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Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 9:08 pm
by superjeezus
Occasionally my bundles for VI's get messed up. I started seeing this in version 6, and it continued in 7 through 7.1. It does not seem to be limited to any particular VI. I suspect it is related to some occasional crashes I have been getting.
Sometimes an instrument's inputs will go out of order. For example, Stylus RMX's outputs for 3-4 will be split up, where 3-4 Right will be the first output on the left, but 3-4 Left will show up as the last RMX output, or at the very end of all VI outputs. Sure, I can drag the "L" block to the right, but the behavior seems pretty strange.
Sometimes, blocks will be randomly re-assigned to a Rewire instrument's output.
When working in sessions with lots of VI's, this can turn into a very time consuming ordeal. The bundles can get so jumbled that it is very hard to figure out what is going where. I usually end up deleting my VI bundles, disabling/re-enabling my VI's, and recreating the bundles. But as I said, this can take a while.
I tend to run sessions that contain several instances of Vienna Ensemble Pro, which externally runs most of my instruments. I also use Bidule to host a few VI's. I will occasionally host a sync-dependent VI like RMX or Omnisphere within DP to make things easier. But I am not coming close to tapping DP's memory limit.
I have used DP since it was just P, and have studied just about every version's manual since then. In other words, I'm not new at this. I have experienced this issue on freshly installed systems, while using only built-in audio, after trashing preferences, and after repairing permissions. I also make sure that I only have bundles listed that I am actually using, and make sure that there are no duplicates. Lately, I have only been running one version, 7.1, with freshly built preferences.
Any suggestions for avoiding this problem?
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 9:14 pm
by newrigel
superjeezus wrote:Occasionally my bundles for VI's get messed up. I started seeing this in version 6, and it continued in 7 through 7.1. It does not seem to be limited to any particular VI. I suspect it is related to some occasional crashes I have been getting.
Sometimes an instrument's inputs will go out of order. For example, Stylus RMX's outputs for 3-4 will be split up, where 3-4 Right will be the first output on the left, but 3-4 Right will show up as the last RMX output, or at the very end of all VI outputs. Sure, I can drag the "L" block to the right, but the behavior seems pretty strange.
Sometimes, blocks will be randomly re-assigned to a Rewire instrument's output.
When working in sessions with lots of VI's, this can turn into a very time consuming ordeal. The bundles can get so jumbled that it is very hard to figure out what is going where. I usually end up deleting my VI bundles, disabling/re-enabling my VI's, and recreating the bundles. But as I said, this can take a while.
I tend to run sessions that contain several instances of Vienna Ensemble Pro, which externally runs most of my instruments. I also use Bidule to host a few VI's. I will occasionally host a sync-dependent VI like RMX or Omnisphere within DP to make things easier. But I am not coming close to tapping DP's memory limit.
I have used DP since it was just P, and have studied just about every version's manual since then. In other words, I'm not new at this. I have experienced this issue on freshly installed systems, while using only built-in audio, after trashing preferences, and after repairing permissions. I also make sure that I only have bundles listed that I am actually using, and make sure that there are no duplicates. Lately, I have only been running one version, 7.1, with freshly built preferences.
Any suggestions for avoiding this problem?
What's your buss count 99? if not I'd run it @ 99 busses and try again. You probably don't have enough busses set up or maybe some corruption due to a VI not instantiating or recalling it's assignments. I have gone through all my VI's with a test to see if they can handle the switchboard operator... some make it some don't! The ones that don't I quit using them and waited for an update or I rewire them into DP if I can't work without it. Fortunately, everything I use is working great.
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 11:17 pm
by Shooshie
I do believe there is a problem here, and I do believe it is more than "user error." I also think there are probably ways to avoid the problem, though it may take some conversation for us to figure that out.
Ultimately, we're going to have to share exactly what is happening, and to see our bundles (screenshots) and to explain what they're connected to on the other end. Then it would be helpful to see them after they screw up.
I've got ideas, but I'd rather sit on them until I know more. Or, someone might supply us with a ready-made answer, but I'm not that far along on it yet. Tell us what you can, and screenshots would be helpful. Also, how are you connecting them on the other end? (The VI end)
We need to figure this out!
Shooshie
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 12:51 pm
by superjeezus
newrigel wrote:
What's your buss count 99? if not I'd run it @ 99 busses and try again. You probably don't have enough busses set up or maybe some corruption due to a VI not instantiating or recalling it's assignments.
Thanks newrigel, that is a good suggestion. But yeah, I always run with the max number of busses.
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 1:02 pm
by superjeezus
Shooshie wrote:I do believe there is a problem here, and I do believe it is more than "user error." I also think there are probably ways to avoid the problem, though it may take some conversation for us to figure that out.
Ultimately, we're going to have to share exactly what is happening, and to see our bundles (screenshots) and to explain what they're connected to on the other end. Then it would be helpful to see them after they screw up.
I've got ideas, but I'd rather sit on them until I know more. Or, someone might supply us with a ready-made answer, but I'm not that far along on it yet. Tell us what you can, and screenshots would be helpful. Also, how are you connecting them on the other end? (The VI end)
We need to figure this out!
Shooshie
Yeah, I have seen it under too many different circumstances, and others have the problem too, so it must be some kind of bug. I will post some screenshots as I see the problem popping up (time permitting of course).
