Plogue Bidule & Vienna Ensemble experts, collaborate!

[Shooshie]

BUt.... if it seems like it aint doing anything when you drag it in - dont taunt it and go clicking on stuff. Just wait til the dust clears.

Good advice for a lot of things, throughout DP, throughout life.

Shoosh

[Marc7777]

Good advice for a lot of things, throughout DP, throughout life.

Indeed.


I also noticed when adding clippings that, the more windows you have open, the longer it takes. Also the bigger the mixer, the longer it takes. (at least on my Mac it does...maybe not others..)

To me, it seems like when adding a clipping and you have multiple windows open, it has to "duplicate" the information to all these windows. adding tracks etc. thus taking more time..

I'm not sure if that's the technical reason, but it seems like if you make a window set that is JUST the Tracks Overview window, it's very snappy (maybe less for DP to "think about")

WOO! i'm so glad we started this. I'm really getting the most out of my template now!!

I feel like my template went to the gym, had a personal trainer, and is now a BEAST! haha

~M

[Marc7777]

I started using my new template, and, as usual, ran into a few issues.

Basically my load times are varying. On a fresh template it only takes about 20-25 seconds to load the template: 2 instances of VEP - 1 local, 1 slaved. about 20 Event plugs. maybe 100 MIDI tracks and 50 audio tracks. For sure not the biggest template.

But sometimes it takes a minute for some reason. Then others it's in between.

It seems that if I load a few plugs and start working one day, then come back to it later, it sometimes takes like 2 minutes to load!! .. this isn't cool.. I basically stare at a beach ball for 2 mins wondering if it crashed. then it loads.

What are your experiences?

I have a friend with pretty much the same setup, and he has a pretty big template and his DP projects open in 10-13 seconds! EVERY TIME! ... i'm sensing something is astray here..

Thanks!

~M

[Shooshie]

I started using my new template, and, as usual, ran into a few issues.

Basically my load times are varying. On a fresh template it only takes about 20-25 seconds to load the template: 2 instances of VEP - 1 local, 1 slaved. about 20 Event plugs. maybe 100 MIDI tracks and 50 audio tracks. For sure not the biggest template.

But sometimes it takes a minute for some reason. Then others it's in between.

It seems that if I load a few plugs and start working one day, then come back to it later, it sometimes takes like 2 minutes to load!! .. this isn't cool.. I basically stare at a beach ball for 2 mins wondering if it crashed. then it loads.

What are your experiences?

I have a friend with pretty much the same setup, and he has a pretty big template and his DP projects open in 10-13 seconds! EVERY TIME! ... i'm sensing something is astray here..

Thanks!

~M

I think it depends on more than one thing, but ONE of those things is the type of instruments that you are loading. When I load Vienna Symphonic Library, the first time it loads takes a lot of time, even minutes, in which everything seems hung up. If I quit and reload, it seems that a lot of that remains in memory, and it takes only a fraction of that time. Outside of that, I think we're dealing with a LOT of variables: plugins available, plugins loaded, instruments loaded, settings for those instruments, bundles, audio and MIDI interfaces, drivers, and other things. No two people have the exact same setup. That's been very frustrating, because even small differences can cause large changes in outcomes. Sometimes I have the most perfect running setup in the world, and other times I'm fighting crashes, hangs, and spinning beach balls. It's just not an exact science.

Shooshie

[Marc7777]

Thanks!

I know this is off topic (and belongs in a different thread) so i'll stop digressing after this question:

But how do YOU (Shooshie and others) troubleshoot that type of thing? I mean I know the usual troubleshooting technique is to start from scratch and rebuild from there, but what are the more effective ways to go about this? As in, what can I eliminate (if any) that would be the biggest possible culprit? Plugins? RAM? etc. ..from your experience of course. (i know there are lots of variables.)

Thanks again!

If i have more questions i'll start a new topic in the "Troubleshooting" section..

~M

[Frodo]

But how do YOU (Shooshie and others) troubleshoot that type of thing? I mean I know the usual troubleshooting technique is to start from scratch and rebuild from there, but what are the more effective ways to go about this? As in, what can I eliminate (if any) that would be the biggest possible culprit? Plugins? RAM? etc. ..from your experience of course. (i know there are lots of variables.)

