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

[davinci53]

@ James- I don't know why either.. It has been unstable since i updated my MAC OS back in Dec 09 ( I am currently at 10.6.3 ) and I also updated to DP7 from Dp5 and the same tome.. I never owned DP6, would that make a difference for this version crashing?
ALSO- l am still using "Antares Auto-Tune 5" that plug-in has periodically been unstable.
i.e.- Out of the blue it goes haywire (jumps notes all over the place with a glide sound.
I wrote Antares and they said they discontinued that version and do not support any more upgrades for it.

I guess I will have to read the DO's AND DON'T's list again.

[James Steele]

Well I wish I had more useful info. All I could think of is to start disabling all plugs but the MOTU plugs and start enabling them one at a time. It may be a third party plug-in for all I know. Very odd.

[bayswater]

disabling all plugs but the MOTU plugs and start enabling them one at a time.

Rather then one at a time, disable half of them, if all is well, you know the bad plug is in that half. Enable half of the half, and then you know which quarter the bad plug is in. Keep halving until you are down to the one plug.

That way you can test 256 plugs in 8 moves. (or a million in 16)

[James Steele]

disabling all plugs but the MOTU plugs and start enabling them one at a time.

Rather then one at a time, disable half of them, if all is well, you know the bad plug is in that half. Enable half of the half, and then you know which quarter the bad plug is in. Keep halving until you are down to the one plug.

That way you can test 256 plugs in 8 moves. (or a million in 16)

What he said! I knew there was a logical way to do this!

[joelfriedman]

Hi,

I'm going to add my 2 cents in desperation as I've started to really crash the last few days and it's stopped me from working. My problem seems to be related to, or triggered by, the use of chunks. I've posted to the regular Motu-Mac email list but thought I'd try this BB too. Here are my 2 posts (see below). I have a zip of crash logs from the last few days if anyone knows how to read them and wants to see them (you'd be a braver man, or woman, than I!). I'd attach the zip but I don't see how on this board.

BTW: I've repaired permissions and earlier ran DriveGenius 3 to rebuild the directories etc.

Best,

Joel

1. Hi All,

Just in time for the holidays!

In my current project every time I access the chunks window (make a copy, try to rename a copy, set a new start time for the chunk) DP crashes. I'm not sure what's going on. There isn't that much info in the file. I'm using it as a scrtach pad to make a temp track/try out ideas for the film I'm working on. It's kept me working on 1 chunk and not messing with chunks at all. I do have audio and some MIDI from single VI installations (M5, Ethno 2, MX 4) - nothing too fancy or taxing. Anyone have thoughts on what is corrupted/causing this and what I might do to stop it? My file size has gone up from 14.7 to 22.4 MB with the crash, but that might be from copying a chunk.

Hi,

A few things to add:

1. The file since the very beginning has been slow to save. Not sure why, especially since there isn't a ton of audio or MIDI data in it, no major use of plugins/FX (just the few VI's I mentioned).

2. I've flushed the undo history a number of times in the hopes of getting things "smaller"/back to normal.

3. As this is a movie project I do have a QT movie with the file (BTW: I remember the thread on Perian, and it is up-to-date: v. 1.2.1)

4. I just checked my plugin list in prefs and I only have Motu and Apple items enabled (with the exception of NI Komplete stuff, which I'm not using/instantiating in this file... yet). Everything passed.

HM... I do see duplicates for M5, Ethno, and Mx4. Not sure why. They are disabled and listed as dupes.

5. The only recent change has been upgrading to Ethno v. 2 (I really, really want those alternate tunings!!!).

oh... As I was typing this email and DP was open in the background.... it crashed. I hadn't even done anything in the app yet!

It's going to be a long weekend...

Joel

[hoisingbreit]

I recently determined that I was afflicted with some kind of Firewire malfunction -- either in a cable, the hub, and/or one of three drives. Many crashes in many applications.

Before assuming there's something amiss in DP -- I suggest unhooking ALL Firewire devices and cables and seeing how DP runs with a fresh project.

I haven't had time to troubleshoot cable vs. hub vs. hard drive, but my Mac guru tells me that the external Firewire drives can start doing something weird after a while. I know DP is supposed to benefit from operating all over multiple drives at once, but I think the necessity is over-rated and the problems under-rated. I recently had a new internal drive installed to replace at least one of my external LaCie Firewire drives.

And to recap from earlier in the thread -- rip Mozy BackUp out and DON'T USE IT! It's a stealth processor-&-drive hog.

Also beware of crashing (and interminable Saving) using East-West PLAY plug-ins; get the tracks down and de-install the plug-ins as soon as the project allows. (This problem might have been Firewire-Drive-related.)

