Corrupted project?!!

[Studio Llama]

Hi all

I'm in a disturbing situation. Large project I am working on has developed a serious glitch.

At one point, I skipped back to the beginning of the track and start to play, there is a loud 'click' all the busses start to show audio passing on their faders, the master bus either reds out, or shows no audio passing through it.

My RME mixer shows the 1-2 redded out. Audible clicks until I quit DP.

I tried a few things, opening the autosave and renaming, that worked a few times, this morning however, it is not solving the issue. And each resave is creating the same effect.

All routing is fine etc. Other projects work fine. I tried taking everything of the master bus. My suspicion is it is a corrupted audio/soundbite? I noticed a few times the last week or so, when starting play from the beginning the bass track would spike, even though there was no audio there. I also wonder if maybe it is Slate Trigger plugin, that sometimes when pressing play, it will trigger a sample randomly, even though there is no audio there to trigger it.

Ultimately though, I have a deadline for this now and its my highest profile gig to date and I can feel the grey hairs multiplying. Has anyone experienced this before? There is a lot of work gone in to this project and I can't start the mix again, perhaps the audio is corrupted and it could be worthwhile to delete it all and reimport. Audio originally came from Pro Tools, though I have other projects from Pro Tools import that work fine.

'Help'. Thank you

(Running DP 8.07, OSX 10.9.2, 2012 Mac Book Pro 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD, RME FF800)

[Studio Llama]

Possible solutions: Upgrade to DP 9, delete DP 8. Delete all plugins, reinstall. Upgrade OSX? Repair disk permissions? (not sure how this one works as never done it.)

[Studio Llama]

OK.

After a head full of new grey hairs and trying everything I could think of, it occurred to me to delete all automation from the master bus as this seemed to be where the issue was.

For now. it works! But it does make me wonder why this would happen? I was automating Izotope Imager for chorus sections, plus volume automation, nay reason why this may conflict?

Thanks...

[Studio Llama]

Problem has come back, after closing project and reopening..

[mikehalloran]

The only things I see are that you are on 10.9.2, not the most stable version of that OS — you should be on 10.9.5 at least.

You have never run repair permissions? You should do that with DP. Go to Apple's Disk Utility, click on your volume and run it. Ignore all the armchair experts who say that never needs doing—with DP, they are wrong.

Reinstalling DP might work—often does when a link is broken. It installs over itself and won't mess up a project. There is no Uninstaller. Repair permissions and reboot afterwards.

If none of those work, save your files into a new project.

You may have to delete preferences but I wouldn't unless all of the above solutions fail.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Repair permissions NOW. Do it often.

You might try loading the chunks into a new project, copying all data. It could be a corrupted DP file.

[stubbsonic]

The other thing that sometimes can save a problematic project is to start a new project and systematically import chunks (using the File/Load... command).

Do them one at a time and check for problems as you go. You might be able to identify the problem chunk (if that is where it is).

You can also copy & paste from the problem file as well (as another way to try to avoid the glitch).

No guarantees, but that can be a way to get up & running when you are under the clock.

But yea, do what the Mikes say first.

[Studio Llama]

Thank you all very much for the replies.

I repaired disk permissions, though, the only permissions that were askew were a few concerned with printer drivers, I think this is why I stopped doing it, because I never saw anything 'important' in the report.

Upgraded to 10.9.5 too.

I finished the mix without shutting the project and bounced down, i haven't opened the project since, will do tomorrow.

I looked in to the idea of starting a new project and loading the chunks. I need to understand chunks better, I have read small parts in the manual. When I loaded in to a new project and selected 'load chunks' all the soundbites imported but none of the sequence, automation, plugins etc.

The only option I had in the load window was 'seq 1'. Should I be doing something in my projects to create more chunks as I go? Chunks don't enter my workflow, I accept I may be missing a trick here.

Many thanks..

[stubbsonic]

You aren't really missing anything. But for some projects and for some kinds of tasks, using chunks can be really handy.

As you are now, I suspect you are always just working with one main chunk. It's probably most useful to think of the Tracks Overview (TO) as your chunk (though there is more to it than that).

If you want to make another section, or just try an experimental new version, or deal with a different kind of track list within the same project, you can use the chunks window to duplicate either just the track layout or duplicate the entire chunk, data and all. It won't duplicate audio, it'll just use the same soundbites to build the new sequence.

You can also have V-Racks, which is a chunk that only contains instrument tracks and effects. (Very useful!!)

And you can have SONGS, which is DP's incredibly powerful and underrated way of building a larger macro object by playing multiple chunks either in series or parallel! It's ingeniously powerful.

[Studio Llama]

Thanks. I will look in to it some more.

You are right, most of the time, I have one sequence, then mix therein. The only time I've opened up another sequence was to do a 'mastering' of the stereo bounce with its own mix bus etc.

Regards, Gareth