Beachball party after 21 track multitrack rec (SOLVED)

[Radiogal]

Recorded a band, multitrack 21 tracks... and after that the beachball party started...
Heck, my Mac is fast with DP8.01, I have fast harddrives and loads of RAM. Didn´t have this problem in DP7.24.

I had also 2 or 3 crashes..

Not good at all.

I restarted the Mac Pro and the beachballs were gone until after multirecording (21 tracks at the same time). Another party!!

I came to the idea to check Punch Gard. I had set it to 60 seconds both pre and post recording.
So I turned it down to zero. This might be one of the beachball party reasons? Donnow yet.
I´ll do another recording session with this band tomorrow. Will see if the problems still occurs.

Anyone experiencing the same?
Any thoughts about this?

Thanks

Recorded 48 kHz/ 24 bit BWAV

[bayswater]

That extra 2 minutes on 21 tracks would take up about 3G of RAM? Not that it should matter if you have 16G. But I assumed punch guard was meant to be used to catch situations where you mistime a punch by a second or so, and may not be set up to handle that much extra time efficiently.

[magicd]

Check your background processing preferences. Is DP set to automatically look for beats and tempo in the audio. Is it set to automatically analyze the audio? If so, you might want to disable those preferences. In any case, the Background Processing window can tell you what DP is doing at the end of the record pass.

Dave

[Radiogal]

Good call. Gotta check that out first thing tomorrow. I think I might have checked these boxes in a recent project. Thanks!!!

Update: Those where was all unchecked.

[dwood3455]

I routinely record live 32 tracks in DP. There is several minutes of processing that always occurs after hitting stop. It mostly has to do with building analysis files for every track. The longer you are in record and the higher resolution you record in, the longer the beachball spins. I use intermission to let the ball spin, check tracks, and make a backup of the project file in case of any corruption.

[Radiogal]

Thanks DWood. Can you tell us more about intermission? Link? Thanks

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'd be interested as well.

[Dan Worley]

With DP 7.21, I commonly recorded 24 tracks at once and had no such wait times. Mostly I record at 24/44.1. I have all unnecessary processing (for what I'm doing) turned off, as Magic Dave suggested earlier. I've been working that way for years. I used to sit and wait for processing until I found the right settings in the preferences.

I haven't had any time to do much tracking in DP8, so I'll be interested to find out if there is any change. I hope not.

Good luck.

[Radiogal]

I had the "Analyze audio file for DSP asap" checked.
I´ve changed that now.
Thanks

[MIDI Life Crisis]

No analysis or beat detection here. Pretty solid with an ocassional hiccup. Rare, like my steaks ( and my stakes).

[dwood3455]

Oh, I meant I literally use the intermission break between sets to listen back to what I've just recorded for any obvious errors. I also manually duplicate the DP project file as a backup. That way I'm ready and more confident for Act 2. I do all of this and let DP produce its analysis files all within a 10 minute time frame. There was one show that was almost 2 hours straight with no break, and at 32 tracks/44.1k DP8 spun its ball for almost 10 minutes. At this point I know its not frozen or crashed I just need to allot enough time before I remove my hard drives etc.

[Radiogal]

Update: Today the Playback ran into red all the time and I lost the sound of several tracks. I copied it to another disc and all seemed well so I erased the audio disc to defrag it.

Conclusion. The problem with the beach ball mentioned in this topic was probably related to the harddrive being fragmented. DP is super responsive again.

[mikehalloran]

You resolved the issue but you did not address the underlying cause: Bigger, faster Mac Pro with more RAM and solid state drives. SSDs never need de-fragging since they have no moving parts.

Many of us look for an excuse to justify a hardware upgrade. You are not in that category and this thread proves it.

If you want to upgrade incrementally, I would think that an SSD or two would be your first priority. Seriously. Another 8G RAM wouldn't hurt either.

[HCMarkus]

Patricia, you have a very fast computer; if it is at the mercy of spinning drives, Mike offers a great idea. I am loving how fast my VI's load from 2 SSDs. System drive is another SSD. I also record and store work files on fourth SSD, backed up to 2 internal spinners and an external TM drive. Everything moves very quickly!

Compared to what we spend on plug-ins, SSDs are very reasonable these days. I picked up the last two 240 GB intel 330's for $140 each. They may be a tad slower than the 335's that replaced them, but are plenty fast for the SATA2 bus in the Mac Pro. Check MacRumors for SSD recommendations.

Easy-Peasy to mount an SSD in the optical bay... no bracket required (unless you jostle your Mac Pro around a lot) and the power and SATA connection for the second optical drive is ready and waiting. In my case, I disconnected my optical drive (I use an external FIrewire CD burner) and connected two SSD's in the optical bay. I moved the optical drive to the lower portion of the bay and used double-sided foam tape to secure the SSD's to its flat metal top.

If you need a few more SATA ports, an inexpensive PCIe card (I got one for $16 from a stateside seller) will expand your Mac with two ports. Cards with the ASM1061 chipset are bootable. Here's a typical EBay link for an offshore seller, $12.00:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-eSATA-2-SATA- ... 27c7b32f83

These cards are single-lane PCIe, so they don't offer full SATA3 speed, but the price-performace ratio is still tough to beat (a lot cheaper than Thunderbolt cases and cables, eh? ). Two ports are available, each configurable as internal or external by jumpers on the card.

[Radiogal]

Thanks guys for your input and info. I´ll look into it.
Oh man, a new Mac Pro? Please don´t say that!! This beast is only 1,5 years and running great.

The underlying cause was that many projects were recorded and loads of editings done on the same audio drive during several months.
I hadn´t defraged/formated the audio disc for quite some time.
I mean it´s just plane computer maintenance, isn´t it?

The running audio drive is a 10000 RPM, 600 GB, WD Velocirapter.
Fast enough even for the largest audio projects I´m running.
The SSD discs are a bit too limited in size for my workflow. The largest ones are expensive and I´d probably kill the SSD before warranty ends due all the writings. Donnow. I´m not any VI engineer. Audio recordings are my specialty.
More RAM, well that could be done, but to be honest, I haven´t hit the limit yet.

But hey, gimme that 48 RAM 12 core Mac Pro with a SSD in every HD bay.. I wouldn´t say no