Do's ans Don't's for a Crash free DP

[Frodo]

There have been a lot of posts about one VI or another plugin not working.

This came from another forum, but I've found this information to be pretty much spot on and reliable.
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Generally you should treat OS X as a UNIX-like system ... which means:

- make sure no related processes are running during updating anything (processes loaded in memory won't get updated for the current session), so best reboot before ... this goes for everything

- after updating run a permission verify resp. if necessary repair (disk utility) - too often permissions become messed up and the system behaves strange ... again, applies to all installs

- if you still notice problems try to validate AU plugins manually (also valid for VST plugins)

- if this didn't help either reboot, uninstall the problem child, trash receipts, empty trash, reboot, re-install, repair permissions

- advanced users can save reboots by killing processes

[gprechel]

Help! I installed DP 6.02 this week, only because I'm working on a HD film, and DP 5.13 doesn't support 23.976 fps. It's basically been a lost week, trying to trouble shoot why DP6 hangs for ten seconds after dragging a note in the quickscribe window. I've been on DP from the beginning and I've never experienced problems like this in any other version. The best performance I've been able to get is after removing every VI and plugin, cpu meter is about 10%, but I still have a problem editing in quickscribe, it will slowly degrade, getting worse with each edit I make. I'm also getting the "max out cpu" error message, sometimes playing back a single stereo pair. None of this happens in 5.13. I've learned over the years not to jump at the first release of any "upgrade", but I figured by now it would be stable.

Has anyone else run into this? Is there a solution? How about any way to run DP 5.13 at 23.976 fps? I've managed to reach tech support twice out of 100 tries over the last four days. I tried all of their suggestions, including new user account. Nothing they offered made a significant difference.

I apologize for the rant, it's been a frustrating week and my deadline is getting closer.

[BriMondo]

I've been on 6.02 for several months now. Latest and greatest 8 Core, blah blah blah...I have never run anything more unstable in my life...and that goes back to SyncalvierII in 1981!! I have tried MOTU Firewire interfaces, 424 interfaces, I have reinstalled the entire computer 3 times and still no relief. I can echo just about everybody else's crash reports...MIDI editing, QuickScribe sluggishness, random VI crashes. Devistating project corrupting crashes that can take hours to rebuild. All of it. I'm in the middle of a big project right now and probably cant jump ship, but I will be cruising the harbor looking at other yachts this month...As far as I am concerned, the only Do & Don't for a crash free DP is just Don't Run DP...then it can't crash!

[kassonica]

SPAM

[BriMondo]

Excuse me?! SPAM?! no...truth! And if you want to see my creds. just go to the MOTU website news feed. DP6 is a total minefield. I even sent my entire computer to MOTU to have them bench it...they told me it was working perfectly!. Well, I am here to tell you that it's not. Time to face up to the truth that this program isn't delivering. I have been on DP since DP2. I think I know how the program works by now.

[kassonica]

Excuse me?! SPAM?! no...truth! And if you want to see my creds. just go to the MOTU website news feed. DP6 is a total minefield. I even sent my entire computer to MOTU to have them bench it...they told me it was working perfectly!. Well, I am here to tell you that it's not. Time to face up to the truth that this program isn't delivering. I have been on DP since DP2. I think I know how the program works by now.

What you should say is 'NOT WORKING FOR YOU' A big difference.

It's working for me everyday and I make my living from it.

I'm sorry that you have problems with it but to say it's completely broken is erroneous.

I'm just putting this into perspective.

BTW this is the wrong place to post this anyway, try here;

MOTU Theoretical Discussions, Gripes, Petitions & Off Topic

[BriMondo]

Sorry about the semantics, but this si ON Topic...It's not working for me AND nobody at MOTU can get it to work for ME either....And I do make my living on this thing too.

back to the Kool-Aid.

[timriley]

DP6 working ok here!

[daniel.sneed]

Except minor bugs solved with DP6.02 release, DP6 has always worked fine here too.
Sorry for your bad experience. This must be solved in one way or another.

Of course you did all standard maintenance, such as Disk Warrior and so on ?
And basic standard Mac daw setup ?

BTW, please do include your complete setup in your signature. You will get more informed help from this board.

