Pro Tools hangs/freezes with lots of playlists

[aerodavo]

I'm encountering a significant issue in Pro Tools while working with an audio track that has several hundred playlists. Every time I attempt to solo a new playlist for auditioning, the system experiences prolonged hangs, often lasting minutes. I'm wondering if this is a known bug or if there's a threshold for the number of playlists Pro Tools can handle efficiently?

As a temporary solution, I've been:

Creating Track Duplicates: I duplicate the main track (including all its playlists) for distinct sections of the song, such as verses, choruses, etc. Let's call these "track dups" for clarity.

Creating Section Duplicates: For each "track dup", I remove all clips from the playlists that don't correspond to the specific section (e.g., verse 1). After this process, these become "section dups". Deleting clips from all but 100 or so playlists seems to alleviate some of the hanging issues, but the system still freezes intermittently, every few minutes or so.

Dealing with Hangs During Playlist Management: To completely prevent these freezes, I find it necessary to delete the unused playlists. However, doing this efficiently requires that all the "track dups" are set to playlist view, which paradoxically can trigger extreme system hangs, sometimes up to 15 minutes or longer.

This workflow is extremely frustrating and time-consuming. Has anyone else experienced similar issues or have any insights on how to better manage such a large number of playlists in Pro Tools? Any advice or workaround suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[cwsand]

Originally Posted by aerodavo

I'm encountering a significant issue in Pro Tools while working with an audio track that has several hundred playlists. Every time I attempt to solo a new playlist for auditioning, the system experiences prolonged hangs, often lasting minutes. I'm wondering if this is a known bug or if there's a threshold for the number of playlists Pro Tools can handle efficiently?

As a temporary solution, I've been:

Creating Track Duplicates: I duplicate the main track (including all its playlists) for distinct sections of the song, such as verses, choruses, etc. Let's call these "track dups" for clarity.

Creating Section Duplicates: For each "track dup", I remove all clips from the playlists that don't correspond to the specific section (e.g., verse 1). After this process, these become "section dups". Deleting clips from all but 100 or so playlists seems to alleviate some of the hanging issues, but the system still freezes intermittently, every few minutes or so.

Dealing with Hangs During Playlist Management: To completely prevent these freezes, I find it necessary to delete the unused playlists. However, doing this efficiently requires that all the "track dups" are set to playlist view, which paradoxically can trigger extreme system hangs, sometimes up to 15 minutes or longer.

This workflow is extremely frustrating and time-consuming. Has anyone else experienced similar issues or have any insights on how to better manage such a large number of playlists in Pro Tools? Any advice or workaround suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi, It's hard to say with no info on your system. Start here: Help Us Help You

Make sure to include all the info on your system as described.

[take77]

^^^

Try the playlist filter feature when working section by section.
I haven't used it in a while but I think it's available in the right click menu on the playlist track.

The filter works if each track is divided into clip segments for each section.
You can filter out clips with the show only options listed.
Maybe you'll get better response time doing that. Just a thought.

Maybe try increasing the disk playback cache as well.
And if the audio files aren't on an external drive try that.