Out of curiosity -- anybody got what they would call a VERY STABLE Media Composer on Mac?  My Avid editors have a constant stream of crash / hang / freezes.. handful of times a day adding up to a very frustrating experience for them.

I've chased vague individual bug solutions down the rabbit hole of upgrades -- currently trying 8.4.4, but not really any overall stability.  Individual issues go, come back, go again, only to be replaced by new/different symptoms.

So I'm wondering if there's anyone who's frozen on a (recent) version they find really generally stable?  Share your hardware/sw/OS/environment information?

--Rob 

We have 5 suites all running 8.3.1 and Mac OS X 10.9.5 and everything is pretty stable.  We have very few crashes.  I've been evaluating later versions of MC on Yosemite and haven't found a combo to be stable enough for everyday usage.  All of our systems are the trashcan macs.  2 with AJA IO XT and 1 with Mojo DX.  Hope that helps.

Hi cmush,

We were on OSX 10.9.5 / MC 8.3.1 / ioXT for quite a while.  It was better than previous builds, but not without its freezes/hangs.  Especially the symptom where the app would just turn non-responsive (but keep playing out if you were playing down a timeline)

Can I ask what AJA driver/firmware you're using?

--Rob

Worked for months on 8.3.1 / 10.8.5 and it was a great combo - though it has a bug specific to BWF that hit me directly.

Been on 8.4.4 and so far so good. The "render on the fly" bug is still there but that's more cosmetic that really problematic.

Overall there are two things I learned about MC:

- 3rd party video card/boxes are not well integrated. Aja is probably the best out there when it comes to decent drivers.

- working with CAPS LOCK engaged all day long is the best recipe for frequent crashes. 

Thx for asking this question! Almost everyday I think to ask it because I haven't seen a stable version of media composer on my 3 macs over the past year. I had one trash can which I sold because avid takes forever to render h.264 videos on Xeon Processors and now have two maxed out 2013 iMacs. Over the year I've had all the versions of Yosemite and I think avid 8.2 through 8.4 and all the . releases. I've hopped from one version to another always looking to escape the frequent freezes and crashes and bugs (especially with 3rd party plug-ins even just the ones in the Avid Production Pack). I've done about 6 fresh installs of OSx over the year. But I will say so far 8.4.4 seems to be the most stable of all the versions I've used this year but I've only had it installed about a week.

I'm starting to think this kind of instablility is just par for the course with editing software these days? I even tried to jump to FCPx hoping that since it's written by apple it'd be rock solid but in limited use I've already seen plenty of crashes and freezes. And I've seen so many crazy bugs and crashes on Premiere I really don't want to have to move back to it. I was thinking of trying Grass Valley Edius in hopes it's more stable and able to do realtime playback of 4k. But don't want to buy new software only to discover it's just as buggy as every other editing application. Anyway hopefully 8.4.4 keeps playing nice :)

Yessssss.

I would love it if we could somehow start a "stability matrix"

OSX version / MC version / Machine Type / IO cards devices

Could that work???

Isn't that what the idea is behind the "qualified systems" document?

All the freezes and bugs I've seen have been on systems from the qualified systems document :) 

Has anyone stopped to think that aside from AVID that it might actually be Mac OS X which is buggy, unstable and fails to play nicely with 3rd party applications and plug-ins? :-)

I was using Avid on a PC before a mac using windows 8 and Avid 8.0 to 8.2. Had similar freezes and crashes and that was why I initially switched to OSx figuring with less hardware options, companies like Avid would have a better chance of making their software stable. It wasn't the case. For awhile I'd be editing on my Mac Trashcan and my Assitant editor would be editing on my PC and we'd both yell out whenever either of us had a crash or freeze. And on any given week we'd be about even.

While I have 8.3 loaded on an external SSD, my day in day out system on the trashcan is OS 10.9.2 and the MC 7.0.3 that still supports PhraseFind.  My external card is the BMD Ultra 4K, running on an old version of SW that still works.

Crashes once a week if I get too agressive in the timeline scrubbing.

If you have the right amount of RAM, a beefier video card then you can get away with say a Mac 4,1 or 5,1. With the iMacs and MacBook Pros you'll need an SSD and a Core i7 processor and the largest video card.  But AVID has always worked best when you have an outboard video processing unit like their Mojo DX, Nitris, Blackmagic Decklink or AJA box.

I've got to disagree with you on that last bit.  I've honestly found Media Composer the most stable in software only mode with no output cards.  A close second in stability is running Avid hardware- we have had a lot of success with the Mojo DX.  Once you start factoring in third party I/O cards you are at the mercy of the third party Open I/O drivers, which can be scary (especially when dealing with Blackmagic).

I'm running MC 7.0.5/Symphony Option on a 2010 12-core with OS 10.9.5 and a Nitris DX.  It's totally rock-solid!  I'm still using 7.0.5 on this particular system because of Phrase Find.  But it's been running like a champ 6 days a week for several years.  

We have a total of 4 MC setups, all on Mac.  The other 3 are software only/MacBook Pro setups running 8.4.x. on 10.10.x.  The software only setups are used by our producers mostly for offline logging and prep so they are not at all pushing any limits.  But they have been trouble free too.  

I've owned nearly every MC/Sym system since 1993 starting with an old Mac Quadro, then tranistioning to PC around 2000, and then back to Macs in 2010.  I was also an ACSR/Mac from 1996-2004.  In my opinion, my current system (7.0.5/12-Core/Nitris) is by far the most stable of any Avid system I've ever cut with.  Because I cut many long format programs, not having Phrase Find capability is show stopper for me.  

There are many new features in 8.x that are very appealing, and obviously my current config can't run forever, but in the meantime, I'm very, very happy with this setup.

The version I used all last year was 7.0.4.2 on 10.9.5 and no consistent crashes - not saying there's not some strange behaviour, especially with audio mixing every now and again - but overall very good. Takes some time to get the BM drivers and AMA plugins correct. Used everyday of the week very stable.