The gray waveform issue...

[cmm]

I noticed a thread from back in May regarding the gray waveform issue after transferring DP6.02 projects from MacBook to G5s (transfer a project over from MB pro to G5, wavesforms show okay at the very start, but waveform window completely gray after that. Seemed to be linked to overview...)

I had that problem back then, and have since moved to SL on the MacBook. I just transferred session files over and have found the same issue again.

The May thread just sort of died without any workarounds. Has anyone found out anything in the meantime?

Andrew

[kassonica]

Yep it happened to me and I think I found out why too, sometimes when you set up a new page or template , DP defaults to AIFF and it's then that these problems occurred (at least with my system) but if you use Bwav it didn't happen (i found this out by accident BTW), why DP default to AIFF is anybodies guess and yes I have Bwav selected in global prefs for all new documents, but it seems setting up a new template, it somehow goes a bit buggy (at least on my system)

Anyway there are two ways to fix the problem A; either scroll in until you see the waveform and make a cut either at the start or end (but it doesn't really matter i suppose) where there is no audio or you record a sec of audio at the end, and then merge file and bingo, all is good, or B; you can reimport the file (making sure DP is set on Bwav) but this is tricker, because timestamps seem to get lost in translation.


I hope this makes sense as I'm at the end of a long day

PS could you check to set what kind of files were being used in the document where this happened to you as I'm curious to know if it's because of the same reason.

Cheers

[Shooshie]

Yep it happened to me and I think I found out why too, sometimes when you set up a new page or template , DP defaults to AIFF and it's then that these problems occurred (at least with my system) but if you use Bwav it didn't happen (i found this out by accident BTW), why DP default to AIFF is anybodies guess and yes I have Bwav selected in global prefs for all new documents, but it seems setting up a new template, it somehow goes a bit buggy (at least on my system)

So, Kass, this has never happened to me (possibly because I've been using WAV, but more likely because I only rarely transfer a project from Mac Pro to G4 (Powerbook). But I'm curious. Even if your default audio format is set to BWAV, it still will just slip back into an AIFF default? Curious indeed, and it's one that I wonder whether MOTU knows about.

Shooshie

[wurliuchi]

Yep it happened to me and I think I found out why too, sometimes when you set up a new page or template , DP defaults to AIFF and it's then that these problems occurred (at least with my system) but if you use Bwav it didn't happen (i found this out by accident BTW), why DP default to AIFF is anybodies guess and yes I have Bwav selected in global prefs for all new documents, but it seems setting up a new template, it somehow goes a bit buggy (at least on my system)

So, Kass, this has never happened to me (possibly because I've been using WAV, but more likely because I only rarely transfer a project from Mac Pro to G4 (Powerbook). But I'm curious. Even if your default audio format is set to BWAV, it still will just slip back into an AIFF default? Curious indeed, and it's one that I wonder whether MOTU knows about.

Shooshie

I have the default set to BWAV but it always writes AIFF. I think maybe I have to change the "Current Project" to BWAV and save as a template. But I thought for sure I did that.

[wurliuchi]

In the Preferences I set New projects and the Current project to BWAV and save, and then Save As a template (and set it as new) but the new projects always default back to AIFF for Current project.

[kassonica]

Shooshie wrote

So, Kass, this has never happened to me (possibly because I've been using WAV, but more likely because I only rarely transfer a project from Mac Pro to G4 (Powerbook). But I'm curious. Even if your default audio format is set to BWAV, it still will just slip back into an AIFF default? Curious indeed, and it's one that I wonder whether MOTU knows about.

Shooshie

Thats right and I just noticed another thing as well, sometimes it defaults to 16bit

If you open a mastering template in DP it will open as 16 bit as well????

When this happened to me and before I had worked it out, a lot of the files were recorded as AIFF and when I discovered it I changed to BWAV half way through the session so some of these sessions have both AIFF's and BWAV and I've noticed on these sessions there will be more crashing, but all with respect to MOTU these are medium to big sessions recorded at 96/24.

I feel it is a bug of sorts.

Ps It's seems to happen more when you set up a document on a PPC then an intel.

[cmm]

Kass,

Your points were bang on: they were indeed aiff files coming from the MacBook (intel btw), although the default new file in prefs was set to BWav.

I found the same thing as wuriluchi mentioned: you can reset the prefs to default to BWav for new files, but when you open a 'new' file from that pref, the 'current project' format in prefs always slips back to aiff.

Thanks for your suggestions on how to overcome it, neither being particularly time efficient, but its preferable to having to edit on the laptop at the moment.

Because you can eventually see the waveform when zoomed in, I also found you can marginally improve this situation by tinkering with the tempo (whack it up to 400bpm for example). Not improved by much though, and obviously only of any use in non-tempo dependent sessions...

I'll pass on these bug observations in the Techlink I've got open.

Thanks all

Andrew

[Kurt Cowling]

The easiest thing to do is just merge all your soundbites. You don't need to do anything to them first. You might need to set the project format to Bwav first.

[cmm]

Actually it was much easier than I thought. I was able to mass convert all the files to Bwav in the soundbites list, without merging, and everything was fine.

A couple of other PITA things have popped up in this transferred project though: no drop down menu when clicking on insert slots in the mixer (although double clicking will bring up a window that lets me choose the plugin I need), the project won't scroll when holding down the scroll left-right arrows in edit windows (repetitive single clicks only), and clicking and holding on a soundbite won't audition the soundbite: I need to click-drag to highlight a section to hear it playback.

These issue weren't a problem in transferred projects pre SnowLeopard, so I'll have to troubleshoot these further
Andrew