TVPaint crashing a lot

[David_Fine]

I have been finding that TVPaint crashes pretty much every single day. Sometimes multiple times. I might be using it all day and then it crashes. It happens only when I go to use a menu or hit the keyboard keys to save. As in Command+S. That is, it doesn't crash when I'm drawing or playing an animation, only when I use a menu or keyboard to invoke the menu.

I have contacted TVPaint support who have been really helpful with trouble shooting, but have not managed to figure out why this is happening for me.

I am using a Mac Studio with Ventura, but this problem actually was occurring 2 years ago on an older iMac as well, so it's not specific to the hardware or OS software. So, wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue. I have tried deleting the preferences file as well, but it did not help. None of my other apps are crashing like this at all. Only TVPaint. Using version 11.7.1, but also tried downgrading to an older version. It didn't help. Am I the only one using TVPaint who is having this happen?

[D.T. Nethery]

Hi, David-

I'm very sorry to read of your troubles. I realize that has to be extremely frustrating.

Both TVPaint 11.7 and 11.7.1 have been stable for me. No frequent (or occasional) crashes. But my set up isn't exactly like yours. I'm using a Mac Mini (Intel chip, not M1) running MacOS 12.6.2 Monterey.

So unfortunately I don't have much to offer in the way of troubleshooting or advice regarding the crashing issue. It does seem odd that it comes from activating a menu (any menu?) or a common keyboard shortcut like Cmd+S for Save. I expect your Mac Studio is one of the new M1 chip Macs , right ? And I haven't tried Ventura yet. I'm kind of conservative about updating the OS , I usually stay on one as long as possible . I was on MacOS 10.14 Mojave until midway through last year when updating to a new(ish) computer (the Mac Mini) necessitated my updating to MacOS 12 Monterey. I haven't had any problems with Monterey , although I do miss some of my good ol' 32bit apps like Quicktime Pro.

Hopefully someone else who is running TVPaint 11.7 on Ventura (with an M1 Mac) will be able to chime in regarding the issue you're experiencing.

[David_Fine]

Thanks. As I say, this issue predates Ventura and predates my current M1 Max Mac Studio, so it can't be hardware or OS related. I just wanted to put it out there to see if anyone else had the same kind of problem or not.

[D.T. Nethery]

Thanks. As I say, this issue predates Ventura and predates my current M1 Max Mac Studio, so it can't be hardware or OS related. I just wanted to put it out there to see if anyone else had the same kind of problem or not.

This has probably already been suggested in your correspondence with TVPaint Support , but have you tried backing-up your custom panels, keyboard shortcuts, customized interface color schemes, etc. then uninstalling TVPaint and re-installing a fresh version of TVPaint ? It's a pain to have to rebuild your old familiar TVPaint set up by reinstalling custom panels, keyboard shortcuts, etc., but it might help ? If the crashing problem predates Ventura and the M1 Mac and you believe it isn't hardware or OS related then the main suspect becomes a corrupt configuration.

TVPaint 11 , 11.5, 11.7 has been very stable for me. I can't say that TVPaint never crashes, but hardly ever. I have occasionally had freezes (requiring a force quit) when using the JSON Export mode (to transfer scenes from TVPaint over to After Effects) but those were on rather large 4K scenes (and a few 6K scenes) with dozens of layers. I discovered that part of that was my attempting to save the exported layers to an external drive rather than the main hard drive. So now when using the JSON Export I always save it first to my main hard drive , then transfer it to an external drive afterwards (to keep my main hard drive from becoming full). Other than those occasional freezes using the JSON Export mode, I haven't had any issues with TVPaint crashing or freezing.

[David_Fine]

Yeah, I have deleted the config file before and it did not help, but I am going to try again and make sure there is nothing else which needs to be deleted and then try running TVPaint without installing any of my saved palettes. Waiting to hear back from support as TVPaint will not even load now. I just can't believe the strange problems I have been having after using TVPaint with no issues for so long before.

[TVPUSER]

I recently moved to 11.7.1 and I had a heavy project that just crashed while trying to move my TVP window to another monitor, I never experienced this with 11.7

[NickH]

I have also been running TVP 11.7.1 on a Mac Studio, since last April. I haven't been getting crashes, but TVP does run very slowly, slower than it did on my 2013 Intel 27"iMac with much less RAM. (I'm guessing it runs in emulation, and is not written for the Apple M1 silicone?) It also gets a few bugs, like the eraser tool can be set to 100% but it is only erasing at about 90%, so I have to save, close TVP. and re-open and erase again. (That generally gets things working as they should.) So it hasn't been crashing, and I do get to save before closing and restarting.
Just yesterday, after not using TVP for 3 months, I tried to open TVP and found that it no longer recognises the CodeMeter is installed and won't open. There have been a couple of recent security updates to Ventura (Now at 13.3.1) this month, which probably caused this. So I am hoping for an update on the forum for dealing with Ventura.

[Matthieu]

Hello Nick,

We are in the process of making TVPaint run natively on ARM Macs. From the tests we have made on our own ARM Macs, there wasn't any performance issue relying on Rosetta 2, so the slow downs may come from something else than this.

Regarding your CodeMeter issue: CodeMeter probably has been uninstalled from your system by a maintenance application such as CleanMyMac. I am myself on Ventura 13.3.1 and didn't encounter any issues with TVPaint (see the following thread here).

I will also handle the request you have made through our contact form to give you more details on how to solve your issue.