If more than about 270 clips and effects are used within one project in Avid Cinema, it's possible that you will start to receive one or more of the following errors:
- "The movie is unable to play back properly. Please increase the application's preferred memory size. For more information see Starting a New Movie in the Online Help.."
- "Couldn't open file for preview (there are too many files open simultaneously)."
- "(-9402)."
- "Error while creating destination movie file (there are too many files open simultaneously)."
The Mac OS allows a maximum of 348 files to be open at any time. This includes fonts, system extensions, open applications, and documents. Since Avid Cinema treats every clip and effect within a project as a separate file, having too many clips or effects can cause the maximum file limit to be reached. When this happens, Avid Cinema will stop functioning and generate one or more of the errors listed above.
If you are encountering this problem with your project, follow these steps:
1. Make a backup copy of your project file in case you accidentally save it while making the changes below.
2. Find a block of clips in the project that you know will remain together for the duration of the project. Note: you will not be able to add effects or edit these clips after completing this process.
3. Delete everything but those clips from the time line.
4. Save the movie in Avid Cinema format.
5. Close the project WITHOUT SAVING IT.
6. Re-open the project.
7. Delete the block of clips from the time line and the library.
8. Import the newly created Avid Cinema movie and place it back in the time line.
Repeat these steps until the project is reduced to a more manageable number of clips.