Soundbites Window Empty! All Edit data lost.

[daniel.sneed]

The only thing I forgot to mention is be careful to not delete your master recording material (original performance). Once you start to edit it and use the edited version, the original soundbite will also appear as "unused" and get deleted with the rest if you're not aware it has been selected.

To avoid this worst case scenario, I generally duplicate my tracking sequence before heavy editing. Then edit the copy.
In very light projects, I simply duplicate and hide the original tracks.
In both cases, any un-edited and un-merged soundbites, won't be deleted thru *select-unused-soundbite-and-delete*. Associated audio-files will remain on disk.

[Kubi]

I wonder if this is related to the problem I have had a couple of times, where a track "appears" to be empty while containing soundbites and playing them back faithfully, incl. automation. It's not a View Filter issue since it happened only with a single track out of many. In the couple of instances this happened to me, restarting DP and reloading the project took care of it...

[Dwetmaster]

To avoid this worst case scenario, I generally duplicate my tracking sequence before heavy editing. Then edit the copy.
In very light projects, I simply duplicate and hide the original tracks.
In both cases, any un-edited and un-merged soundbites, won't be deleted thru *select-unused-soundbite-and-delete*. Associated audio-files will remain on disk.

I usually just duplicate the take from the track I want to edit. And then edit the duplicated take. Then when I'm finished editing I duplicate the edited take and I merge the soundbite from the duplicated "editing" take. That way I'm always backward compatible till the end...

[daniel.sneed]

Good, Dwetmaster!
Yes, duplicate takes. I'm not used to this takes thingy, except for improvised soli, which I rarely do.

BTW, one of these days, I'll jump into Polar, I guess!

[eriknorlander]

Thanks for your reply, Dave. I am a big believer in the Merge Soundbites idea and also the "Save As" with Soundbites. In this case, neither of those would help me as my project is for editing drums only. I have the original complete files, both from Pro Tools and the imported version that DP created. It's the edits I want, and those are what I had the problems with.

Since MLC's advice, I have been proceeding more conservatively with my Soundbite count, saving frequent incremental backups and merging about every 10 bars or so once I'm sure I love my edits. So far ... knocking wood now ... so good.

Your observation about problems arising with importing projects from previous versions *and* from other drives is interesting. I'll bet there's something going on there.

Cheers,
Erik

[eriknorlander]

I wonder if this is related to the problem I have had a couple of times, where a track "appears" to be empty while containing soundbites and playing them back faithfully, incl. automation. It's not a View Filter issue since it happened only with a single track out of many. In the couple of instances this happened to me, restarting DP and reloading the project took care of it...

Hi Kubi,

It is more than a display / viewing bug in this case. The tracks won't play, and the soundbites window shows up as empty, too. As for restarting DP and reloading the project, no luck with that either. I tried all sorts of measures to get the edits back, of course including the old favorite trick of starting a new project and then Load-ing the sequence from the troublesome project. I tried repairing permissions, running disk repair utilities (no problems found ... !), copying the project to other drives, all that stuff. My troubles seem to be related to creating a freakishly large number of soundbites through editing 26 grouped drum tracks. I'd love to hear from the o/p to see if the number of soundbites may be a factor in his troubles as well.

Cheers,
Erik

[eriknorlander]

The only thing I forgot to mention is be careful to not delete your master recording material (original performance). Once you start to edit it and use the edited version, the original soundbite will also appear as "unused" and get deleted with the rest if you're not aware it has been selected.

Hi MLC,

At first read I thought, oh yes, of course, this is good practice. But then it occurred to me that any of the edited soundbites -- as long as they are edited non-destructively -- can be restored to the original soundbite simply by fully opening up the waveform edges in the Sequence Editor to its original start and end, and if necessary, reset it to its original time stamp. If I start with a soundbite called "Kick" and make 1,347 (non-destructive) edits to that soundbite, I can always go to, say, "Kick.834", open up the waveform edges completely and have my original complete soundbite back again.

Right? Or am I missing something?

