Strange re-ordering of tracks

[colinmansfield]

I've been helping a friend with his Pro Tools rig. He seems to be prone to finding problems (or perhaps creating them) when I'm not watching him work… Most of the time I can fix whatever went wrong either over the phone or in person, but he just told me of a problem that started last night that I've never seen before and I cannot figure out how to fix it.

Each time he selects a track in the Edit Window, it shoot to the top of the window. He sent me a video of what it looks like: He had several tracks in the edit window, when he clicked on the third track down, it immediately sprang to the top, just as he said. I looked through PT's preferences and menu commands, but didn't see anything that might cause this behaviour. I'm pretty certain something got switched on somewhere by mistake, but I haven't found it yet*.

Has anyone seen anything like this? How can we stop it? He is using a MacBook Pro with one 4-core processor, 8 GB RAM and OS X 10.6.8. Pro Tools version 10.3.9, MOTU interfaces.

- Colin

* One problem I have in PT 10 is that I can't use the Help menu without locking up or crashing PT. Most of the time it's no big deal, just annoying. But this time I couldn't search the manual for whatever setting may have caused this.

[musicman691]

Were the tracks actually re-ordered? Say the order was:
flute
sax
drums
bass
and after he clicked on the drums track it re-ordered to something like this:
drums
flute
sax
bass
Is this what happened?
There is also 'scroll to view' which doesn't re-order the tracks just brings the selected track to the top of the window so if he clicked on 'drums' it would be at the top of the edit window with bass underneath. Flute and sax would still be where they were before but off the top of the edit window.

[colinmansfield]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Were the tracks actually re-ordered? Say the order was:
flute
sax
drums
bass
and after he clicked on the drums track it re-ordered to something like this:
drums
flute
sax
bass
Is this what happened?
There is also 'scroll to view' which doesn't re-order the tracks just brings the selected track to the top of the window so if he clicked on 'drums' it would be at the top of the edit window with bass underneath. Flute and sax would still be where they were before but off the top of the edit window.

it's the first case -- the selected track leaps over the tracks above to re-order them.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by colinmansfield

it's the first case -- the selected track leaps over the tracks above to re-order them.

Can't say I've ever seen that happen. Then again I use OSX 10.8.5; never tried it on my Snow Leopard machine.

[colinmansfield]

This only started a couple of days ago although he's been using this rig for years. I haven't been able to recreate it on my similar system...

[Farhoof]

Could be an OSX issue instead of an PT issue. My mouse functions get messed up when someone just used a pen tablet, or some trackball with click-to-drag function.
Are other programs showing anything strange?

[colinmansfield]

Originally Posted by Farhoof

Could be an OSX issue instead of an PT issue. My mouse functions get messed up when someone just used a pen tablet, or some trackball with click-to-drag function.
Are other programs showing anything strange?

He's the only person using this computer. He uses a Logitec mouse as well as the computer's trackpad -- again, this has been his setup for ages. It could be the mouse (or the trackpad) is screwing up somehow though; it's something I'll have him check out later. (It's a 40 mile round trip, so I won't be going out to his place till the weekend.) He only runs four programs as a rule -- Safari, Mail, Pro Tools and the MOTU audio setup. He'll also run installers when necessary, but that's about it. However, next time I'm out there I'll check to see if anything else shows weird behaviour.

[colinmansfield]

We found that this problem may have been triggered by using the Real Time MIDI Effects > Transpose function in the Edit window.

I seem to have solved the problem at least temporarily by deleting Pro Tools and its preferences, applying the OS X 10.6.8 Combo Updater (which should have removed or updated any leftovers from incremental updates) and reinstalling Pro Tools. Everything was fine for nearly a week, but then my friend purchased and installed Ivory and the problems have started again. He uses the transpose to be able to play piano in C but have it play back in C# (or whatever). however, it appears that the problem is only affecting Ivory at this point so I offered a quick workaround of using Mini Grand to rough out the track, then commit to the transposition and with the VI back to Ivory for its richer pianos.

I don't really want to have to go through the delete prefs and reinstall rhumba again, so if anybody has any ideas on how to make the transpose RTME work with Ivory (or why it may not be working) I would appreciate any help I can get. TIA.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by colinmansfield

We found that this problem may have been triggered by using the Real Time MIDI Effects > Transpose function in the Edit window.

I seem to have solved the problem at least temporarily by deleting Pro Tools and its preferences, applying the OS X 10.6.8 Combo Updater (which should have removed or updated any leftovers from incremental updates) and reinstalling Pro Tools. Everything was fine for nearly a week, but then my friend purchased and installed Ivory and the problems have started again. He uses the transpose to be able to play piano in C but have it play back in C# (or whatever). however, it appears that the problem is only affecting Ivory at this point so I offered a quick workaround of using Mini Grand to rough out the track, then commit to the transposition and with the VI back to Ivory for its richer pianos.

I don't really want to have to go through the delete prefs and reinstall rhumba again, so if anybody has any ideas on how to make the transpose RTME work with Ivory (or why it may not be working) I would appreciate any help I can get. TIA.

See if you can do the pitch change in Ivory. Or if you can't do that, have him play in the MIDI and then transpose the whole track by using Event Operations/Transpose. Thing is though this shouldn't be the cause of the re-ordering of tracks.

[colinmansfield]

I'll have him check in Ivory to see if that suits him. And I agree, the re-ordering of tracks should be a separate matter (and perhaps it is, although the two problems appear at the same time).

Thanks!