I have been able to avoid "serious error" and kernel panic for the last two days by doing the following (not sure which steps are essential):

1. Creating a new admin user.

2. Setting PrP to use CPU instead of CPU

3. Ignore "...line 87" error by moving the dialog out of the way; obsessibly click it if I need to read the audio waveforms.

Yes my spendy Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac is dormant, and red render lines abound, but PrP has never been so responsive. Exports do seem to take much longer, but I haven't timed them.

Next steps:

1. Boot from external Lion FW drive

2. Erase/Instal Lion.

3. Update to 10.7.4

4. Make sure I have latest CUDA

5. Fresh instal CS 6 Production Premium

6. See if I can use PrP with GPU instead of CPU

7. Instal and check after each step: GoPro CinePro codec, FCP, Mocha, etc.

8. Post results

CD 6 Production Premium  Main System: Mac OS 10.7.4 | MacPro5,1 | 32 GB Ram | PROJECT & MEDIA drive: Mercury Accelsior. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: > 500 MB/s read/write | CACHE drive: Internal SATA Raid 0. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: > 400 MB/s read/write | Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac | CUDA Driver Version: 4.2.10 | GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (270.00.00f06) | Cineform 1.2.0.127 codec installed for access to GoPro footage |

Regarding Mac Pro5,1: I  had a  very stable FCP, AE, PS CS5/6 station since mid-2010 (from 10.6 to 10.7.4). I updated software/repaired permissions regularly. I used Permission Manager, SuperDuper, and DiskWarrior to keep my ducks in a row. (see config below)

Unhappy with Apple's commitment to FCP/Pro users, I geared up for switching from FCP to PrP, specifically, I added a Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac (which seemed like the most powerful card Adobe was recommending to take advantage of CS6 improvements). I also added a fast cache volume.

I decided to learn PrP by editing a DSLR project with it. (No recompress of h.264? Awesome!!, I thought). Though I had the latest Cuda drivers and Mac & Adobe updates, the day I started using PrP to  edit, I got kernel panics, serious errors, and what I would later learn is a harmless/annoying line 87 error. (Thanks @benwinter!)

Phone calls with Adobe tech support: escalated to a higher tier. An employee who shall be referred to as "V" told me to try creating a new Admin account, and to email him the results. The results were: "serious error" in the first few minutes of use. I sent the update to V along with my crash report. He has not yet responded but has (or has allowed the system to) mark my case #0183359996 as "withdrawn" for some reason. But I digress! I have great news, keep reading!

@Jim Simon asked if I had tried simply wiping/rebuilding my system. I didn't have time in the middle of the project (and why would I have to wipe/rebuild a highly functional box?? Was this a wild goose chase??? What's the deal?? I'm on a deadline, waa waa!) I hobbled through the project by turning rendering from GPU to CPU, quitting PrP after it sent anything to another program, and incessantly clicking the error 87 dialogue until it disappeared for a while.

But as soon as my project was finished, I wiped/rebuilt my system. ALL CLEAR SO FAR! Thanks Jim!

My next steps are to back up my functional system and begin adding all of the things I need to really use it: Wacom diver, Epson Expression 10000 XL driver, GoPro CinePro codec etc...

In the age of the App Store, Apple makes a fresh install tricky. I have listed the obsessive steps I took to create a fully-fresh&functional edit system that dynamically links to AE and AU the way I always hoped it would. I will definitely update this post if I encounter  kernel panics and serious errors as I incorporate the rest of my programs/peripherals.

Details:

1. Download Lion (again) from App Store and make a bootable install disc on an external FW drive using these fantastic instructions:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20080989-263/how-to-create-an-os- x-lion-installation-disc/

2. Boot from FW; Erase my system drive; Install 10.7; (note: no migration, no time machine, just a fresh install) restart

3. Upgrade to 10.7.4; restart

4. Download/instal latest Mac Cuda driver (4.2.10)

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda-mac-driver.html; restart

5. Give Admin Automatic login; un-require password for sleep and screensaver

6. Instal CS6: PrP, AE, AU, PS, AI, FL; I did NOT launch any of the applications.

7. Launched AAM Updates Notifier; downloaded/installed all updates; restart

8. Launched PrP; it asked me to (click to) install Java Runtime; I complied; PrP downloaded Java, installed it, then launched.

9. I made a new project:

10. General tab: I left everything as is -- Renderer is set to the default "Mercury playback...GPU" (come on Quadro 4000, I'm rooting for you!!);

11. Scratch Disc tab: I set all capture/cache directories to a folder within my dedicated CACHE volume; I set the proj file directory to a folder on my dedicated project and media drive.

