Unity3d Mac project freezes when importing ogg/mv4 files on external hard disk

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Updated to Catalina on Mac Pro, since then if I try to open a project on an external hard disk it will freeze when it encounters mv4 or ogg files. The import will stop on the first file of this type that it encounters. Have to kill the Unity process, and sometimes even after the process is force quit the import dialog will remain up. This implies that Unity started a separate importer thread, possibly an external helper app, or something like that. Just guessing.

After updating to Catalina any time I open an application the OS goes through a "verification" step the first time that takes a long time. I am wondering if the process handling the import is something like this. Catalina won't let it run until it is verified, and because it's a helper app that Unity uses, it never gets verified. Unity waits forever for the import process to complete.

Answer 1

Answer by akeplinger · Jan 27 at 08:44 PM

I found the files, in one case, and resaved them. It was a punt, because I don't know what could have been different in the sound settings. I had the same issue with a different program that had way too many ogg files than I could resave, and in that case I found using Unity Hub that the problem only seemed to affect certain versions of Unity. In this case I updated to 2019.3 and I could import. I was trying to use 2018.x and that was freezing. Your milage may vary, because I also installed a new larger hard disk and migrated files from external USB drives to internal SSD so compiling could be faster (like x4 faster) and that might have had some impact. At one point I thought the problem was because Catalina handles external volumes differently than internal, but that theory didn't hold up. Sometimes you try everything you can think of and have no idea which thing did the trick.

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Answer 2

Answer by dcolman · Jan 27 at 09:24 PM

Got it. Yeah, I am actually not importing from external drive; downloaded project from bitbucket to my SSD and tried to import and the freezing happened. I have a PC that I can use so I’m just using that for now as I’m working on Android build; I’ll have to keep tinkering so I can do future iOS builds. It’s a released game so I’m not thrilled with the risk of updating the engine. I’ll update if I find something.

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Answer 3

Answer by Kargan · Mar 20 at 11:21 AM

Hi,

I have the same issue and can't find a solution, what do you mean by "resaving" them @akeplinger ?

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Shawn_Flanagan · 3 days ago 0

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Hi Kargan,

Could you provide some more information about your setup? For instance, which version of the Unity editor are you using, and which operating system are you running?

If you are on macOS Catalina (10.15), you may be running into an issue with older versions of the Unity editor. Catalina dropped support for 32-bit processes, which older versions of Unity were using to import audio files.

Here's the list of Unity versions that are supported on macOS Catalina: 2017.4.32+ LTS 2018.3+ LTS 2019.1+

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Kargan Shawn_Flanagan · 3 days ago 0

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Yes, I am on MacOS Catalina and I'm using Unity 2018.1.9f2. This is a released project so I don't really want to update my editor, is there a workaround for this issue ?

Shawn_Flanagan Kargan · 3 days ago 0

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If you don't want to update your editor, there are two workarounds, but neither seem ideal.

Downgrade to macOS Mojave (10.14). This was the last version of macOS that supported 32-bit components.
Install Windows and move your Unity project to that OS. Windows 10 still supports 32-bit components.

Realistically, my suggestion would be this:

Backup your Unity project.
Install Unity 2018.3 (which is the minimum version of 2018 that supports macOS Catalina).
Try opening your Unity project in 2018.3 to see if it still works as expected. If so, congratulations! The problem is solved! If not, then restore your backed up version of your Unity project and go with one of the other options (downgrade macOS or install Windows).

I'm guessing those aren't the suggestions you were hoping for, but unfortunately they are the best ones that I am aware of.

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Unity3d Mac project freezes when importing ogg/mv4 files on external hard disk

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