Cheers,
Erik

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Normally I'd say you're correct, but if you merge that edit the original becomes 'unused' and would get deleted with my instructions. Also, considering the nature of your issues, I just want to make sure you don't loose your master. Sounds like you're back in the proverbial saddle again. That's a good thing. ☺

[Shooshie]

Guys, do you think it's a DP limitation? Or could it be a problem with a drive containing more files than it can recognize? Is that even remotely possible? The reason I ask is that about 18 months ago I lost a 2TB hard drive. Letta me tella you: Thatsa lotta filesa. It began acting strangely. Disk Utility faithfully reported that the drive and files were completely fine, until it would no longer boot at all. Then I managed to get it to cough back into existence a time or two more. Each time, Disk Utility reported that the drive was in perfect shape. I managed to get most of my important files of it just a couple of hours before it bit the dust a final time.

Is it possible that we can reach a limit on files? I just realized that I have no idea how many files HFS+ can recognize. That's a very old file system! Possibly the last remnant of the old MacOS that is remaining in a critical link of the OSX system chain. It's also the major reason that DP is still retro-compatible to Performer files from 1987 or beyond. I know it can hold a lot, but how many is that? Is it possible for us to fill up a disk with that many files?

The reason I wonder if it applies here is because Erik's problem continued until he reduced the number of files on his drive. I guess it would be pretty easy to find out: just duplicate the project folder a few times, with all those tens of thousands of files, and see what happens. (backup recommended!)

Shoosh

[eriknorlander]

Guys, do you think it's a DP limitation? Or could it be a problem with a drive containing more files than it can recognize? Is that even remotely possible? The reason I ask is that about 18 months ago I lost a 2TB hard drive. Letta me tella you: Thatsa lotta filesa. It began acting strangely. Disk Utility faithfully reported that the drive and files were completely fine, until it would no longer boot at all. Then I managed to get it to cough back into existence a time or two more. Each time, Disk Utility reported that the drive was in perfect shape. I managed to get most of my important files of it just a couple of hours before it bit the dust a final time.

Is it possible that we can reach a limit on files? I just realized that I have no idea how many files HFS+ can recognize. That's a very old file system! Possibly the last remnant of the old MacOS that is remaining in a critical link of the OSX system chain. It's also the major reason that DP is still retro-compatible to Performer files from 1987 or beyond. I know it can hold a lot, but how many is that? Is it possible for us to fill up a disk with that many files?

The reason I wonder if it applies here is because Erik's problem continued until he reduced the number of files on his drive. I guess it would be pretty easy to find out: just duplicate the project folder a few times, with all those tens of thousands of files, and see what happens. (backup recommended!)

Shoosh

Thanks for your thoughts, Shooshie. I don't think it's an OS or disk formatting issue because I'm not actually increasing the number of files on the disk. I started with 28 AIF files on the disk, and I've only been chopping them up and moving them around -- no destructive edits. So according the Finder, I still have only 28 files in the Audio Files folder even though DP has created 1,300+ soundbites from each of those individual audio files.

However, methinks there is more going on here, and that those disk files are perhaps containers for lots of little files. If I take a single audio file, bring it into DP, make 100 edits, then start a completely new project and bring in the same single audio file from disk, it will have all of the previously created soundbites available. So I guess the soundbite data is actually stored in the audio file on disk and not in the actual DP project. Is that possible?

Cheers,
Erik

[daniel.sneed]

However, methinks there is more going on here, and that those disk files are perhaps containers for lots of little files. If I take a single audio file, bring it into DP, make 100 edits, then start a completely new project and bring in the same single audio file from disk, it will have all of the previously created soundbites available. So I guess the soundbite data is actually stored in the audio file on disk and not in the actual DP project. Is that possible?
Cheers,Erik

Your story is so weird that anything is possible! But, AFAIK, this is NOT the way DP is supposed to manage audio files.
BTW what's the actual size of the the DP file itself?

