What To Do If Final Cut Pro Crashes
FCP has crashed randomly on some students. A crash means that you get an error message, the computer stops responding to your inputs, the program starts acting strangely, or some combination of the above. If you have a computer problem, use this strategy:
- If the computer is acting in ways that seem wrong to you, DON'T IGNORE IT and wait for a serious problem to develop. You are much more likely to lose work this way.
- If you crash and FCP doesn't close itself, try to save your project UNDER A DIFFERENT NAME. Otherwise, you may accidentally save a bad file over a good file. If you cannot save your project, you have no choice but to go to the next step.
- After trying to save your project under a different name, close FCP.
- Once FCP is closed, DON'T re-open it and try to continue editing. If there is a problem, continuing to work will compound it and you may lose more work. Shut down the computer using the menu item under "Special." The computer power should be off. Wait 3 seconds. Turn on the computer and restart.
- Reopen the project and check if you have lost anything. If your project is really screwed up, open the last autosave version of your project and thank your lucky stars that you only lost 10 minutes of work. You DID set your preferences so you know where your autosave files are, didn't you?
- If you cannot find your autosave project, do not panic. It is somewhere on your drive or the editing computer. Do a file search for the date that you last edited the project (you can look at the time-stamp on any other Final Cut Pro file to see the format). You should be able to find the autosave file using this strategy.
- If you have never tried to open an autosave version of the project, you may want to try doing that before you crash so you can make sure that your autosave is set up correctly.
- Make sure you check your preferences EVERY TIME you edit. Incorrect preferences will make it almost impossible to recover from a crash.
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