's done: a fresh install of OSX, reinstalled ppro twice, disk premission repair, clear cache, and turned off graphic switching.
computer info:
Processor 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1024 MB / Intel HD Graphics 3000
Software OS)

Please file a bug report: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

This is working fine on my MacBook Pro running 10.6.8 with a NVIDIA 330M GPU.

Report · Oct 08, 2012

@Kevin Obvisously its going to run differently on your machine. You're running a different OS version and Graphic card. The bug report has been fill out already. Was hoping someone else on here had an idea. I think its a result of the OS upgrade.

Report · Oct 08, 2012

mogpersons wrote:
The bug report has been fill out already. Was hoping someone else on here had an idea. I think its a result of the OS upgrade.

Thanks. Hopefully someone else will chime in.

Report · Oct 08, 2012

@ EditorPete -

That's what I did. I made a clone of my Lion system before I did the upgrade, just in case everything feel apart. I also did the standard repair permissions, trash preferences and clear the caches, but I don't know if that had any effect. One other note is that I had to manually download the latest CUDA driver after the GPU driver - the CUDA updater in the system preferences pane wasn't working properly.

Good luck and I'm so curious to hear how it works for you...

Report · Oct 11, 2012

I did a clean install of Mountain Lion updated to 10.8.2, CS6 production premium, updated CUDA to 5.0.36 with GPU driver 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02), updated to PP 6.0.2, and have had a great editing experience with performance and dynamic links. Had my first "Serious Error" today. The problem may not be completely fixed but it has been much better than before.

Report · Oct 11, 2012

We have 2 MacPros 4.1 with GTX285 running on lion. All the latest software & drivers etc. And are getting the "Serious Error" after saving and then closing... nearly every time.

We don't seem to have any evident signs of Prem crashing except sometimes the audio starts to sound like it has a digital distortion filter on it, bit like digital scrubbing. When this happens then

Prem eventually crashes.

We also have Imacs running CS6 and do not get any of these issues.

So must be a CUDA thing as all you guys are suggesting and possibly nothing to do with the OS, we have our acceleration off nearly all of the time and things seem to be more stable but then what's the point of the card.

Question: Are you guys running in "memory" or "performance" mode?

Cheers

Report · Oct 11, 2012

Those using ML are reporting better results. A common thread here seems to be that most of the CUDA-related "serious error" problems go away with the combination of PPro 6.02, ML 10.8.2, and the latest graphics drivers downloaded directly from nVidia.

Report · Oct 11, 2012

I started out in this thread with being one of the people without Serious Errors. But, that has changed. I get them more with R3D footage than any other type. But other codecs aren't exactly carefree.

I've discoverd I can banish the Serious Errors temporarily by doing some comination of the following - meaning one or all three:

Delete Pr Preferences

Delete Media Cache

Reinstall CUDA driver

I've repeatedly done these as well, but I'm not sure if they have any effect:

Delete Preview folder

Reinstall nVidia Driver

Reinstall application, then update

But, you never know. So far, I haven't been prevented from finishing a job due to Serious Errors by doing these things.

If Pr works with CUDA off, but not on, reinstall the CUDA driver.

I have another current thread, "Pr corrupts its own media" and I stand by that. I believe it corrupts the Media Cache which causes errors, and the Preferences are way too easily corrupted.

I've also learned that corrupt media will crash Pr.

And some plug-ins will cause Pr to crash (MB Looks is the worst offender of the plugs I use.). These are pretty easy to find after either AME or Pr crash or fail the render and leave a partially exported movie. You can look at the rendered movie, and Pr will crash and/or stop writing just before the clip that contains the effect is about to commence.

10.7.4, MacPro3,1, Pr 602

Report · Oct 11, 2012

Jim, have you considered giving the latest cocktail of 10.8.2, 6.02 and the latest CUDA/GPU drivers a try?

Report · Oct 11, 2012

I have a partition with all that stuff on it, Needles. I updated to the latest OS and CUDA a couple days ago. But, I haven't used it in a work situation.

My early experiences with 10.8.0 were very disappointing.

There's a 10.7.5 out, and I haven't read anything about whether it's a worthwhile upgrade for Pr users.

10.7.4 is the Devil I Know.

What are your thoughts? Is it a well-evidenced, tangible improvement?

Report · Oct 11, 2012

I agree that 10.8.0 was a mess - I moved back to Lion almost immediately. I was still experiencing the Serious Errors back on Lion, but not like I saw when I tried out ML. But, since I updated to the latest stuff mentioned above, I have not had any Serious Errors. I probably just jinxed it for myself, but Premiere has never been more stable and usuable for me. Well-evidenced? All I can say at this point is that I have about 4 days editing with lots of CUDA-accelerated effects, multiple codecs, many dynamic links, sending back and forth to audition, etc...and so far so good!

Here again is my current system:

MacPro 4,1 w/ 32GB RAM

GTX 285

Pr 6.02

Mountain Lion 10.8.2

GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)

CUDA Driver Version: 5.0.36

Aja Lhi

Report · Oct 13, 2012

needles27 wrote:
since I updated to the latest stuff mentioned above, I have not had any Serious Errors. I probably just jinxed it for myself, but Premiere has never been more stable and usuable for me. Well-evidenced? All I can say at this point is that I have about 4 days editing with lots of CUDA-accelerated effects, multiple codecs, many dynamic links, sending back and forth to audition, etc...and so far so good!
Here again is my current system:
MacPro 4,1 w/ 32GB RAM
GTX 285
Pr 6.02
Mountain Lion 10.8.2
GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (304.00.05f02)
CUDA Driver Version: 5.0.36
Aja Lhi

Needles, it's very encouraging to read this from you.

I've updated my test partition to 10.8.2 and the latest CUDA and nVidia drivers, but I still can't make that leap. My ATTO RAID is giving me some problems (unmounting briefly and then remounting) I wasn't getting with 10.7.4, and my FontExplorer library is all kinds of messed up. When I updated to 10.7, I had to take two full days to reinstall and organize my thousands of fonts. I can't afford to do that again during this peak period of my work cycle.

And not only that, 10.8 is WAY slower than 10.7. I get lots of beach balls I wasn't getting before. Opening apps takes about four times longer. I don't see how anybody considers this an "upgrade," if this is typical.

But, as I mentioned, thus far, I haven't been shut down by the Serious Errors. I have my routine of fixes, and they have put me back in business after a short delay... until the next Serious Error. I had four yesterday. That's about average.

BTW, AJA updated their Control Panel and Adobe driver a few days ago for the Kona line. And I also just discovered a new nVidia driver that requres 10.7.5. I think I'll try this new cocktail of updates, and see what happens.

Adobe Community

The Mac CS6 "Serious Error" thread