Hi, all - First, the basics: I'm on a G4 Dual Processor MDD mac running OS 10.4.11 with 2 GB of RAM and always keep a minimum of 35 GB free hard drive space available. For the past two months, the mac freezes solid (requiring a hard/power button reboot) every time I try to convert an .avi file to .dv. What's weird is that this happens with every conversion app and any .avi file I'm attempting to convert. Problem began during a conversion with Toast Titanium 9 (which I'd been using to convert for over a year without difficulty). I figured the .avi file was corrupt, tossed it out and tried again with a completely different .avi file...same result. Firstly I ran some basic maintenance tasks - repaired permissions, defragged the drive, had TechTool Pro check/repair all file structures, directory maintenance etc. No relief there. Having read that Toast 9 could be problematic, I deleted every Toast/Roxio pref file after each crash; ultimately I deleted the entire app from my drive and went back to Toast 8. Same problem. I purchased and tried a slew of other conversion programs, including MovieConverter, iVCD, VideoVangelist, VisualHub, Xilisoft's Video Converter and freshly-installed versions of Toast 8.0 and 9.0. I've also used D-Vision 3 to fix/repair some .avi files to see if the files themselves were bad. In every case any of the above apps would freeze the mac partially through the conversion process. After a month of this I became so frustrated that I erased the entire hard drive, reinstalled OSX, then reinstalled clean copies of all my conversion apps one at a time, trying a conversion with each app before reinstalling the next. I also opened the mac and ensured that all the RAM chips were securely seated. Same behavior; the mac crashed and froze every time. Even with brand new avi files! Last night, I burned a data disc containing some of the avi files from my drive and copied them to a friend's powerbook. I tried converting them using the Toast 8.0 app that was already on the powerbook and the conversion and subsequent burn worked *perfectly*. I'm truly at my wit's end trying to determine what in hades is going on to cause these crashes. Wouldn't wish this problem on anyone, but if someone out there has experienced it, or has some other fix to recommend, well...I'd be most grateful for any help/advice/info you'd be willing to share! Many thanks in advance... elsiejazz
