Video Engine Problems with Pro Tools 11

[tmoneygetpaid]

We are having the exact same problem mentioned in the post above.

Our Blackmagic cards (Intensity Pro in one machine, Decklink Mini Monitor in the other) weren't putting video out at all in PT11. Our AVID rep. advised us to install the new BM version 10 desktop drivers. All seemed to be working and we rejoiced. Another user logged in and couldn't get video to output to the cards (no output option is even there), and various combinations of play/ stop and beachballing at import because the AVE won't initialize.

After uninstalling/ reinstalling the drivers the same sequence of events unfolds-- successful initiation of the AVE, importing works great, BM card outputs as it should, but there is some trigger that inevitably causes that set of 4 symptoms Jordan listed to make video nearly unusable.

Help?

[Jazzbass56]

The Avid video engine is a real problem for me, it takes for ever to load and now it effects playback of the audio by freezing .
I work as a music editor for film and TV, so this is a real bummer, I now go back to PT 10 for video work, for my own personal music projects I can use PT 11
I find it hard to believe this problem has not been resolved by AVID since they want everyone to use PT11, but is it's not ready and not one dub stage I work on is using it

[simon hunt]

Before I post the particular problems occurring for myself and the students I'm responsible for, I'd like to make a request :

It is now nearly six weeks since we've heard anything from Avid about this broken AVE, unless I've missed anything since CSJordan's quoted post below. (Please let me know if I've missed a post)

Could we please :

- Get an update on this ?

- Have this issue elevated to a sticky, or somewhere where people can easily find it? The two threads on the AVE problems clearly indicate that Pro Tools 11 is unusable for the post-production community, and (in my case) for audiovisual work at a university. Jordan's post indicates that Avid understands the seriousness of this, so please let us know what is happening, and please make that info easily available.

My comments and experience after a repost of Jordan's comment from 12.2.14 :

Originally Posted by CSJordan

Hey guys,

Sorry I've been silent on this thread for awhile. I can assure you that we're working aggressively to find resolutions to the various issues reported. In answer to mattrussell's post:

This is a top priority, and we have multiple teams looking at it. While I can't speculate on the cause of the issue, it's worth noting that customers with 3rd party video cards (AJA, Blackmagic) have been the major, but not sole, source of these reports. With that said, there are several unique variations of Video Engine problems, which have all been assigned to their own individual bug reports; this means lots of testing is taking place to verify and reproduce each report on multiple systems (i.e: it's taking some time, and we appreciate your continued patience).

As always, we can't give an estimate of the time to fix - it's a possibility that fixes may be spread across multiple releases due to the number of unique reports. We know how much of a pain-point this is for you, our customers, and we want to make sure that fixes are not only timely, but rock-solid.

Currently, we're holding off acquiring customer log files because we have enough to draw from for the moment. Continue to update this thread with any new reports or +1's to the issues outlined below - I may PM you individually to gather logs if deemed necessary.

Current issues:

• Playback may enter a "play/stop" pause mode for several seconds before initiating playback when Video Engine is online
• Video Engine is dropping offline during playback, can be reinitialized by stopping and restarting playback (video goes black or is stuck on a frame)
• Video Engine does not initialize at all - may cause Pro Tools to stop responding, or an unexpected quit when closing the application
• Video plays in Pro Tools Video Window, but 3rd-party card / driver is not selectable in Output Options (greyed out)

I run sound courses for several hundred students at a university,most of whom are attempting to do AV work. I am not an AV technician or on IT staff, but have tried to gather information, and am happy to provide any more that is requested.

We have about 100 different lab computers with various permutations of MBox3s/Pros/2/mini, Mac Pro towers and iMacs; 2 x HD sound studios, and 2 x HDX sound studios.