[mess]

Guys, do you think it's a DP limitation? Or could it be a problem with a drive containing more files than it can recognize? Is that even remotely possible? The reason I ask is that about 18 months ago I lost a 2TB hard drive. Letta me tella you: Thatsa lotta filesa. It began acting strangely. Disk Utility faithfully reported that the drive and files were completely fine, until it would no longer boot at all. Then I managed to get it to cough back into existence a time or two more. Each time, Disk Utility reported that the drive was in perfect shape. I managed to get most of my important files of it just a couple of hours before it bit the dust a final time.

Is it possible that we can reach a limit on files? I just realized that I have no idea how many files HFS+ can recognize. That's a very old file system! Possibly the last remnant of the old MacOS that is remaining in a critical link of the OSX system chain. It's also the major reason that DP is still retro-compatible to Performer files from 1987 or beyond. I know it can hold a lot, but how many is that? Is it possible for us to fill up a disk with that many files?

The reason I wonder if it applies here is because Erik's problem continued until he reduced the number of files on his drive. I guess it would be pretty easy to find out: just duplicate the project folder a few times, with all those tens of thousands of files, and see what happens. (backup recommended!)

Shoosh

Highly doubt this is a DP limitation. You'll find people with film scores using FAR more files. Sounds like something isn't behaving properly, especially considering we've seen several people reporting it in the last week. If this was a limitation it would have come up a LONG time ago and FAR more frequently.

[mess]

However, methinks there is more going on here, and that those disk files are perhaps containers for lots of little files. If I take a single audio file, bring it into DP, make 100 edits, then start a completely new project and bring in the same single audio file from disk, it will have all of the previously created soundbites available. So I guess the soundbite data is actually stored in the audio file on disk and not in the actual DP project. Is that possible?
Cheers,Erik

Your story is so weird that anything is possible! But, AFAIK, this is NOT the way DP is supposed to manage audio files.
BTW what's the actual size of the the DP file itself?

DP has ALWAYS stored SB edit data (start and end points, time stamps) in the parent audio file. This is true of all file formats (PT regions, etc). The sequence is storing all of the sequence specific data related to SB placement (what track, loops, fades, etc).

[db13231]

@MIDI Life Crisis, thanks for your reply. I'm going to do just that and will report back. I'm going to try merging some of the new edited soundbites as well to try to reduce the soundbite count.

@db13231, does your problem project by any chance also have a freakishly high number of soundbites?

BTW, I did try the old faithful load sequence into new project trick. No luck with that, unfortunately.

Cheers,
Erik

Hey Erik,

Looks like we opened up a can of worms here! Yeah I did have a ton of soundbites based on work I was doing with drum edits for an average rock song. About 5 mins long, 10 or 12 tracks of drums, and then I'd use the beat detective thing to create soundbites from beats. So not only would I have the thousands of little soundbites, but I'd still have take files from different versions and whatnot.

I do attempt to merge soundbites when I’m happy with my edits, but not all the time. I’d prefer not to with the drums, only because they are so transient that after editing for an hour or two, some times I miss something I would like to be able to go back and check the fade later. ☺

I ran Disk Utility from the orignal Mac OSX startup disk, transferred my work all to an Avastor drive running Firewire 800. I also went in and deleted all my unused bites. Another thing I did which I doubt helped was trash all my many mixes in the Mixer window. I basically did a spring cleaning.

I was never able to get back the edits I lost and had to go back to previous versions of the projects that were messed up. Since I posted my first thread everything has been running smoothly, but it was a huge hassle spending hours rebuilding the sessions.

I’m sorry to hear it happened to you too, but glad to know that it might be a DP7 glitch. I’ve been using DP religiously since 3.0 and have never run into this before. ☹

Thanks to everybody who had some advice on the general cleaning up of my projects.

[daniel.sneed]

DP has ALWAYS stored SB edit data (start and end points, time stamps) in the parent audio file. This is true of all file formats (PT regions, etc). The sequence is storing all of the sequence specific data related to SB placement (what track, loops, fades, etc).

I was far! Thanks very much for this one, Mess!