DVCHDPROAudio.plugin Console Error

I'm sure you've seen it if you've ever launched your Console and looked at All Messages. Something like:

8/8/11 12:50:03 AM Mail[212] Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio:  dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio, 262): no suitable image found.  Did find:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: no matching architecture in universal wrapper

You'll see it for VLC, Mail, loginwindow, SustemUIServer, UserEventAgent and a bunch of other stuff.

You don't need it. Or at the very least, it's highly unlikely you'll need it.

So what to do? Since Apple has never really clarified what's going on here and it's a LONG STANDING bug/error/incompatibility and older versions can't even load on Intel machines (there is a universal version from 2007 of the plugin) I went to where it was, zipped it, trashed the original and left the zip file sitting there.

It's located in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL

What is this thing anyway, you ask?

I think it's a USB driver for 1:1 audio connections that apps like Reason, Audacity, Cubase and Logic use; or at least used to.

If you want to poke around the file you can take a look at it in the Terminal: copy and paste in:

ls -IR /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin

and you'll see some helpful-ish information:


drwxrwxr-x  6 root  admin  204 Apr 20  2007 Contents


/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents:
total 24
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin  1258 Mar 30  2007 Info.plist
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Apr 20  2007 MacOS
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin     9 Mar 30  2007 PkgInfo
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin   514 Apr 20  2007 version.plist


/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS:
total 2456
-rwxrwxr-x  1 root  admin  1254748 Mar 30  2007 DVCPROHDAudio

So it's not a permission's issue.

Then you can try: (again, copy and paste into the Terminal)

file /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio

and you'll see some slightly more helpful things like:

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio (for architecture ppc): Mach-O bundle ppc

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio (for architecture i386): Mach-O bundle i386

So, hey, at least the version you may or may not have is Universal.

And you can even right-click on it and Show Package Contents and dig around. You can open the DVCPROHDAudio file in Contents/MacOS with something like Hex Fiend and confirm that it's an audio driver for some obscure and some fairly outdated stuff.

Bottom line is you'll know if you need it. If you don't know, then you don't need it and likely never will. For my system it seems okay to zip the original package in the HAL folder and trash the original plug-in. This way it won't load (because it's not a .plugin file) and should the occasion arise when you do need it, just double click it to unzip it right where it needs to be.

Final Cut Pro and Freeverse's Color Picker

If you're seeing something like this:

5/7/09 10:34:53 AM Final Cut Pro[408] Warning Custom ColorPicker class with name .com.freeverselib could not be loaded.

In your Console logs it's because someone has likely installed Freeverse's Lineform application at some point on your Mac. Lineform is a simple drawing application but it's installer does (or did, not sure) some strange stuff. One thing is that it installs a 4 KB file called .com.freeverselib.06020 into ~/Library/ColorPickers (the tilde means it's the Library folder in your home folder).

The file it installs begins with a period so it's hidden. Why, I have no idea but I don't like it. I dislike hidden files entirely, but that's another rant. How do you get rid of it and the console error every time you use the color picker in Final Cut Pro?

01) Launch the Terminal.
02) Paste in "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1" without the quotes. (this command toggles the visibility of hidden files in Leopard)
03) Hit return.
04) Hold down Command + Option and right-click on the Finder icon in the dock and select Relaunch.
05) Navigate to ~/Library/ColorPickers and trash the ridiculous .com.freeverselib.06020 file and empty the trash.
06) Paste "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 0" (that's a zero) without the quotes into the Terminal. [or just hit the Up Arrow and backspace and change the 1 into a zero.] Hit Return.
07) Command + Option right-click the Finder icon in the dock and hit Relaunch again.

Done.