[RichG]

Not sure if this is a problem with Maxwell or Cinema but just lately, when I launch a Maxwell render from Cinema, the app starts then quits straight away. It used to be that I could hit render and Maxwell would launch 1, 2, or 10 instances of the app and render away happily. Now I have to find the .mxs file in the finder and double click it, then hit the render button in Maxwell.

It's a minor PIA but I'd like the old behaviour back.

OSX 10.7.5
Cinema R14.042
Maxwell Render 2.7.20.0

[JDHill]

Could you please expand on what you mean by saying that it quits? It sounds like the Maxwell window comes up, but I'm not sure what happens then. Does it start rendering at all? Are you able to see any messages being printed to in the Maxwell console? Then, when it quits, does it seem to do so in an orderly fashion, or does it crash, and if so, with or without an Apple crash report dialog? What if you open Applications/Utilities/Console.app, clear the console, and then capture what happens during this process? Does it appear to capture any interesting messages?

Have you noticed any other unrelated altered behaviors on the machine? If what you are describing here did not coincide with some changes to your Maxwell installation, it would seem likely to be related to an OS update or similar. Have you already tried trashing your Maxwell installation (and emptying the trash and rebooting) and reinstalling it from scratch?

[RichG]

Hi JD

Thanks for getting back so quickly. It's not like a crash at all. As I say, I can then go to the generated .mxs, launch it and render just fine. I've captured the process here so you can see, with the console window too. The console does specify an error but the file will render. And this happens every time now.

http://www.loopcorp.com//Miscellany/Maxwell_Launch.mov

You will see another instance of Maxwell on the dock, that is the same file (with a different version name) which I have already started rendering. I haven't got any other problems I can think of but I will give your suggestion of trashing and reinstalling the app a go.

[JDHill]

Doesn't look like I'm going to be able to look at that video right now, my DSL's been super flaky lately (so far I've downloaded 142KB of your file). I'll try again later. Ten years I've been on this line, but as we speak there's a cable modem somewhere on a Fedex truck, heading my way. So anyway, yes, I'd try the reinstall, and if that fails, perhaps look at repairing disk permissions, in case you're getting shut down due to the app being started from Cinema, rather than through Finder. There's an outside chance the Apple Console.app might be able to provide some clues relating to that.

[RichG]

It's OK, it's not a problem that's stopping me working, just wondering why it's happening. That movie is only 14Mb by the way, so it should be fine when you get cabled up. But if the browser struggles to play it, you can always download here:

http://www.loopcorp.com//Miscellany/Max ... ch.mov.zip

[JDHill]

Thanks, it's (it's a 12Mbps DSL) working better this morning. Looking at the video, I'm going to say that Maxwell is having trouble handling the directory name "Gate Billington's Xmas Cake - 1634". Probably, it is that apostrophe. So please try writing the MXS to a different (simpler) directory and let me know if that helps.

[RichG]

Hi JD, that was it, thanks a lot! I deleted the apostrophe and all is fine - got to watch those path names.