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. 

[needles27]

Interesting.  I have a wacom tablet, but have just unintalled the drivers.  I also just installed the latest CUDA drivers recently released, and will do some more editing later today.  I'll see if there is any difference.

[ExactImage]

No Wacom drivers here.

[Jim Curtis]

I have Wacom installed, but I'm one of the lucky ones not getting the serious error, so far.

[ExactImage]

How about Colorista II ?

[needles27]

I have that. 

[Jim Curtis]

I have the demo installed, but don't use it.  As a test, I just applied it to a clip and scrubbed back and forth without a crash.

[genefama]

I have a Wacom tablet.  I doubt it causes my crashes.  I think Premiere Pro CS6 has knocked out my Mac Pro audio, though.  I have a grey "muted" symbol for audio status and nothing I've tried can unmute it.  It happened after a Premiere Pro crash.  Highly unstable.

I wonder if Adobe's push to recruit Final Cut Pro X customers, or conversely, Apple's decision to alienate their own pro users, plays a role. After all, Premiere Pro is the only Creative Suite product that doesn't perform solidly in OSX Lion. It's also the only one that competes directly with an Apple product.

It seems a big coincidence that when they ruined Final Cut and started hemmoraghing customers that things suddenly became unusably buggy on the Mac for the program everyone was switching to. 

I'm sure I'm being paranoid.

[needles27]

Uh oh...when troubleshooting turns to conspiracy theories, then we are officially out of ideas.  

[Guest]

@needles27, did the new drivers help any of the crashing?

@Jim Curtis, I see you updated a partitioned drive to 10.7.4, is this the machine you respond to above regarding:

      "I have Wacom installed, but I'm one of the lucky ones not getting the serious error, so far."

If so are you running CUDA? what drivers? did you install the trial of Production Premium, Creative Cloud, or install from disks? I really want to track down the issue, and you may be able to provide answers if you have a stable OSX10.7.4 Premiere experience.  Thanks for your postings and willingness to help even though you don't have the issues.

@ExactImage, I do not have Colorista II

My most stable operations so far is to not use my wacom, and don't open PS or Bridge.  I tested opening both PS and Bridge and I haven't crashed, but in general I've found more stability without those applications open.  I'm seeing more frequent crashes with .prprj files sizes above 50MB, this may just be a coincidence but thought it's worth mentioning.

[needles27]

I haven't had a chance to test enough, so I can't tell yet if the latest CUDA deivers have helped.  I will get back to the group when I have something more useful to share.    

[Jim Curtis]

@Jim Curtis, I see you updated a partitioned drive to 10.7.4, is this the machine you respond to above regarding:

      "I have Wacom installed, but I'm one of the lucky ones not getting the serious error, so far."

If so are you running CUDA? what drivers? did you install the trial of Production Premium, Creative Cloud, or install from disks? I really want to track down the issue, and you may be able to provide answers if you have a stable OSX10.7.4 Premiere experience.  Thanks for your postings and willingness to help even though you don't have the issues.

Glad to help, if I can, RB.  I already posted my CUDA drivers above.  I had previously used Migration Assistant to update my Lion partition, but Pr wouldn't launch at all.  So, I uninstalled the CS6 Production Premium suite and re-installed from the downloaded installer.  I skipped installling all the templates and content.

The main difference I'm seeing is that I didn't run any nVidia driver installers on Lion.  Chris Bobotis at Mettle.com told me that GPU drivers are built into the Lion OS, and since it was working OK, decided not to run anything extra.

I did update CUDA to the most recent the night before last.  I worked a bit on Pr yesterday using my Kona, and didn't see any changes, plus or minus.

Here's what may be a real challenge for us:  external monitoring in Pr now relies on four separate vendors:  Adobe, Apple, AJA (etc.), and nVidia.  Lots of potential for finger-pointing.

I have already requested to AJA that they write am Adobe driver for 10.6.8.  I am much more comfortable with 10.6.8, and would love to stay there.  The ONLY reason I'm looking into Lion at this point is for external monitoring with Pr.  Everything else is working just fine.  Please join me in making the same request to AJA.  Maybe I don't understand the inner workings of Mercury Transmit.  But, it seems to me that would make life simpler and more stable for all concerned.

