exported files cause crash

[apeckman]

My problem is that when I try to import files into Final Cut Express 2.0.3 (or iMovie 4.0.1)-- and these are files I created and exported (in wav or aiff format) from Audacity 1.2.6-- my Final Cut Express (or iMovie) application crashes. Every time.

Background: I have been recording live music on a yamaha digital multitrack and have successfully used Audacity to re-record onto my computer. I was able to do this with Soundflower. Now I can play those files in Audacity and I can import them into iTunes. No problem there.

Several days ago I created an FCE project and was able to import an audacity sound file successfully. All was perfect. Then I had a seemingly unrelated problem, that turned out to be common among YouTube users on old machines like mine, where I could no longer watch newly uploaded videos on YouTube. It had something to do with YouTube changing from h263 to h264 encoding, I believe, though I still don't know what that means. So in trying to troubleshoot that problem, I reinstalled FCE, among other things.

The next time I tried to open the FCE project (the one which had the successfully imported Audacity wav file), FCE crashed. So I restarted the program, created a new project, and tried to import the audio. FCE crashed. Every time I try, crash. I tried re-recording several times and importing the new recordings into a new FCE project. Crash. I tried using a different HD to save the exported file and tried again to import in FCE. Crash. I've verified, repaired permissions, etc, several times. I have plenty of room on both external HDs.

I'm wondering if I should try reinstalling Audacity, if that would make any difference, but I see from other posts that it looks tricky to uninstall and remove all old audacity files.

Help! (please?)

p.s. I'm running os 10.3.9 on a powerbook G4 ppc,

[kozikowski]

<<<I have plenty of room on both external HDs.>>>

And the System Drive? How full is that one? Do you perform the "periodic" command line tools or run MacJanitor? Verify Disk and Repair Permissions? All drives on a video machine should have at least 10% free space at bare minimum.

<<<I still don't know what that means.>>>

h.264/MPEG4 is a much better compression scheme. It allows live HiDef video on the web and is the basis of Apple AAC and Windows Media WMA. Our higher end video conference units use h.264. The older MPEG2 is the basis of digital television broadcasting and Movie DVDs.

<<<I'm wondering if I should try reinstalling Audacity, if that would make any difference, but I see from other posts that it looks tricky to uninstall and remove all old audacity files.>>>

Not that tricky. Let us know about your system drive. That's where my money is.

Koz

[apeckman]

Thanks for replying so quickly.

My system drive has 8 GB free (of a total 28 GB drive).

I have verified and repaired permissions several times recently on this drive.

"Do you perform the "periodic" command line tools or run MacJanitor?"

I don't know about command line tools or MacJanitor ... please explain.

Thank you!

[apeckman]

Okay, I downloaded and ran MacJanitor ... took several minutes and looked like it was doing stuff.

Then I restarted and tried to import sound file into new FCE project ...

Crash.

Any suggestions you have would be really appreciated.

[apeckman]

BTW, I'm able to import non-Audacity files (e.g. music files from cds, etc.) into FCE, no problem.

[kozikowski]

MacJanitor is a series of instructions neatly packaged that you can perform yourself in "Terminal" if you want to. OS-X is a UNIX based operating system and as such, it likes to write everything down as it goes. Those lists get really long and can start to affect machine performance. MacJanitor cleans them all up and compresses them for storage. The first time it runs it can take a good long time. Successive passes won't take as long.

What you're supposed to do is leave your machine alive and lit up all day and all night (nobody ever does this). If you do, each morning the periodic tools will run by themselves at 4am, 5am, and 6am. OS-X is a cat. It licks itself clean each day.

Go into Audacity Preferences and make sure you're set for either 44100, 16-bit (not 32) Stereo (not Mono), the Music CD standard --or-- 48000, 16-bit, Stereo the television sound standard. Either should work.

You can open up one of your older "broken" sound files in QuickTime and press Apple-I to get the INFO panel. What does that say?

Koz

[apeckman]

Okay, I just tried opening my quicktime app and it crashes every time. I think we may have found the issue. More background: I've had problems with quicktime messing up video playback in iMovie and FCE in the past, so recently when I was troubleshooting I downgraded my QT to 6.5.2 (I was running QT 7.5 and thought that version might be giving me problems.)

Should I try reinstalling 6.5.2, or is there another version you would recommend given my system?

Thanks so much for all your help, Koz.

Andrew

[apeckman]

p.s. I used Pacifist to install older version of QT.

[kozikowski]

We didn't allow our 10.3.9 machine to go to QT7. There were some really bad things that happened when Panther people tried to go too far.

Everything stands on QT services. I'm surprised that you could back up to an earlier version and everything would still work. Actually, it doesn't, does it? I would expect iTunes to be profoundly unhappy with you and I bet some of your library vanishes.

We had one Mac that got upgraded too far for the service it was in. It created all sorts of compatibility, connection, and mounting problems. We had to blow away the OS and start over.

My money is on you doing the same thing to get the stability back.

Koz

[apeckman]

Everything stands on QT services. I'm surprised that you could back up to an earlier version and everything would still work. Actually, it doesn't, does it? I would expect iTunes to be profoundly unhappy with you and I bet some of your library vanishes.

It DID work ... and then it didn't. I did create one FCE project and was able to import the audacity file. Now that I'm thinking of it, maybe that was BEFORE I downgraded to QT 6.5.2. ... Doh! I guess I shouldn't have done that, but I was so frustrated by not being able to see YouTube vids I just had to try it.

Haven't noticed any changes or problems with iTunes, but I haven't used it much since then, so that may reveal itself later.

We had one Mac that got upgraded too far for the service it was in. It created all sorts of compatibility, connection, and mounting problems. We had to blow away the OS and start over.

My money is on you doing the same thing to get the stability back.

I was afraid you were going to say that. Okay. I've reinstalled the OS once before, and my memory is that it wreaked havoc with many of the apps I use (I believe I lost all my playlists on iTunes, for example). Is there any way to minimize this?

Also, once I've reinstalled the OS, what Quicktime version should I update to? Should I go back to 7.5, since I was able to import successfully once using that version? (I've since learned that 6.5.2 doesn't do much better with the new h264 encoding on YouTube, and that I can workaround it by adding &fmt=5 to the web address.)