[bpardo]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! After reading your tip about separating workflow into different drives (partitions don't count), we suddenly realized that the reason our DP 7.22 couldn't find soundbites is that we had mistakenly thought that saving files into different partitions was akin to different drives, but, instead, the sound bites were disarrayed into different partitions and DP couldn't find them.
What a relief!
Thank you so much for taking the time to post!!!
Bpardo :^)

Habits I brought with me from OS9:

8 ) Separate your workflow to different hard drives that can access their disks independently from each other (partitions don't count). When Apple needs to do a system call, while MOTU is writing to disk, while your favorite VI is chugging away merrily, thinking it's the only app in the world, you open up the odds that pretty soon they're all three going to need something at the same time that simply isn't there, and when one of them has to wait, things could get very nasty. Use your head. Figure out the workflow. Separate different needs to different drives.

There are surely more. I'll add them if/when I think of them. These are pretty essential and basic. I always abide by these, 100% of the time. If I don't, and it crashes, I think, "I deserved that." But I do. And it doesn't.

Shooshie

[otalgia-2000]

"i was working in the lab, late one night..."

when lo & behold, a DP (7.22 in this case) project started going crash-crazy on me. aggravating, because i thought that running an 8-core with 14 Gb of RAM would be system enough to prevent that kind of shenanigans, but there you have it.

in trying to get the project back on stable ground i took some of the measures outlined in this thread and i'll be trying others as well.

but the whole experience got me thinking in general terms, and i wonder whether or not they're valid (if anyone cares to check me on this).

i'm forming the idea that a big-balls system alone might not be enough to keep a project from crashing; that projects themselves have certain limitations that may be independent of available system resources.

am i barking up the wrong consolidated window with this?

one reason i got that idea was that i noticed DP's CPU meter telling one tale but OS system's Activity Monitor reflecting a different picture (for example, that i'm not even touching a lot of my available RAM).

naturally i'll continue to rely on DP's CPU meter because that's where the glass ceiling is (if there is one), but i just found it interesting.

and here's another question: the DP manual points out that the number of buses you've claimed in the studio settings pane isn't really as critical as the number of buses you actually use. ok, but i wonder if they meant:
"isn't as critical as the number of buses you have established in a project's bundles window",
or,
"isn't as critical as the number of buses you have established in a project's bundles window WHICH ARE ACTUALLY PASSING SIGNAL at any given moment"

which could make a difference to those of us who are template mad.

give me two good mics and a 1/2-inch machine,
O-2K

[slybass3000]

I don't know if this has been posted yet but for me now DP7 after a hell of a time is rock solid since I start every project on a clean ATA drive with nothing else on it. No crashes even with up to 50 + chunks with v-racks and plug-ins. That change made all the difference in the world for me.

[Darcycpoes]

All good tips.

Here's my contribution:

If you're starting to max DP out, don't change the memory/location points while playing a sequence/song.

On my system, this is almost bound to bring on a crash.

[Shooshie]

I don't know if this has been posted yet but for me now DP7 after a hell of a time is rock solid since I start every project on a clean ATA drive with nothing else on it. No crashes even with up to 50 + chunks with v-racks and plug-ins. That change made all the difference in the world for me.

Interesting. I may have to try that. Not that I've had any problems, but next time I do, it'll be interesting to know if that fixes it. Just start it on an empty drive.

Shooshie

[denekawa]

7) Use MOTU's MIDI interfaces.

All due respect, but I'm not sure about this one. Aren't most of the people having MIDI problems using MOTU MIDI interfaces? I've never used one and have never had a MIDI problem. M-Audio and Tascam interfaces have always worked great with my DP set-ups.

Gotta admit, you're right, Chris. But I've never personally had any trouble due to the MTP-AVs on my system, at least not until I installed MOTU's latest "Universal Audio Update" last month. I uninstalled it, reinstalled my old drivers, and everything has been fine.

Shooshie

I had an issue too when I installed the new Clockworks and Universal Update. It finally made the battery in my MTP-AV cash in or the timing just worked out that way. It dropped all of my settings and a helpful tech at MOTU was right on it. He walked me through the process to take the MTP-AV apart and I installed a new CR-2032 lithium cell and should be good for another 10 years now. Dang, this thing may outlive me. I created a whole new studio set up and renamed it and as of today everything is running as smooth as can be expected, but it all started after I downloaded the latest update. It may be a good thing overall. Time will tell.

[profdraper]

From my DP8 /ML experience thus far:

All of the same requirements as for Pro Tools apply. See http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_U ... g/en367983

Agrees with the other posts, also turn off spotlight indexing on media drives.

In terms of DP8 itself, the most improvement I've had is in terms of regularly checking out and flushing the undo cache - the 'pruning' options & DP prefs are mind-blowing in that some MOTU person sat down and actually worked all this out. Talk about detail.

Having said this, I do believe that DP8.01 has some graphics bugs but no doubt a few more revs will greatly stabilise all.

Otherwise, every once and a while it pays to do a clean, manual OS and apps install (despite the boring pain of feeding in disks and authorisation codes etc). Time machine migrations and the like slowly screw the operating environment over time. Clean flushes everything out and makes the computer feel almost like new again.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Indeed, there are GUI bugs in DP. MOTU knows this and hopefully will fix 'em in the next update.

[Oliveber]

OK, kidding aside, don't change hardware settings too much. And, definitely don't change settings with e.g. Apogee's FireMix except prior to launching DP (Timeline taught me this a while back).