Here are the specs for the HD studios, where I am mostly :

PT 11.1.2 HD
OS 10.9.2
16 GB memory
HD I/O
2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB
Blackmagic Intensity Pro


We are experiencing most of the problems - not constantly, but frequently - that are occurring in this thread and the other thread at http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t...Engine&page=15

That is :

- AVE getting stuck while loading, either halfway through the load or when it reaches the end of the load bar, with session unable to open with video,
This is generally on lab computers with MBoxes, though also occurs in the HD studio.

- Sometimes "ERROR Launching Video Engine" dialogs, which means the session is completely unable to open. Frequent in the HD studio. Force quit and reboot are only options to get PT working at all.

- Sessions including video that have previously worked, being unable to open without deactivating the AVE, which means no video. Both MBox and HD systems. Occurs whether or not the video has been left coming out the Blackmagic card OR in desktop status.

- "The Video Engine could not start playback because the clock is not locked. If this persists, try deactivating or removing Native plug-ins" (not frequent)

- AVE dropping out during a session.

- Jittery playback.

We have tried most of the user-suggested fixes from the two threads, and have had much the same results as people's comments following those fixes have indicated : none of these fixes work beyond the short-term, and the problems are impossible to diagnose when they do not appear on a constant basis.

All I can summarise from my experience is this :

- Total failure of the Video Engine to launch, or previously-working video sessions that completely fail to open, can sometimes be fixed by a computer restart.

- There is nothing that will fix the slow-loading video engine that never finishes the load bar. Some days it works, and some days it doesn't - with the same settings and the same sessions. A complete reboot works sometimes but not always,

I know my frustration with this won't help to solve anything, but we're just heading into a period where students are meant to be working on AV projects, and I unfortunately do not have the power to ask the university to revert to Pro Tools 10.

I just ask :

- Please update us. It's been six weeks.

- Please ask me for any specific tests you need to do, or any specs on the other systems besides the HD system that you need.

Thanks in advance for any assistance or advice.

[noiseboyuk]

Just to say that I'm watching carefully from the sidelines. I use PT10 CPTK for post audio. A colleague of mine went for 11HD, it's now gathering virtual dust because the video engine makes it unusable (like others occasionally its fired up for major rendering jobs I believe, but that's it). Every post house I know has stayed on PT10.

I hope Avid sort this before they go on to develop PT12. I'm worried that they'll drop the "upgrade" from CPTK to HD... but it's clearly madness to upgrade all the while basic functionality is lost when doing so.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Just to say that I'm watching carefully from the sidelines. I use PT10 CPTK for post audio. A colleague of mine went for 11HD, it's now gathering virtual dust because the video engine makes it unusable (like others occasionally its fired up for major rendering jobs I believe, but that's it). Every post house I know has stayed on PT10.

I hope Avid sort this before they go on to develop PT12. I'm worried that they'll drop the "upgrade" from CPTK to HD... but it's clearly madness to upgrade all the while basic functionality is lost when doing so.

Even though the AVE isn't up to specs yet I must say I don't really miss the countless crashes every day due to memory ossues under ten.

Before 11 it was 5-10 crashes a day in big post sessions because of memory overflow (sometimes it was impossible to re-record iver certain sections because PT would crash when Altiverb switched IRs etc. . Sometimes twice the amount when conformalizing recuts. Now I'm down to 3-4 a day due to AVE lockups and zero memory related crashes.

I guess it's a question of weighing out the pros and cons. But this doesn't mean there are serious issues with the AVE. It's not that 11 isn't unusable. SOme things got much worse others got much better. In terms of how often I have to restart per day, PT11 is much better than 10. But yes, the AVE can drive you bananas under 11 especially looking at the cost for making the transition from 10 to 11.


Frank.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

Even though the AVE isn't up to specs yet I must say I don't really miss the countless crashes every day due to memory ossues under ten.

Before 11 it was 5-10 crashes a day in big post sessions because of memory overflow (sometimes it was impossible to re-record iver certain sections because PT would crash when Altiverb switched IRs etc. . Sometimes twice the amount when conformalizing recuts. Now I'm down to 3-4 a day due to AVE lockups and zero memory related crashes.