12. Sequence Preset: DSLR 720p24 @23.976

13. It took five seconds to load the interface, so I quit and relaunched; much snappier results on the second launch.

14. Edited a project with various h.264s from Canon 5D & Canon 7D; no problem, works great!

15. Made a 1080p24 sequence. Warp stabilize a shaky shot in that? No problem! Load the result into my 720p24 sequence? Sure! I'll even "Scale to Frame Size" (NOTE: Though i love the one-stop scale feature -- I've notice a bug or bizarre interface choice at this point: I have 1080p footage in a 720p sequence, I can see the whole frame but  the footage shows a scale of 100% in its effects control; the correct value is about 66.7%)

16. Highlighted all clips in sequence and initiated "Replace with After Effects Sequence"; It launched AE

17. AE Prefs; I left everything the same except -- I set all of my caches to a folder on my designated Cache drive. (Note: I point all disposable Adobe data to a folder called "CACHEs" in every App that gives me the choice on where to save temp stuff. Along with preferences, this folder gets emptied/trashed when things run-amok.)

18. Rotated, scaled, masked, vignetted and otherwise jacked around with footage in AE; was astounded to see near-instant update in PrP. Some clips had poor playback on first drag-through, but very quickly cached themselves and suddenly I was living the dream: not rendering in AE :)))

19. Sent sequence audio to AU; changed temp directory to designated cache volume/folder; it told me changes would take place after I restarted App, so I restarted and re-opened the XML PrP had previously sent to AU.

20. EQed and sent back to PrP; no problem!

21. Went back into AE; turned on raytracing, added some lights, shadows, bending... back in PrP things were a bit more sluggish on that clip as expected. (About the same as dragging through the AE timeline ) Rendered in PrP... Heard the Quadro fan kick in... Green lines, good playback...

CS 6 Production Premium | Mac OS 10.7.4 | MacPro5,1 | 32 GB Ram | PROJECT & MEDIA drive: Mercury Accelsior. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: > 500 MB/s read/write | CACHE drive: Internal SATA Raid 0. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: > 400 MB/s read/write | Nvidia Quadro 4000 Mac | CUDA Driver Version: 4.2.10 | GPU Driver Version: 1.3.4.0 (270.00.00f06) |

@Benjamin Goldman, thank you for your detailed and step by step solution to "fixing" the "serious error" if you would follow up with performance and stability after a few days of serious editing, all of us in the Mac community will be crossing our fingers that you don't have an error, I know I will be following your guide if you have a stable system after a few days.  Thanks again!

@Jason Van Patten. Hmm. So far so good for me -- but only  a few hours of heavy testing. Sorry to hear your fresh install only lasted a month.

If you have a system that worked for a month trouble free, are you able to use SuperDuper or similar to clone back to its healthy state and then get another month of good use?

Also, I noticed that you have a bit of a Hackintosh... I remember reading about the guy who alters PC video cards to work with Macs... and how vociferous and articulate he was when arguing about how well his cards worked. Are you able to verify this? Is it possible that the (seemingly) extremely sensitive install requirements are exacerbated by some of your modifications? Any command line Unix instructions for dealing with Time Machine's intrusions, etc? Just curious, because I realized how much stuff I did to my system over the years that it was "highly functional" that seem(ed) regular and safe to me.

FYI, I will definatly update my posts at the first sign of crash.

@RBmendo. Thanks for the feedback. Hope this proves useful... More updates to come, but my system has been golden sof far.

@Jason Van Patten. Cool.  Glad to know the mods are working for you. I'm sure you are getting more bang for your buck... I don't use time machine either, but wrote a Unix command to stop OS from asking me if every drive it ever sniffed was ripe for a Time Machine backup volume. Though you might as well if you had lots of volumes/backups to manage.

It's annoying that we're having this conversation. I wish Adobe/Apple/Nvidia had it so we didn't have to, but the difference between our situations seems to be in the order of updates. My clean install was 10.7 (all that is available from App Store), then I upgraded to 10.7.4, then Cuda... THEN CS6, then ran CS updates. My  current approach has yielded a stable/enjoyable system (so far). So I cloned it and then started adding everything else. Still no problems half a day later (even re-running the projects that caused errors, serious errors, and 87... earlier in the week)

And I have a clone of a healthy system/apps volume that I can use to replace my system/apps if something goes wonky in the middle of my next edit.

As you stated, you were running 10.7, installed Adobe PrP and PS, THEN patched it up to 10.7.4. Seems logical enough. That's what pretty much everyone did, including me... right before my original rock-solid FCP, AE, PS system became a PrP paperweight. Is this correct, or did you mean that you had updated your fresh install to 10.7.4 before proceeding? If not, we are still comparing Apples and Oranges (pun intended).

