Harmony crashing consistently on macOS Sierra, 10.12

Harmony 14 is consistently crashing on me when running on the latest operating system, macOS Sierra.

I’ll open my scene, do about a minute of work (nothing major, usually just scrubbing the timeline when this happens), I’ll get a spinning beachball for a moment, then my entire machine will lockup, and finally I get kicked out and see my computers login screen.
Then I have to log back in on my mac, start over again, and the same thing keeps happening.

I’ve been able to use macOS Sierra on my mac without issue UNLESS I’m running Harmony. So other apps are not causing me issue, but as soon as I try to work in Harmony, it takes down the entire system and logs me out of my machine.
Crazy that an application can take down the entire machine (kicking me back to the login screen), and not just have the app crash itself.

Are there others experiencing this issue?

I’m finding that going Full Screen with any app running at the same time tends to lead to a more volatile setup with Version 14 and Sierra, though this is not a sure fix either. Until they fix it, it’s an ongoing problem. :-/

Since Harmony 14 and Sierra I’m having the exact same issue on my MBP 15" (mid 2014, Iris Pro + GT 750M). Never had anything like that on Harmony 12 and El Capitan.

I always assumed that my GPU was going bad, but now that you mention it, my Mac has never had any issues when not using Toon Boom. Besides, I’m able to run Heaven benchmark for an hour with maximum settings, GPU starts boiling, still no artifacts or crashes at all. So it appears to be a TB + Sierra issue indeed. That’s why I’ve been using gfxCardStatus to force integrated only, no issues since then.

Once that issue occurred, have you guys checked the console (applications/utilities/console)?
The log contains the following message:

com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.crashreporter.writereport.gpuRestart
com.apple.message.signature: Kernel
com.apple.message.signature2: UNBUNDLED ||| kernel ((null))
com.apple.message.signature3: UNKNOWN
com.apple.message.result: noop
com.apple.message.summarize: YES
SenderMachUUID: F499C5C8-3ED0-3EA1-9B22-A7CC76D703A7

Which usually refers to a hardware issue, but as I said, my Mac keeps running without any problems as long as TB is not in use.

I guess we have to wait for an update. Will check out oliputland’s approach though.

Having the same problem on my Mac with Harmony 14. Didn’t have the problem before I upgraded to Sierra :frowning:
10+ crashes in a day if I have the patience to keep going

I’ve set auto save to every 1 min but it doesn’t always save every 1 min.

There may be some unrelated source but keep in mind Sierra is too new. With any new edition, expect there to be some exceptions as it doesn’t matter that every other program you use works with it. Until the software company official states it is compatible you are on your own.

I realize the requirements page says OS X 10.11 or later and 10.10 or later. I believe their protocol is to state the actual OS they are supporting. They show 10.11 and 10.10 meaning they do not support Mavericks 10.09 and earlier versions as well as 10.12 Sierra.

Well, I just, tonight, in fact, installed Sierra on my Mac Pro 2008. Yes, supposedly I wasn’t able to, Apple said it wasn’t supported but I never let that stop me. Anyway, I installed it on a second SSD and will slowly add apps to it and build it up.

I always do that with new OS updates. I always have two main SSDs, one for the previous OS, being 10.11.6, El Capitan, and a second for the new OS, being 10.12, Sierra. I never just migrate over all of the apps from one to the other, and I always start from a nice clean install and then reinstall all of the apps, one by one. I tend to think that starting fresh like this helps to get rid of what I call cruft, or odd bits and pieces and makes for a smoother experience.

Hopefully, by the end of this week I will have Sierra and all of my apps installed and find out if there are any issues and specifically with Harmony. But it is important to have your old OS ready and waiting to fall back on, part of the reason why I prefer desktops over laptops, I can have multiple hard drives. I currently have 10.10.5, 10.11.6 and now 10.12 on my Mac Pro, each on different hard drives.

You can boot from an external hard drive to achieve the same result using a laptop.

Bus speed will not prevent you from testing software.

I have been reading up on various forums that people are having similar issues where users are even watching something like a movie on Netflix and then it crashes and takes them to the log in screen. It does take time for 3rd parties to update their apps and whatnot. It even takes time for me to get drivers from Nvidia whenever we get a new Mac OS update.

So far I have not had any problems but am still early into it, haven’t installed Harmony or Adobe CC apps yet. I know people that will always wait until the OS is several point updates in (like 10.12.3 or 10.12.4) before making it their daily OS and I have a feeling that I will probably do the same.

And Ampy, true, you can do that with laptops but nothing beats having a tower and filling it up with storage and not having to worry about external hard drives to boot and test from. I do use external hard drives for backups with Carbon Copy Cloner and also have a cloud based backup service. The point though is that everybody should have a plan and have fallback options if things go wrong. I see so many people update and then things go wrong and they have no way of easily going back.

I agree. After using a Mac Mini for years having the ability to include multiple drives was one of many perks when I built a hackintosh. Drives are so affordable now, even SSD’s…relatively, considering I paid over $500 for a 9GB drive years ago.

Hello there.

I am having exactly the same problem:

No crash screen
A complete freeze
Then back to the Login Screen.

Never had a problem like this before.

The cause of the problem seems totally random so I can’t ever predict when the situation will arise, unfortunately.

Please contact support to have a look on your system.

I have. I have been told that I should just reinstall it, which I did as throughly as I could.

It still crashes I’m afraid.

My specs are as follows-

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013)
macOS Sierra - 10.12.1 (16B2555)
2.9 GHz Intel Core i5
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB

Hello again.

Seem to have finally found a solution.

Since I have done this, the problem has not resurfaced.

They solution is as follows:

1.) Go to Harmony Preferences/OpenGL

2.) Change the Texture Memory and the Vector Drawing Texture Size to within your Graphics Card’s memory capacity- In my case- 1024 MB

3.) I also changed the Playback Caching value to something more conservative- 1000 MB

Hopefully this will stop the problem, as it seems to have worked for me.

:slight_smile:

Spoke too soon, though it seems to be doing it less- it IS still doing it. :frowning:

Oh well. Back to support…

Your graphic card only has a Gig of RAM which in today’s
world of Retina displays and multiple monitors is not very
much.

Is it okay at first and only starts acting-up as the project gets
filled with drawings?

I thought I’d add another part to this thread.

After 5 months, the problem is STILL present- particularly since there have been no updates or bug fixes, though I now feel that I have isolated what causes the crashes (in my case) in the first place.

I have a Cintiq 24 Touch,
Late 2013 iMac
2.9 GHz Intel Core i5
16gigs of ram
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB
running macOS Sierra

The problem is inconsistent, but I am ALWAYS manipulating a deformer when it happens. I can be running an extremely complex scene with full 3D set and even 3D models and no problem, but deformers sometimes trip the system up causing such a large crash that I am bumped back to the login screen of my Mac with no crash report at all to refer to.

This really does have to be addressed as it is impacting on my work flow quite markedly.

For these issues it will help if you contact support so that they can investigate
and run some tests on your system. It may also help to update the Wacom driver
because there were issues is Sierra with the driver as it was when Apple released
Sierra and Wacom did not have a fix immediately.

Another thing that can help is if all the toolbars in the software are fully displayed
and there are no toolbars showing the “>>” icon.

In your case do you really need Sierra?

Was this ever successfully resolved?
I’m having the same issue on my MacBook Pro 15" under Sierra.

So it seems. I’m still on Sierra, but upgraded Harmony to 15 when it came out and I don’t remember it crashing since then. I assume Harmony 14 was faulty and it has been fixed with 15. Are you still on 14?