[editdroid]

We've been running DP in our studio for almost 6 years and generally had very good results. But it's been a frustrating year. It's very unstable - one or two crashes every day. I have been managing a post production studio for years and I've very used to troubleshooting software but I have to say that I just cannot seem to solve this one. Spent hours and hours on it. Looked at memory, plugins, settings computers updates, voodoo.. etc etc. Nothing helps. That's just the honest truth. I got a feeling it's something to do with the waves plugs.. but I can't seem to nail that one down... Ah well.

[JameBond007]

We've been running DP in our studio for almost 6 years and generally had very good results. But it's been a frustrating year. It's very unstable - one or two crashes every day. I have been managing a post production studio for years and I've very used to troubleshooting software but I have to say that I just cannot seem to solve this one. Spent hours and hours on it. Looked at memory, plugins, settings computers updates, voodoo.. etc etc. Nothing helps. That's just the honest truth. I got a feeling it's something to do with the waves plugs.. but I can't seem to nail that one down... Ah well.

I never had any problems with DP 5.13. It was rock solid on OS 4.11 on my Intel Core duo 2.66.
I then installed 10.5.6 and DP 6.02 and it works but seems "sticky" when working with it, and it started freezing especially with PLAY.

DP 5.13 works well in 10.5.6 so I think I am going to stay with this. Could Dp 6.02 maybe work better in 10.4.11 for dual cores?
Is it possible that DP 5.13 works even better in 10.4.11 rather then 10.5.6?

[editdroid]

In my experience the problems increase with the size of the project. We are doing some music but mostly post-production work and the projects are around an hour long at around 40-50 tracks.

There is no question that DP has some kind of stability problem now. I'm about ready to give up...

Very frustrated.. sorry to be negative. So many lost hours this year. I'm the biggest DP fan ever but I'm a beaten man now...

[jpiscitello]

The problems seem to be twofold: one is when you are doing anything and the computer hits a virtual page fault - this is when the hard drive spins up randomly, because the program has decided to rotate some memory onto disk. This doesn't tend to happen during playback, but often during editing, adding new plugins, etc.

The second general instance is with plugins. Problem is, if the plugin crashes, the whole environment crashes.

MOTU has no mechanisms for telling you which plugin "did it". And they certainly have no way to "wrap the plugins in their own protected memory space - ie, if the plugin crashes, DP would keep running. This is probably the biggest thing DP could do for stability.

Another idea would simply be to instrument DP so that it keeps a layman-readable log of what's going on when something crashed. ie, something akin to the undo history. This would be saved continuously whether or not you are saving your project in DP. That way, when a crash happens, you can read what happened, and then MOTU could start gathering data on the order of hundres or thousands of users, and start getting a read on where the crashes are coming from and prioritize the fixes. Because right now any crash you have - it's very hard to reproduce, behavior is random and moody, and very hard to track.

[Robbie_2327]

I'm afraid I have to give up on DP6 as well. I had tried using it on a film project last summer (Twilight) and it was far too unpredictable, but I chalked that up to the complexity of the project - lots of VIs and audio tracks. But I'm just starting a project from scratch on a well-equipped system and with only a few tracks and a few VIs it's DP6 is already unstable. So it's back to DP5.13, although I'm definitely going to experiment with the competition as well.

Carter Burwell

Hmmm... only one post to the forum and it's to announce "giving up" on DP6. Interesting. I'm not even sure... was DP 6.0 even *released* last summer? If so, just barely and you were definitely using version 6.0-- a version that admittedly had problems. Any way, DP 6.02 has been out for a while. Have you tried that one... the most recent version since your one post to this board or have you given up and gone away?

I was shocked to see that Carter Burwell posted something on here at all. (for any one who doesn't know who he is he's one of the biggest film composers in the industry. Just google him and you'll see)

I met him at the scoring session for Hudsucker Proxy back in like '93 and he was using Original Performer 4 back then. He had it running on his lap top while we were recording a live orchestra. I can't imagine after all these years a guy like that would just bail on DP. However, it would be great to have a few posts from him on a regular basis. His scores are fantastic!

[JES]

Reading back through this thread (which I've done since finding my MBP sluggish), I see there's a lot of consensus about restarting your Mac before a session. Do people also use a dedicated account for audio? Would logging out and logging under an audio account the same RAM-flushing as a restart?

Thanks.

--JES