I guess it's a question of weighing out the pros and cons. But this doesn't mean there are serious issues with the AVE. It's not that 11 isn't unusable. SOme things got much worse others got much better. In terms of how often I have to restart per day, PT11 is much better than 10. But yes, the AVE can drive you bananas under 11 especially looking at the cost for making the transition from 10 to 11.


Frank.

Weird - PT10 10.3.7 pretty much never crashes for me, and many projects are 150-200 tracks. Not sure where the issue is there - could be something system related, a rogue plugin or something?

Anyway, don't want to drag it off topic. Since my system is rock solid now, I'm not switching until I get solid reports that the video engine is sorted.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Weird - PT10 10.3.7 pretty much never crashes for me, and many projects are 150-200 tracks. Not sure where the issue is there - could be something system related, a rogue plugin or something?

Happened all the time in super-sessions and AltiVerb. It needs a lot of RAM to load IRs. And when conforming with monster region-groups etc.

You had to set undo level to one and all sorts of other tricks to get around it.

The main reason being PT10 limitation to 4GB RAM.

[nst7]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

... but it's clearly madness to upgrade all the while basic functionality is lost when doing so.

When you do the upgrade to 11HD, you also get a license for 10HD. This will allow you to keep using PT10 with all the extra CPTK features. So there's no reason not to upgrade now, especially if you're worried that they'll take the upgrade away.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

Happened all the time in super-sessions and AltiVerb. It needs a lot of RAM to load IRs. And when conforming with monster region-groups etc.

You had to set undo level to one and all sorts of other tricks to get around it.

The main reason being PT10 limitation to 4GB RAM.

Ah, I don't use Altiverb - though do use SpeakerPhone and TL Space. They don't seem especially resource heavy. I haven't ever had to monitor RAM use cos it just works for me... hence I'm a little nonplussed about 64 bit generally (though its good to know there's headroom and its much more useable for music VIs).

nst7 - yes, you're right that's pretty logical I guess. Just seems weird to buy something you won't use! I'm not so worried that they'll just stop the upgrade overnight... perhaps part of me is hoping against hope they'll do some kind of deal to induce those of us who can't see a good reason to upgrade to actually upgrade. If PT11 were solid, offline bounce is reason enough of course. As it is, I'm just in a holding pattern til something changes.

[thierryd]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Ah, I don't use Altiverb - though do use SpeakerPhone and TL Space. They don't seem especially resource heavy. I haven't ever had to monitor RAM use cos it just works for me... hence I'm a little nonplussed about 64 bit generally (though its good to know there's headroom and its much more useable for music VIs).

We've been using PT10 for a long time now and are running 10.3.7 fairly stable. It was a huge improvement over PT9 for a lot of (postproduction workflow) reasons. But the memory limitation of the 32bit PT10 application has bitten me quite a few times, especially with Altiverb as Frank mentioned.
We bought PT11 somewhere in November to experiment with it in our HDNative room (all other PT systems are still TDM, one will soon be HDX2) and on my laptop. PT11 is a lot faster at doing things like starting up, session loading etc. The last few days I'm glad we have it, because I have some weird issues with Field Recorder Workflow on a new television series we are starting. The AAFs are coming from MC7 and there are corrupt fades in them for one reason or another (never seen this before). PT often crashes on the track expanding and I have to do it in pieces. Now with PT10 you have to restart the computer after a crash or else PT will soon end up in a screen of death. With PT11 at least you can just quickly relaunch it after a crash and continue. It also is a lot quicker with the data management. I've long held off from migrating, because plugins were not compatible anymore with PT11, but now I start to get ready to make the switch to PT11 and switch some of those plugins to something else or go native with them. The Video Engine problems with Blackmagic are a pain and need to be quickly addressed by Avid, but I plan to get around that with a PT10 video satellite for now.

Greetings,

Thierry