As far as my workflow goes, I always host all of my VI's in a V-rack. Lately, that is almost entirely made up of several instances of Vienna Ensemble. Each VI channel is renamed to whatever instrument that instance of VE attaches to. Each VI channel's main output is bussed to a stereo audio track in the TO window, with input monitoring active. Additional outputs from the VI's are activated in the Bundles' Instruments section, and they also feed audio tracks in the TO window. By working this way, I can capture the audio tracks (real-time bounce) easily without doing all the same routing tasks for every project. Well, except for when I need to rebuild Bundles.
On the VI end, it's pretty simple. In Vienna Ensemble, I just create several additional inputs as needed, and route each of them to different outputs, which then are routed in DP via Bundles.
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:09 pm
by superjeezus
Ok, it just happened again on a smaller project. Here's a screenshot of what happened to my "Omni" VI. This VI track is actually an instance of Vienna Ensemble which connects to a VE instance of Omnisphere. Note how the left channel of "Omni Out 3-4" is pushed much further right in the list of instrument outputs. Doesn't seem like such a big deal, but this tends to happen to several instruments at a time, and their inputs in the TO window go dead. Also notice that the "L" block for the Omni 3-4 is not filled in.
This file's bundles were just fine until I closed this file, worked on something else, and re-opened this project. In other words, all I did was open the project and this stuff was messed up.
Note: The right side of the image will be cut off in the thread. To see the whole image, right-click and select "View Image".
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 10:43 pm
by Shooshie
I'm just going to suggest something. Get your bundles working for a particular song, then save the result to a "bundle file." Name it with the name of the song. Then when you open up the other file that you worked on before going back to this song, do the same for it. When you return, load your bundle file and see if it works right off the bat. (you might want to do this in a copy of the file, so you can revert if necessary) If you have to reassign all the I/O to the tracks, this may not be such a hot idea after all.
It appears to me that something is affecting the order that the bundles load their channels. Maybe it has to do with the order in which the plugins publish their instrument channels. I've seen something like this happen, myself, but not often enough to find the pattern and see what's causing it.
Different files are loading different bundles. It's as if we need a dummy file to load between files, and delete all the bundles, then let them reload with the next file we open. Something's just not getting cleared out. I just don't understand why the problem is intermittent. It takes a certain kind of connection to mess it up. Maybe certain VI's. I never saw this happen before I used Kontakt, and actually I'm not using Kontakt much anymore, so maybe that's why I don't see it happening! Could Kontakt be the problem? But then I only see Omni, Trillian, and Strings in you instruments section.
In spite of all the above, I can go back and load files from 3 years ago, with all kinds of Bundles configs, and everything loads properly and plays. I'm still waiting to see what happens.
Could you post the Bundles window from the file that you opened in between the two sessions with this file? Oh, and remember to try the saving and loading bundles if you have the time to experiment.
Shooshie
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:29 pm
by superjeezus
I have experimented with saving/loading bundles, but I am sure I have not exhausted all of the possibilities there. Regarding the issue popping up yesterday--at the moment, yesterday seems like last week, and I can't remember everything I did before I opened this file and took the screenshot. I know I opened several files, loaded some chunks into different files, etc. Pretty standard stuff. I am going to just have to keep watching to see if I can identify a pattern.
I think I mentioned this, but even though the screenshot shows the names of several VI's (Omni, Trilian, etc.), those are my names. Each of those VI's are actually instances of Vienna Ensemble Pro, which connects to the VI's matching the names I gave in the external Vienna Ensemble Server app. Hope that makes sense. I don't have any instances of Kontakt in this project, but I certainly have seen the problem when I have run the Kontakt VI in DP.
I did experience an issue today where I loaded up a project which had previously had some instrument bundles defined, and the assignments were just gone. The instrument was listed across the top and on the left, but no blocks were filled in. I am 100% certain the blocks were filled in before I closed the file last. Consequently, the corresponding tracks in the TO window had italicized inputs. I just re-assigned the bundles, re-assigned the inputs for the audio tracks, and it all worked again.
Time is not on my side this week, so troubleshooting this may take a backseat for a few days at least. I will still take whatever screenshots seem relevant. Anyone else experiencing this problem, please jump in with your experiences
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:43 pm
by michkhol
I was able to stop the output assignments going haywire by creating another VE instance and putting it after the first "mad" one in the Bundles window. I made all assignments in the second VE leaving the first one blank. It has been stable since then.
YMMV
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 2:32 pm
by Shooshie
michkhol wrote:I was able to stop the output assignments going haywire by creating another VE instance and putting it after the first "mad" one in the Bundles window. I made all assignments in the second VE leaving the first one blank. It has been stable since then.
YMMV
Very interesting! Does it survive a power cut to your audio/MIDI interfaces?
Shoosh
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 2:44 pm
by KEVORKIAN
michkhol wrote:I was able to stop the output assignments going haywire by creating another VE instance and putting it after the first "mad" one in the Bundles window. I made all assignments in the second VE leaving the first one blank. It has been stable since then.
YMMV
Very interesting! Thx I will try this.
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 8:08 am
by michkhol
Shooshie wrote:michkhol wrote:I was able to stop the output assignments going haywire by creating another VE instance and putting it after the first "mad" one in the Bundles window. I made all assignments in the second VE leaving the first one blank. It has been stable since then.
YMMV
Very interesting! Does it survive a power cut to your audio/MIDI interfaces?
Shoosh
Haven't tried it yet. It certainly survived disabling/enabling VI and project open/close. It's a "closed" project, I have to resurrect it when I have time.
Re: Bundles: Am I Doing it Wrong?
Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:17 am
by Eleventh Hour Sound
My bundles have been holding up pretty good, but I do occasionally have an issue. Does anyone know how to stop something like Ableton Live from showing up in the bundles window? Thanks!