I will definitely eat crow / pull my Quadro 4000 if I start having trouble again... But my initial troubles showed up with much less monkeying around than I am doing right now, so I'm cautiously optomistic.

Best,

Benjamin

The only thing I've done with it is: install Adobe's Premiere Pro and Photoshop (CS6), Firefox, and then patch it to 10.7.4.  It was working, and then it wasn't.

 

@Jas. Thanks for the clarifications. So if I understand you correctly, you did exactly what I did, and had a stellar system which lasted about a month before "bit-rot" made your system unusable? Then you returned to CS5.5.2 and everything is  stable again?

Just another example of Premiere being an Amateur app not a professional editing software.

I got a new 17" MacBookPro on Friday.  The only things I did were upgrade the RAM to 16GB then update Lion all thye way - and 'then' installed CS6.   I got the serious error within 2 hours.

This is about as clean a machine as I could have made.

@neeles27, I've been thinking this as well, We have almost 9000 views on this thread and 177 replies, which is the most in the first 5 pages of the Premiere Forum (i'm sure it goes further, I just stopped there)  I will be trying Benjamin's advice with the reinstall with crossed fingers that I get the same result.  But there is definitely a problem, and from your noticed lack of communication with the Adobe Engineers, its seams as though we may be on our own to find a solution.  Which hopefully Benjamin has found.  I'll report my findings with my new install when i've had some time to test it.

On an additional note, i've been seeing a lot of Memory Page Outs, (requiring a restart) when multiple CS applications are running, and most noticeably when the "serious error" occurs.  Not sure if it means anything to finding a solution to our errors, but thought it was worth mentioning.

I don't know if I can conbtribute to the cause but I lost sound of my internal speaker of my Macbook pro 17' since I rebooted after installing CS6 applications (photoshop, lightroom, InDesign, bridge, premiere, after-effects,audition,encore). I installed 2 days ago, way after lion's 10.7.4. Almost for sure, Adobe's responsible for our problems. I didn't worked in Premiere, I just started the application to see if it worked, opened a project and closed it. It's really annoying to pay for something that wrecks our machines. We could all get those softwares for free but we agreed to pay for these awesome products. Could be fun if they agreed to fix our problems ASAP.

OK, I tested Premiere Pro CS6 and sound works fine and I don't seem to get any errors. But, I have no sound elsewhere. Videos on YouTube have no sound and freeze all the time after 12 seconds and iTunes doesn't play music at all, the playback time staying at 0:00. Mega problem here, and it's since I installed CS6 applications for creative cloud.

I believe the serious error is gone for me. I have three monitors, two are Dell compter monitors and the third is a Panasonic TV hooked up via HDMI to MiniDisplayPort. I have two graphics cards, an ATI Radeon 5770 and an Nvidia GT 120. Previously, the ATI card was driving one Dell monitor and the Panasonic TV, and the Nvidia handled the other Dell monitor. Since switching both Dell monitors to the ATI card, and the Panasonic to the GT 120, I've not had any serious errors.

However, this problem still persists for me: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4519408#4519408

I'll use Timemachine go get my Mac configuration before installing CS6 to see if it's really the problem.

Finally, I won't restore my computer, I'll lose too much work I did in Lightroom 4... Just hope that Adobe and/or Apple will release an upgrade soon.

I'll admit, FCPX has gotten me through all of my projects for the last month no problem. I have work that needs doing, and Adobe isn't doing it. I had to get online every 2 minutes at first to figure how to do things but at least I dont get shut down as soon as the program opens! I must say though, I'm not much a fan of FCPX... there are a few things that are enjoyable (background rendering and the basic functions of the inspector interface ((although that tends to get in my way as well))) but the rest is quite a hassle to "work around".

Has anyone installed the CSXS Infrastructure CS6 update?  Wondering if that has helped anyone with the "Serious Error" i'm getting one every hour or so now. Completely frustrated. 

I just finished 3 long form projects with...

PP CS 6.0.1

Invidia Quadro 4000

CUDA driver 4.2.10

MacPro 5,1

Lion 10.7.4

I edit 5 days a week 8 hours a day and push the system as fast is can go. I'm not a newbie and have built 6 editing suites for production companies. I CANNOT make this thing crash (with one exception). I imported a FCP project via XML, which went smoothly except for the fact that one audio file had a filter that for some reason would crash Premiere if I tried to copy and paste that clip to a new program. Not a big deal at all- in fact, quite understandable.

That said I do not use dynamic linking (yet) and use pretty basic graphics.

I use Canon 5d files, P2, and ProRes.

What really blew my mind and tottaly did not expect was that I could import and drop Apple Motion files right in the timeline. Crazy!

I wish I had your experience with CS6.....