We all get to the point where accepting things the way they are is necessary. I think we talked about this in another thread, but VSL used to take as many minutes to load as you guys are speaking of in seconds, being 15-20+. It took a long time for it to get to this point, but 20 seconds for large template for me is brilliant.

As for troubleshooting, it's often a process of elimination. It could be that an instrument is not quite up to snuff with OSX or one or more plugins may not get along with DP or with VEP. It could also be a matter of having too much data streaming from a single hard drive or too many hard drives choking a single buss. In case of problems, I would disable the busiest VIs until there were signs of improvement. Convolution reverbs can get CPU-greedy, so use them wisely-- ie: don't try 40 instances of Altiverb.

On the latest machines, much of this ought not be a problem and nothing to fear. Chances are greater that the latest machines that are well-outfitted simply suffer from the amount of data called for at once. I wouldn't worry about load times unless they take more than a minute. The most important thing is that the project records and plays back smoothly.

Other things can happen that are simply inexplicable. Deleting DP's Preferences clears up a lot of this stuff. There are other preferences which can be deleted if the symptoms point to them. Deleting these preferences and then restarting DP will created fresh preferences automatically.

Beyond that, the problems get more serious-- like potential hard drive failure or a need to reinstall certain bits of software.

More specifically with VEP and all VSL products, take care to cross-check when OSX is updated along with updates of Vienna products and eLicenser. So many times a version of a Vienna product is intended to work with a specific version of eLicenser (or later).

Generally speaking, keep your drive directories clean. I would suggest offloading old projects from the DP project drive once in a while. I hesitate to suggest defragmenting because some here have reasons why that may not be a good idea. But offloading is safe and effective to keep your audio drive from hitting 80%+ capacity.

[Marc7777]

Thanks Frodo!

I'll keep notes of those tips! Although I found my specific culprit. It seems my spotlight was stuck indexing. I've never really had that thing working.. I didn't notice the little magnifying glass with a dot in it. It was for sure making my DP a little sluggish since after I stopped it indexing ( spotlight preferences, privacy) DP was back to it's normal self! I hate when it's just one little thing that causes your whole setup to choke!! ughhhh!

Also, a fresh restart on the Slave and Master computer always helps too!

Troubleshooting 101 - 1) Breathe. 2) Restart your computer! ha!

Anyways I'm back to speed! What's next on this thread? Any more tips to come up with? or add to the to-do list?

~M7

[Shooshie]

Bumping this back to the top so that maybe some of the folks who use VEP and/or Bidule will see it and respond.

Shooshie

[rixax@vex.net]

To add to what Marc has listed so clearly, I understand that Vienna-ensemble pro 1-2 is the bus that I assign to instance in DPs mixer. Then out 1-2 goes to (let's say) bus1-2 and then follow the print out 3-4 goes to vienna-ensemble 3-4.

This is the way I use internal plugins as well. If I create an instrument inside DP virtual rack like Kontakt. The rail is like bus 3-4. All Kontact stereo 1-2 routes to bus 3-4. Then I can create new outs in Kontakt that show up in DP as Kontakt 3-4, Kontakt 5-6 etc.

I'm just getting used to VEP. I may try toy load all sounds for all ongoing projects in multiple instances of VEP and then preserve and decouple to have access for all projects. This will eat up a lot of ram but since I only use a few instruments at a time for each cue, It may work. between metaframes, instances, preserve and decouple, I'm just getting familiar with the possibilities. There are only 9 stereo outs per instance of Play in VEP so maybe I'll gang Kontakt with one, Mach 5 with another and then a few by themselves. MIDI is not a problem with the VEP 5 MIDI plug but you then have to assign more instruments to one output pair.

