Video corruption with FCP 5.1 on 24" Aluminum iMac

[zimagold]

Had my 24" Al iMac for a couple of weeks. Everything works great, but I've encountered a video issue that seems different from the ones I've read about. It has happened twice so far. While editing in Final Cut Pro, all of a sudden, the video turns into random colored blocks. Any video displayed on the viewer or canvas is affected. Restarting FCP does not solve the problem - only a system reboot. Meanwhile, video played outside of FCP (using Quicktime or VLC) is unaffected.

I have not done the 1.1 upgrade after reading about some of the problems. I'm also in the middle of a project, so I generally will never do an upgrade at this stage. Seeing if anybody else has run into this or if you've heard of possible solutions.

Thanks,

 

[djc6]

I started experiencing corruption in Pages today.. does it look anything like my screenshot?

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/4264965/

 

[zimagold]

No, it looks different. Only the area inside the video window is corrupted. It shows as blocks of colors (mostly pink and green). I should've taken a screenshot of it - will do so next time.

The corruption actually ended up freezing the system. I had to do a hard reset with the button. It sure looks like an ATI driver problem. I'm contemplating the upgrade to 1.1. I'll report back if I do it.

 

[Luap]

Call Apple at once and report/log the issue. £10 says "We've not heard of this happening before.." Which is complete BS. Freezing and corruption issues are all over Apples own forums, and enough people have reported the problem that they cant not be aware of it.
The bad news is, people are starting to spring up with evidence to prove it is a hardware fault.
Im on my 2nd alu iMac now, and that has exactly the same fault as the first one

 

[zimagold]

I've now experienced the same type of video corruption as posted by djc6. Seems like it's becoming a daily occurrence (strange, since it worked fine for the first 2 weeks). Screenshot below.

This results in a system freeze which required a hard reset. What are you guys doing about this? I'm not used to Macs crashing...this is like working on a PC all over again.

 

[mavis]

I've now experienced the same type of video corruption as posted by djc6. Seems like it's becoming a daily occurrence (strange, since it worked fine for the first 2 weeks). Screenshot below.

This results in a system freeze which required a hard reset. What are you guys doing about this? I'm not used to Macs crashing...this is like working on a PC all over again.

I don't have a Mac yet (my first one is on the way!!) but that corruption looks an awful lot like the corruption I'd get from pushing my X800XT-PE's RAM too hard on an overclock, which causes the RAM to overheat, in turn causing video corruption.

In other words, I'd suspect overheating. In preparing for my new iMac's arrival, I've seen this tool mentioned numerous times on this board and others: smcFanControl. You might want to try it out to see if better fan management helps your temps, in turn helping that video corruption. If the HD2600 Pro in the new iMacs is actually an underclocked XT (which has been confirmed), that alone tells me that Apple's engineers were trying to lower heat levels in the iMac (why else would you underclock a video card?) ... So, yeah. I may be wrong, but it looks to me like heat may be the culprit here. It's worth a shot, anyway.

 

[AlexisV]

It looks like your video chip could be on the way out. I had a GeForce 6800 in my PC that did something similar and it had to be replaced.

I think you might have to ask for a replacment. Bad luck