And at the risk of repeating myself, the external monitoring experience with Media Composer 6 is as slick and smooth and stable as one could ask.  That seems to exculpate nVidia and Apple, and point the aforementioned finger directly at AJA and/or Adobe.

[ExactImage]

Sadly, I don't think this problem is isolated to Lion only.  I'm seeing the Serious Error dialog in Snow Leopard too

[Jim Curtis]

I wonder if BMD, Bluefish and Matrox customers are having a carefree experience.  If so, that would seem to implicate the AJA driver.

[ExactImage]

I don't have AJA installed.

I do have an Intensity Pro though....

[Guest]

I'm running Matrox MXO2mini with MAX,  I really haven't run Premiere CS6 without the Matrox drivers installed to see if that helps the issue. 

@Jim Curtis, sorry I didn't see your drivers listed above before, I'm not exactly clear if you have the AJA drivers installed on your Lion drive, if you don't, it's sounding like we all have some type of 3rd party monitoring driver installed.

I initially thought it could be a hyperthreading issue as Jim Curtis has a 3.1 system, and a lot of us that have 4.1 and 5.1 systems are seeing the same behavior, but ExactImage stated he's running a 3.1 system as well and getting the error on OSX 10.7.4.

Anyone not running 3rd party monitoring drivers and not seeing the serious error, if so, I think it will be the case of finger pointing Jim Curtis pointed out above.

[needles27]

I'm losing touch with what I have tried/what has been installed, uninstalled, etc.  But, I think I was seeing the error before AJA released their CS6 Drivers.  But, I did have the old versions of AJA stuff on my system and the card in the machine from the 5.5 days....but they were inactive. 

Also, is anyone else (especially those with AJA hardware/software) experiencing an issue where you hide Pr and come back to work, and the sequences play back in slow-motion with 1/2 speed audio?  Throw another issue on the pile for me.

[Guest]

@needles27, I'm the same way, i've just tried so many things to get a stable system I'm kind of at a loss, it could be any number of combinations of drivers, updates, OSX version etc........ 

[EditorPete]

Im running Mac OS 10.7.4 2x3ghz quad core intel xeon with 14 gig of ram,  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 is my graphics card

I updated to CS6 production suite a few weeks ago, didn't have too many crashes then. I recentley updated my os from previous version ( I think it was 10.7.3 ) forget how apple numbers there updates. I started getting weird crashes in PrP and also had some OS audio wierdness ( it muted without me able to unmute ) I've been reading this thread and today I updated CUDA and went to Nvidia and updated my card driver as well...Been running for 3 hours without a crash....

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Pete

[Guest]

@EditorPete, thanks for sharing you experience with the updated NVIDIA drivers, are you running any 3rd party monitoring drivers, AJA, Matrox, BMD, Bluefish, etc...?

[needles27]

@EditorPete -

Also, what specifically are the error messages, and can you find a pattern when it crashes?  Can you PM me one of your crash logs?

[EditorPete]

I will be back in front of my machine on Monday, if I have more problems I will let you know.

Thanks,

Pete

[ExactImage]

Again, I've seen this error twice in the last 24 hours on Snow Leopard, so I'm really no longer convinced it's a Lion Specific problem. 

[Jim Curtis]

If you're getting the errors, please tell us what you are doing immediately prior to getting the errors.

[WorldOfCrap]

All sorts of things have caused these errors, but now I'm getting them simply by opening up a clip in the viewer window and hitting "I" to mark my in point. Triggers it every time.

This has rendered Premiere CS6 unusable, as you can imagine. I just tried updating both NVIDIA drivers, to no avail. Pulling out my CS5.5 discs as we speak.

[Guest]

@Media OCD,  I've been having fairly consistent results with resetting my PRAM,  restart while holding opt+command+p+r until the "C-chord" chimes twice and then release.  This has helped quite abit in my "serious error" crashes. Also, try deleting your Pr preference file in ~User/Library/applicationsupport/adobe/Premiere Pro/6.  Hopefully it will help you.