[SixStringGeek]

Back on Topic! - VEP on a single Mac. Setup is EASY!! These are the steps I took that gave me the best results (after installation of course):

1) Open DP, but don't load a project. (previously there were issues in the order of starting apps, so i got into the habit of this.)
2) start up VEP Server (32 or 64 bit)

FWIW, I set up both VEP 32 and 64 bit server to run as startup items. Then they're always running when I need them. You can run both which is THE WAY that I know of to mix 32 and 64 bit plugs. Otherwise, I just create an instrument track with VEP like any other instrument track, it opens a kind of chooser panel with a selector, 32 or 64 bit. Choose the bitness and enter the host name where you want to run the instrument, generally this is localhost if you just have one machine. Click connect and you get a new blank instance window. Configure as desired. Having only just upgraded from VEP 4 to 5 today, I typically only put one multi-instrument in VEP, like a Kontakt, Omnisphere, or some such thing. Each server instance hosts one multi-instrument. (Or I put Ivory II in its own server instance - 32bit pig that it is).

I leave things coupled so stuff gets saved with the project. I tried decoupling for a few things but found it was hard to keep track of stuff.

Biggest headache is DP crashes tend to leave instances around marked as "connected in use" and you need to clean those out now and then, generally by closing DP, then clobbering the two server processes and restarting them.

[Shooshie]

Wow! Great information folks. Keep it coming. I'm not going to write the first VEP tips until next week, as I'm too busy setting up a new Macbook Pro/Lion with DP, Waves, Wallander, and a dozen other things for a remote session this weekend. So there's time to expand on any details you think haven't been covered. If anyone wants to upload some graphics, that would be nice, too, but I don't know where to host them. I've been hosting all the Tips Sheet graphics until now, but come June 30, there will be no more iDisk in DotMac or MobileMe, so we're going to have to find a real host before then. If you want to host your own graphics on whatever server you use, that's fine.

Anyway, this is actually making a lot of sense, even to me, who only has used the regular VE, not VEP.

Shooshie

[Marc7777]

Biggest headache is DP crashes tend to leave instances around marked as "connected in use" and you need to clean those out now and then, generally by closing DP, then clobbering the two server processes and restarting them.

Actually all you have to do after DP crashes, is right-click on the instance that is still connected and it'll say "Force disconnect instance" click that, it'll tell you that it may crash your DAW ... but your DAW is already crashed.. soooo... ha

Then just start up DP and open a project

Back in action!!

Hope that helps ya!

~Marc

[Marc7777]

OH! a tip that generally gets overlooked.

It is highly recommended to turn OFF your AIRPORT when using VEP Server. Not sure if it affects just a single computer, but definitely if you have 2 or more computers connected via VEP Server.

The thread usage options in VEP are very flexible, however, the manual (and VEP techs) can't really say what is best to do. What are your experiences?

I tend to leave mine at the maximum. (16 threads) The manual says that you should evenly split up threads based on the amount of instances. so 1 instance 16 threads, 2 instances 8 threads, etc. I've never really ran into an issue with this, but some others seem to have..
Some say that on a local hosted VEP server they'll set the threads to 14 (out of 16 lets say) so that "in theory" your DAW will use 2 threads by itself, and VEP can use the rest... i'm not sure DP is smart enough to do this or not.. just my thought..


i'll try and think of more of those pesky little tidbits that can dramatically affect your VEP experience.

Cheers,

Marc

[labman]

The thread usage options in VEP are very flexible, however, the manual (and VEP techs) can't really say what is best to do. What are your experiences?

Marc

something I clipped from somewhere...

You may change the number of used threads in the Multiprocessing drop-down menu in real-time, and each Vienna Ensemble PRO instance will use the specified number of process threads. So 1 instance on an 8 core computer should use 8 threads, 2 instances should use 4 threads, and so forth. Ideally you should have as few threads as possible. If you're also running your host sequencer on the same system as the running instances, it might be wise to reserve a core for it.

To keep it simple, set the amount of threads to your amount of cores. If you run into performance issues, lower the amount of threads.

HTH

[SixStringGeek]

Actually all you have to do after DP crashes, is right-click on the instance that is still connected and it'll say "Force disconnect instance" click that, it'll tell you that it may crash your DAW ... but your DAW is already crashed.. soooo... ha

I've found that doesn't work 100% of the time in v4, they don't die. Just got v5 so hope this works better.