FCP X Inspector crashes...

Question

I'm using the FCP X Trial and going through the lynda.com tutorials. FCP crashes on many effects, transitions, etc., but only after I place them into a timeline, then call up the Inspector to make adjustments. I originally installed the Trial on the same drive along with FCP7, so after seeing these crashes I took these steps - trying it again after each:
repaired permissions
deleted preferences
trashed, redownloaded, and reinstalled the Trial
installed the Trial on a different internal drive
created a new partition on a different internal drive, installed a fresh OS 10.6.8 on it, booted into that partition, installed NOTHING except the FCP Trial
still crashes
and it does this on photos, clips, things imported from FCP7 ProRes Capture Scratch folders, etc. - in other words it's consistent on any media I try, and it does it even on a clean install of Snow Leopard.
I have a brand new iMac that has never had FCP7 on it - I'm going to try it on that. But, please any ideas? I've been using FCP since 2002, and LOVE the new version, but for me it's completely unusable because I cannot use the Inspector.
If it matters - 2008 Mac Pro 2.8 ghz 8-core - 14 mb RAM - Radeon 5870 graphics card.
Any help, anybody?

Answer 1

Andy, I deleted the two preference files at User/Library/Preferences/  that had FinalCutTrial in the name, and even deleted any third party effects I had loaded. But, beyond this, I tried it on a brand new Snow Leopard install with a new user account that had never opened FCP before - don't see how those preferences could have been corrupted in the 30 seconds it took to get a crash. I also tried it on a brand new iMac that has never had FCP7 on it - brand new as in 1 week old that is running Lion.
I didn't explain the codecs because it's complicated. My camera is a Canon XF100. It records to XDCAM HD422, but in a .mxf wrapper that is not yet supported by FCP X. There is a plugin for FCP7, so I've just been grabbing files from the Capture Scratch folders of recent FCP7 projects. Some were ProRes, some were brought into FCP7 and left as native (which works great in both 7 and X). I even tried bringing some of those XDCAM clips into FCP X as native, and also let FCP X transcode some of them to ProRes. It all works the same. And the same problems crop up with h.264 clips from my Canon 60D transcoded to ProRes as they were imported into FCP X.
I have no problems with imports or editing at all, until I apply certain Effects and then open the Inspector while the clip with the Effect applied is selected in the Timeline.
I've been wrestling with this for about 2 days now and am going to take a break from it until tonight, but I will say that the latest configuration I've tried seems to slightly help the problem:
MacPro - drive 1 is boot drive
drive 2 partition 1 is the clean Snow Leopard install I did last night - I'm not BOOTED into that partition, but the FCP X Trial that I'm starting up is one in the Applications folder on that volume
drive 2 partition 2 is where I have the Final Cut Pro Events folder
This weird configuration seems to solve a few earlier problems - crashing when using the Trim tool on a transition already in the Timeline, and a few others like that.
But now I read that Ben is having the exact same problem, even on a new machine like I experienced.
So, despite the posts saying it must be machine or user account specific, I remain unconvinced. I've reproduced it in three user accounts on two Macs with both Snow Leopard and Lion. Is it Final Cut Trial-related? or 10.0.1-related? I have no idea, because that's all I have ever had access to. I have not gone through testing every Effect like Ben seems to have, but was going to try that next. I'll especially target those that he had trouble with.
So, thanks for the help so far.
Ben - PLEASE post back here if you get any info on a resolution.