March 19, 2007 10:30 AM PDT

Mac OS X 10.4.9 (#5): Problems capturing video in Final Cut Pro 4.5; Update prebinding pitfall; more

by CNET staff

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[For complete coverage of Mac OS X 10.4.9 troubleshooting issues, see our special report]

Problems capturing video in Final Cut Pro 4.5 It appears that the ability to capture video in Final Cut Pro 4.5 is broken for many users under Mac OS X 10.4.9. Users with this version of Final Cut Pro are experiencing either dropped frames or completely interrupted captures in most cases.

The only solutions to this problem appear to be a downgrade to Mac OS X 10.4.8 or an upgrade to Final Cut Pro 5.x.

As pointed out by MacFixIt reader Mitchel Cohen, Apple's discount upgrade to Final Cut Pro 5, interestingly enough, ends today (March 19th).

Update prebinding pitfall Late last week, Unsanity (developers of the APE [Application Enhancement] environment) posted an article discussing a potential pitfall in Mac OS X's update prebinding mechanism that can cause files to be inadvertedly erased when multiple prebinding processes are being run. This piece underscores earlier statements on MacFixIt indicating that the prebinding routine -- which takes place automatically during the Mac OS X update process during the "Optimizing the system" phase -- can be a point of susceptiblity.

Prebinding is a process that, essentially, updates the information various applications store about where to find necessary shared libraries and other components. It can not only result in faster launch times, but also allow a non-launching application to work properly when there is a glitch in its addressing data.

According to Apple, application-level prebinding is no longer under Mac OS X 10.4.x, meaning that developers no longer need to prebind their applications before shipping them to customers. However, prebinding data can become corrupt or otherwise problematic, in which case a forced prebinding can prove useful.

A forced prebind is done at the end of most standard application installations, and also bears a manual process.

We have consistently recommended that users perform no other system operations during the entire Mac OS X update process, save perhaps the downloading phase when using Software Update. Performing other tasks during the update process potentiates the aforementioned flaw, as well as other problems that can occur when files are being replaced by the update are also being read/written by the currently logged in user. [In a January 5th article titled "Direct and indirect problems after system updates" we noted "A prebinding routine is also performed by some Apple updaters -- a process that is meant for maintenance, but can sometimes actually expose underlying problems."]

As should go without saying, you should not only refrain from launching applications or working with files during the update process, but also from putting the system to sleep, disconnecting/connecting devices, and other potentially interruptive actions.

We previoulsy publisehd a case example from MacFixIt reader James Sentman, who wrote:

"While most of us would never consider putting our MacBooks to sleep while applying an update, unfortunately for me my almost 3 year old son had no such compunctions about closing my lid for me the moment I turned my back. After re-opening the lid the update appeared to finish normally, but it refused completely to reboot, hanging at the spinning doohicky for ever. I restarted in verbose mode to see what was happening and it got stuck in a loop saying it was unable to find the root user, trying again. And it would try again over and over every few seconds but never found anything. I restarted to single user mode and ran disk checking but no low level errors were found on the disk, the system install was just messed up or incomplete.

"Luckily I had cloned the drive (thank you Carbon Copy Cloner!) just a few days prior and was able to boot from that, copy my changed files (mail, iTunes, iPhoto and my working directory) onto the clone and then restore the clone. After re-applying the 10.4.9 update all seems well again now."

This flaw is also one of the reasons why re-applying the concurrent Mac OS X combo updater is among the most successful solutions for a bevy of issues that occur after applying incremental Mac OS X updates; files inadvertedly deleted by the prebinding routine are replaced when the combo updater is run, allowing proper system operation. Re-application fo the Mac OS X combo updater has been a recommended general workaround for post-incremental update issues on MacFixIt since the first release of Mac OS X 10.3.x (Panther).

Finally, it should be noted that this potential prebinding flaw is far from the only cause of problems starting up after an incremental Mac OS X update. Kernel extension or startup item problems, incompatible devices and drive damage are all potential culprits. Fore more, see our tutorial "Startup fails (particularly after a system or security update); solving."

Safari: Problems accessing secure sites Some users are reporting problems with access to secure sites after applying the Mac OS X 10.4.9 update.

MacFixIt reader Jim K writes:

"I updated 15 Macs at work, both power PC and Intel. Now I have one Intel iMac and one Power PC where Safari won't load any https: sites. I get the error message: Safari can?t open the page ?https://www.xxxxxxxx.net/? because it couldn't establish a secure connection to the server ?www.xxxxxxxx.net?. I have deleted the plist file, reset Safari, cleared the different cache files and reinstalled the proper Combo updater. Nothing works. I also created a new user and tried to go to a secure site and get the same error message."

Traditional fixes for this issue include:

Delete .plist Delete the file com.apple.security.revocation.plist from the following directory:

/Library/Preferences

You can replicate this workaround to some extent without deleting any files by opening Keychain Access (as mentioned above) then navigating to its Preferences (under the Keychain Access menu), clicking on the "Certificates" tab and making sure that both "Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)" and "Certificate Revocation List (CRL)" are turned off. However, some users have found that only deleting the aforementioned file works.

Unfortunately, in some cases, it may be up to certificate providers to update their certification methods for compliance with Apple's new, more stringent security standards.
Temporarily disabling JavaScript JavaScript can be disabled by opening Safari's preferences (under the "Safari" menu) then clicking the "Security" tab and de-selecting the option "Enable JavaScript."

Empty cache In other cases, this problem can be solved by simply emptying the cache (Safari menu > Empty Cache). In other cases, the solution is to open Safari's preferences, then click on the Security tab, then "Show cookies" and deleting all cookies.

Delete .plist file Some users have found success with deleting the file com.apple.Safari.plist from ~/Library/Preferences.

Reset Safari Finally, resetting Safari (via the "Reset Safari" command, accessible under the "Safari" menu) can resolve site access/login issues in some cases. Note that this will delete your browser history, cache, cookies, and other stored data.

Double-click login.keychain In some cases, the solution is easy as navigating to ~/Library/Keychains/ (this is the Library folder inside your user home folder), then finding the file named "login.keychain" and double-clicking it.