importerREDserver Crashes Like Its A Party - Premiere CS5.5

[Michael Romano]

So I've been cutting a 4.5K 23.976 RED native project to try out CS5.5. Sequences using the 4.5K preset, Adobe supplied.

Up to this point it has been smooth, really smooth in fact. But this is bad.

Seemingly at random the timeline refuses to play back. Once this happens neither the Source window or timeline will give it up. No error is provided in the GUI and the entire interface appears to function, just no playback. Sometimes, if you hit play, it will play some 20sec later and then stop working again.

Possibly has a connection to scrubbing on timeline backwards/forwards quickly but I can't say for sure.

Restarting PPCS5.5 sometimes works, sometimes not. I even cold rebooted and it happened the very first time I tried to playback.

Being the curious one I found in the console that "importerREDserver" is crashing. Anybody else have this problem? If you're brave enough attached ZIP has the crash logs, too many characters for inline!

I'm basically shut down over here doing reboots and such. Looking for some Adobe love. Any suggestions appreciated.

System specs:
OSX 10.6.8
2X 2.93GHz MacPro
2X GeForce GT120 512MB (No CUDA yet)
8GB RAM
12TB RAID (CalDigit)
Adobe MC CS5.5

 

[Fabricio Morato]

Hi,

I can't be much of a help, but I notice that your system has only 8GB of RAM, and the red importer uses a lot a ram... can you monitor your RAM to see if this might be the case?
Other than this I can't think of anything else at the moment...better wait for David to look into this...

 

[hans de vries]

I'm no expert either but I'm learning. You're ram doesn't seem to be enough; I had trouble until I had 18 gbs of ram, of which 15 goes to ppro; the fact that you don't have cuda doesn't help; I bought a quadro 4000, which was on sale at b&photo. There was a file in the user>library>preferences folder that I was advised to delete; I'm on holidays now so I can't help you with the name of the file right now, you can also find it on the adobe forums but don't ask me where; but I deleted it; and I stopped using the sheer codec, which I was told messes with ppro; everything is running fine now.
Oh I also deleted one piece in the timeline that made everything hang up; I don't know why, but deleting it stopped the trouble; maybe some corrupted file.

I understood from the forums that the system requirements posted on the adobe website are dictated by the marketing guys and not by the engineers. The system specs mentioned are to start up the program, not to work with it (is what I as told)

 

[David McGavran]

So I've been cutting a 4.5K 23.976 RED native project to try out CS5.5. Sequences using the 4.5K preset, Adobe supplied.

Up to this point it has been smooth, really smooth in fact. But this is bad.

Seemingly at random the timeline refuses to play back. Once this happens neither the Source window or timeline will give it up. No error is provided in the GUI and the entire interface appears to function, just no playback. Sometimes, if you hit play, it will play some 20sec later and then stop working again.

Possibly has a connection to scrubbing on timeline backwards/forwards quickly but I can't say for sure.

Restarting PPCS5.5 sometimes works, sometimes not. I even cold rebooted and it happened the very first time I tried to playback.

Being the curious one I found in the console that "importerREDserver" is crashing. Anybody else have this problem? If you're brave enough attached ZIP has the crash logs, too many characters for inline!

I'm basically shut down over here doing reboots and such. Looking for some Adobe love. Any suggestions appreciated.

System specs:
OSX 10.6.8
2X 2.93GHz MacPro
2X GeForce GT120 512MB (No CUDA yet)
8GB RAM
12TB RAID (CalDigit)
Adobe MC CS5.5

Thanks for the crash report!!! I am sending to the correct people.

Thanks (others this is very useful info if you see problems and forward them to us)

Cheers

Dave

 

[Michael Romano]

Thanks to all who responded. This machine is stock right now, I have 24GB RAM in the mail and 2x QUADRO 4000 on the horizon. The memory usage isn't all that much though, when experiencing the crash I see some 5GB free. I've worked on the very same project with all the media over GigabitE on a 2010 MacBook Pro without incident - It also only has 8GB RAM.

I also forgot to mention in the OP, there were multiple instances on importerREDserver running, like 8 or 10 of them.

I'm specifically avoiding a full re-install of the CS software in hopes that a bug can be resolved - This whole operation for me is to test the reliability of Adobe's platform which has been pretty stellar for the most part! I am loving the dual system love, something I specifically requested a while back and its nice to see Adobe listening. Dave - FCPX & CS5.5 have been your perfect storm!

Please keep me posted on the outcome of those error reports.

