Mac Pro Freeze and Fans go Crazy!

Hi all,

Here's one I've never seen before. I just purchased a MacPro 2x3GHx Quad w/ 16GB ram and 3TB of disc space set in a RAID.

I'm producing a ten minute animation w/ many many many layers of photoshop docs, nests inside of nests, etc... I try rendering the sequence and at some point the cooling fans kick into superdrive and the computer freezes solid. I have to hard kill the system by pressing the ON button for ten seconds to kill the machine. I give it a few seconds and restart, but the fans 'remember' their crazy speed and keep going. It's like space ship about to lift-off. So, I shut down... UNPLUG the CPU from the wall...then restart. It's then the fans reset to their nice quiet speed.

I find I have to render my animation in smaller bits...like 30seconds at a time. Once rendered, I can safely output the finished movie.

FYI - 1920x1080 ProRes HQ 29.79

Any thoughts?

Oh, and something else... sorry, I figure, while I'm here.... Sometimes a nested sequence has a problem w/ a cross dissolve. I add a simple 30frame fade up over a background of a nested sequence and during the dissolve the image renders in low quality! But here's the kicker, I take out the cross dissolve and use the OPT-W (opacity level) with two simple keyframes to fade up the nest...and it's perfect...

Thanks Cowboys and Cowgirls.

cheers

George Mauro
former ACI for FCS
may it rest in piece. :-)