Massive project crash when Saving

[Christiaan]

Howdy folks,

I've recently started a new gig cutting sound for a reality TV series. Coming from the music world, I've been enjoying a nice steep learning curve and I'm still a bit green with DP but starting to quite enjoy it.

I have encountered one major problem none of the sound guys at work seem to be able to solve so I'm looking for any insight anyone can offer.

The show I'm working on is approx 45 min and with 18 contestants, the host, and various guests each with their own microphones as well as camera-audio galore, we end up topping 50 tracks easily.

The video editors are working with FCP7 and are spitting out OMFs, most of them coming very close to their 2GB limit. Needless to say, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of soundbites I have to sift through and organise once it's all imported into the project.

The problem is, once I get about 30 tracks (containing 20-100 soundbites each) into the sequence, I am no longer able to save the project without it crashing. The only work around I have found so far is to import each individual OMF, delete anything I don't plan to use, save, and pray. Inevitably I end up maxing things out and I have to go back and prune soundbites wherever I can before I can import anything else. Each time DP crashes, it takes 10-15min to fire the project up again. Not helpful with deadlines looming!

I don't know if this is a software limitation, or a system issue. Other co-workers encounter the same problem on slightly newer and more powerful systems. At first I wondered if it was a RAM thing, a processor problem but now I'm just frustrated. If anyone has any insight as to what's causing the problem or if you could suggest more efficient work-arounds, I would be extremely grateful.

Cheers,
Christiaan

iMac 24-inch, Early 2008
Processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS 512 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7

[MIDI Life Crisis]

What version of DP? I wouldn't do any project that extensive under Lion, regardless of the version. If you can drop back to Snow leopard and DP 7.23 or 7.24 your problems will likely go away.

[Christiaan]

Sorry - I'm running DP7.24 at work and 6.0 at home (Snow Leopard).

Same problems on both machines so I don't think it's the OS. Co-workers running various versions of DP7.x and OSX all encounter the same problem once the we break a certain project size barrier.

Besides this problem which doesn't appear to be an OS issue, I'm very surprised to say I haven't had any serious issues using Lion.

[Frodo]

There could be a number of considerations. I may be bashed for my flag-waving in the RAM category, but if you're managing data in GB and have 4MB of RAM, then that could be a contributing factor. DP alone can utilize almost 4GB by itself. OSX is also running, obviously, and requires a certain amount of RAM of its own. With 4GB installed, it sounds as if your data is competing for resources. We used to get the "out of memory" warning from DP when saving with little enough memory. Now, we just see OSX holding tight while applications tend to crash when overwhelmed. OSX has gotten much more robust and more intolerant of late.

If you're running video, it's not hard to imagine all of your installed RAM being well implemented. Streaming video from a dedicated hard drive apart from audio and virtual instrument libraries is a plus.

4GB of RAM is plenty enough for modest use, but it sounds as if your project(s) are quite demanding above the norm. You could try adding more RAM (say-- another 2-4GB) if that doesn't work, you could return the RAM.

In my case, the crash on save issue has been due to a memory limit solved by adding a little more memory.

I would also check my system drive to make sure that it's not more than 75% full. Virtual memory uses part of that drive to store data outside of RAM. If there's not enough room on your system drive to handle the overflow of data to be saved, apps can crash.

Archive and dump pics, vids, mp3s, and other large docs that take up system drive space to keep the system drive clean as a whistle. I would also disable unneeded startup items and unused plugins. If you're not using Bassline, Modulo, Nanosampler, Proton, ProVerb, or other MAS and AU plugins, disable them. If they don't load on boot, they don't eat memory.

Just some thoughts.

[Christiaan]

Getting the boss to spring for more memory might be an issue so I'll take your other suggestions into account. Since both my home and work computers have 4GB RAM I had a bad feeling that was the problem.

What makes me wonder is that I've been keeping an eye on my Activity Monitor and there doesn't seem to be any drastic variation when I get the crash.

The hard disk is pretty clean as the computer was just wiped clean when we bought it a month ago. At the moment there's over 200GB free so I doubt that's an issue. I've done my best to turn off, disable and delete anything that's unnecessary.

Next time I fire up a problematic project I may try running the video off a separate drive and bye-bye plugins!

Thanks for your suggestions. Fingers crossed!

[martian]

dp 6 -to 6.22 have a crash on save issue.. ( actually it started in dp5)

maybe 6.23 fixed it as that was released after DP7...

and Avid based OMF were a big part of it.. ( basically avid doesnt add extension like .wav to the embedded audio - and corrupted file headers were the cause of the crash on save )

DP 7 is robust - I use OMF a lot - altho rarely more than 16 tracks... so thanks for the warning..

I suggest you try splitting the OMF "horizontally"

( you could use protools 9/10 or maybe FCP )

[macguy]

You may want to merge soundbites because you have a lot of fragments there. And another thing... more ram couldn't hurt.
DP 6 wasn't too stable. Go with 5.13 or 7.

[martian]

i think the point of the OMF is to be able to access the "fragments"

thats the whole point of a flexible modern post production process...

the poor OP is working hard just to get by.... already throwing as much as possible away..


i suspect its related to the file importing.. ( was before )

before saving - did u try converting the soundbites format ? ( maybe AIFF to Wav etc)

then remove unused and flush undo..

maybe might give u some hints..

[Christiaan]

Well, it's been months and months of finding workarounds to my problem with the project crashing and the boss finally bought some more RAM for my computer. Despite the fact that this particular iMac isn't supposed to support an extra 2GB of RAM, everything is working splendidly. Hooray!