 

[Michael Romano]

UPDATE

Thinking about the RAM comments I decided to check it out. The importerREDserver crashes and this is what I'm seeing in Activity Monitor:

FREE: 4.12GB
WIRED: 532.0GB
ACTIVE: 1.88GB
INACTIVE: 1.47GB (Prob. has to do with iTunes, only thing that ran before PP since reboot)
USED: 3.87GB
VM SIZE: 176.97GB (I've been told this doesn't much matter even though the size is huge)
PAGE INS: 391.8MB
PAGE OUTS: 0 Bytes (This makes me think RAM is NOT an issue on this machine)
SWAP USED 0 Bytes

CONSOLE REPORT BELOW

7/28/11 2:25:20 PM	Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5[2352]	OS_ViewContainer Cocoa view is <DVAMacContainerView: 0x132bbab20>
7/28/11 2:30:40 PM	com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[366]	([0x0-0x53053].com.adobe.ImporterREDServer[2467]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error
7/28/11 2:30:40 PM	ReportCrash[2479]	Saved crash report for ImporterREDServer[2467] version ImporterREDServer version 5.5.0 (5.5.0.0) to /Users/michaelromano/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ImporterREDServer_2011-07-28-143040_Norris.crash
7/28/11 2:31:47 PM	Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5[2352]	[PremiereCocoaMacApplication handleMenuCommand:1314149236 from <DVAMacMenuItem: 0x12b818290 Default Still...>]
7/28/11 2:32:30 PM	Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5[2352]	[PremiereCocoaMacApplication handleMenuCommand:1314149236 from <DVAMacMenuItem: 0x12b818290 Default Still...>]
7/28/11 2:33:29 PM	com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[366]	([0x0-0x48048].com.adobe.ImporterREDServer[2390]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error
7/28/11 2:33:29 PM	ReportCrash[2528]	Saved crash report for ImporterREDServer[2390] version ImporterREDServer version 5.5.0 (5.5.0.0) to /Users/michaelromano/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ImporterREDServer_2011-07-28-143329_Norris.crash
7/28/11 2:34:15 PM	com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[366]	([0x0-0x51051].com.adobe.ImporterREDServer[2464]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error
7/28/11 2:34:15 PM	ReportCrash[2528]	Saved crash report for ImporterREDServer[2464] version ImporterREDServer version 5.5.0 (5.5.0.0) to /Users/michaelromano/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ImporterREDServer_2011-07-28-143415_Norris.crash
7/28/11 2:34:20 PM	com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[366]	([0x0-0x52052].com.adobe.ImporterREDServer[2466]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error
7/28/11 2:34:20 PM	ReportCrash[2528]	Saved crash report for ImporterREDServer[2466] version ImporterREDServer version 5.5.0 (5.5.0.0) to /Users/michaelromano/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ImporterREDServer_2011-07-28-143420_Norris.crash

What is very interesting is that sometimes it will start back up and play rather choppy. I went from pre-instability 6x instances of importerREDserver running to a post instability 11x. The log seems to be trying to restart it and then it promptly crashes again.

Other related processes running while issue persists:
Adobe QT32 Server
CS5.5 Service Manager
dynamiclinkmanager
FMCore

Everything else seems to behave fine, system stability is perfect.

 

[Michael Romano]

FURTHER UPDATE!

I think I may have solved the issue:
BIG MOMMA DADDY CORRUPT CLIP

Hadn't seem this single frame because I either blinked or it crashes in another part of the clip and this is just the visual manifestation of the error.

I can verify it crashes importerREDserver on two different machines and that it crashes RCX 487 when attempting to go to any resolution higher than 1/4.

I'll be keeping it off the timeline and I'll post back if this indeed solves the issue.

Thoughts on crash error:
It might be nice if Premiere knew that importerREDserver had crashed and notified the user with a GUI message. You could even tell them to check the clips frame by frame in RCX for such errors.

Adobe Team: I can't share this specific clip for further testing due to NDA but this error is not unheard of in bad copies or mistakes made in camera. I've seen it posted before and I'm sure you could get a copy of an offending file from someone.

 

[Michael Romano]

CONFIRMED

This clip was the trouble maker. Removed it and all is back to normal.

For those interested in a fix on clips like these read on...

Open the offender up in RCX
Make in point at frame 0
Make out point one frame BEFORE the erroneous frame
Export via R3D trim function (In export tab)

With same clip in player, hit ALT + O (Clears In/Out points)
Make in point at one frame AFTER erroneous frame
Make out point at the last frame
Export via R3D trim function (In export tab)

You'll now have all but the offender frame free in two different files. This is not a perfect solution but in this case, and many others, it saves the day.

 

[David McGavran]

CONFIRMED

This clip was the trouble maker. Removed it and all is back to normal.

For those interested in a fix on clips like these read on...

Open the offender up in RCX
Make in point at frame 0
Make out point one frame BEFORE the erroneous frame
Export via R3D trim function (In export tab)

With same clip in player, hit ALT + O (Clears In/Out points)
Make in point at one frame AFTER erroneous frame
Make out point at the last frame
Export via R3D trim function (In export tab)

You'll now have all but the offender frame free in two different files. This is not a perfect solution but in this case, and many others, it saves the day.

Glad that this fixes your problem. We try and be robust about crashes in third party libraries (in this case the RED SDK) but it isn't always easy without an actual crashing file If you have any that cause this it would be a great test file for us to develop against.

To answer one of your questions, we do run up to core number of ImporterREDServers. That is some special performance sauce we add to the red workflow to make it snappy.

Cheers

Dave

 

[Michael Romano]

Dave - PM sent