Phocus locks up completely..

robertpoll · July 05, 2008, 04:18:45 AM

Hi,

I've been suffering lockups when shooting tethered and spent some time today trying to recreate the problem, with reasonable success. Was wondering whether anyone had seen similar problems, or better still could also recreate the lock up. Here's what I did...

1. Select the scratchpad folder, and make it the capture destination.
2. Close any other tabs in the thumbnail window so that you only have scratchpad (this seems to be an important step but can't guarantee 100%).
3. Clear out the folder
4. Shoot enough images so that you get scrollbars in the thumbs window.
5. Shoot a burst of about five photos as quickly as the camera will allow
6. As soon as you have released the shutter on the last shot, hide Phocus using apple-H. Timing of this does seem important, it doesn't cause the problem every time, but maybe two times out of three.
7. Click on Phocus in the dock to un-hide it.
8. Wait for all images to appear in Phocus.
9. Now take another shot.

What I see is that the last shot never makes it to Phocus, and if you subsequently try to do anything you get the spinning colour wheel and the whole machine is locked up - you can't even force quit Phocus. Interestingly, the camera thinks Phocus has the image as the red light doesn't flash. Also you can tell when it's going to happen, as the hide takes a bit longer than usual, perhaps half a second or so.

Would be really grateful if someone could try to recreate to problem!

...rob

Chris Crumley · July 19, 2008, 04:26:20 PM

Robert,

I get no where near the success you do. I get an occasional frame to display, but generally, trying Phocus tethered on MBPro 2.6GHz with max RAM I can get nothing but spinning color wheels. I set up a new User, same thing. I talked to NickT some about this weeks ago and haven't had time to mess with it. FC 4.8.6 works fine for my H1/H2 39CFH.

I'll have to call HBlad USA next week and see if Eric or someone can makes sense of it. I like the looks of Phocus and hate not being able to use it for work.

mauro risch · July 20, 2008, 12:39:36 PM

Phocus is working just perfect. The set is H2D-39, MBP 2x duo 2.33, 17', 3GB ram, 100GB HD. Mac OS 10.5.4. Granite cables. It works just the way I'd expect. The clients feel clearly more friendly to the images on Phocus when I show the images. Final quality of the images, spot on. Exporting images on tiff or DNG are very fast. Color balance, easy. The 2.6 MBP should be even better.

Chris Crumley · July 21, 2008, 04:00:47 AM

Mauro,

Thanks for the feedback. I've had unusual things happen with the H1 updated to an H2 and the 39CFH back. Eric (HBlad Atlanta) got comfortable with the problem being real and reported it to the Danes and it got fixed (Flexcolor). This may be another case of the software not being friendly to the back+H2 combination.

Chris Crumley · July 25, 2008, 01:13:27 AM

I downloaded and installed Phocus 1.0.1 yesterday and have done a dozen or so tethered captures. Only one crash. Because of the crash, I don't trust Phocus yet and wouldn't use it for a shoot with people or clients, but I'm hopeful now. I love the GUI, so I'm hoping Phocus settles in. More testing today.

robertpoll · July 25, 2008, 02:05:23 AM

Thanks for the comments guys. Chris, if you get a minute, and have the inclination I'd be interested to know whether the hide/unhide thing I mentioned at the beginning of the post causes you to hang. I can recreate it pretty easily but not sure whether it's a general problem or just me. Would be interesting to know as I believe the only Phocus crashes I've seen so far have been either the one above, or when exporting TIFFS. If that's the case, bith can be avoided quite easily when shooting.

thanks!

...rob

alanshoot · October 04, 2008, 05:05:44 AM

Hi folks,

I have another Phocus lockup problem. Everything was perfect til about a month ago. First thing, one of my batteries gave empty readings even after overnight charges. so I went to the dealer; they reset the battery....good to go. THe next day, Phocus crashed during a shoot. I'd had crashes before. I just had to quit and restart the app. But now, even after force-quitting the computer won't recognize the camera. I have to pull the batt, and shut the computer down for several minutes before I can start again. after several tries at firmware reloads etc. The camera's out for repair. However, even with the second loaner, the problem still arises, so I got a loaner computer while I had the firewire ports replaced on my MacPro, and still I get the unfixable crashes. And to top it all off, now my desktop MacPro, to which I connect the laptop via firewire target mode, has no firewire at all.

I really can't replace logic boards every week in two computers, but so far, nobody has any explanation for the problem, let alone a solution. If Phocus weren't 100% better for the kind of client oversight, tethered shooting I do, I'd go back to flex. If there's anyone out there who can shed some light on this I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks... ak

robertpoll · October 04, 2008, 05:22:06 AM

This sounds a lot like the problem I have. In my case you can avoid it by not hiding Phocus (you need to avoid putting the mac into sleep mode also). The odd thing is that it will carry on working after you've unhidden (or woken the mac up) so long as you allow each shot to fully download before the next. As soon as you get a shots queuing up it locks up the machine completely. Alan, have you tried making absolutley sure not to hide/sleep Phocus?

thanks,

..rob