Video of PT CPU Usage way too high Bug

[propower]

OK- forget my other threads about this (mods feel free to delete them)

Maybe a video is the best way to kick this off....

This happens on my system (and my previous three computers). On my current system it can be once a day in the middle of anything or like the video if i am doing a lot of TCE work every 10 minutes. I have had this on a full system as well as a clean install and nothing else. Has nothing to do with Plug ins. I can get this on a single track in a session with no plug ins. Sample rate is 96kHz, Buffer is 64, HD Native and all the rest in my signature...

Check out the Video at ~3min in - you will see the CPU usage jump to 8X what is normal and stay there even if the session is closed! The second bad effect of this is that CPU temps go to the mid 80s (degC). Amazingly PT keeps going and never throws an error message! Maybe I should just get a nMP and let it be session overhead? Just kidding of course - sort of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppi9...e_gdata_player

Thanks
-Lee

[propower]

Come on code busters - I only know enough to be dangerous...
Any serious tech heads want to weigh in??
AVID - is it real or just me??

Here is XCODE recordings of PT-Good and PT-Bad
The process:Taskmanagerlmpl:Thread.... has four instances taking up almost all of the activity - millions of intervals being used!
When PT is running right it is almost zero.

[Darryl Ramm]

Great clear video, thanks for posting.

You say this has nothing to do with plugins. But just to clarify you have no third party plugins installed in the AAX plugin folder at all? You don't need plugins instantiated in a session to burn CPU, if they are misbehaved the can do that all by themselves. Just want you to clarify, if so great as it helps point the finger at Pro Tools itself.

Edit: From the video it looks like you have had Softube Tube Tec compressors inserted on the tracka, and all those plugin instances may be disabled there, hard to tell for sure with the video resolution, but even if they are disabled did you remove the actual plugin files from the AAX folder and restart Pro Tools before doing this test?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by propower

Come on code busters - I only know enough to be dangerous...
Any serious tech heads want to weigh in??
AVID - is it real or just me??

Here is XCODE recordings of PT-Good and PT-Bad
The process:Taskmanagerlmpl:Thread.... has four instances taking up almost all of the activity - millions of intervals being used!
When PT is running right it is almost zero.

if you want to be a debug warrior with Xcode, Activity Monitor etc. grab a stack trace of the running process. You may be able to infer what is going on by just by looking at those thread stacks. Snapshots/samples showing percent of thread usage in Activity Monitor are a handy way to start. Spend some time understanding what they show (e.g. a 100% usage thread in a semaphore wait is uninteresting. Find the threads burning real CPU.. ). Save the file as text and search through it for "plugin" etc.

[propower]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Great clear video, thanks for posting.

You say this has nothing to do with plugins. But just to clarify you have no third party plugins installed in the AAX plugin folder at all? You don't need plugins instantiated in a session to burn CPU, if they are misbehaved the can do that all by themselves. Just want you to clarify, if so great as it helps point the finger at Pro Tools itself.

Edit: From the video it looks like you have had Softube Tube Tec compressors inserted on the tracka, and all those plugin instances may be disabled there, hard to tell for sure with the video resolution, but even if they are disabled did you remove the actual plugin files from the AAX folder and restart Pro Tools before doing this test?

Thanks for the reply...
The test in the video does have plugins from Softube in it. My plug in folder is pretty sparse but does include Softube, NI K9 and most of AVID. My claim about not plug in related is that I preformed a similar test on a clone disk I have with nothing but PT10/11 and OSX 10.8.4. All of the stock AVID plugs are there but no additional ones. I was able to get the same behavior with one audio track and no plugins instantiated.

I never thought of trying to empty the plug in folder of even the stock AVID ones. Maybe I should try that. Yet if it does it with only the stock AVID ones then I would hope AVID would be more interested.

I am trying my best to give AVID at least some way to repro or see what is happening. The "code busting" was my humble approach to try and get some clue - and help point me at some solution. I sadly thought what I was seeing was the thread burning real CPU :-(... Talk about analog electronics - I am your man - real software debugging - I am a bad hack at best....! I have posted Activity monitor "process samples" in the past. They have piles of VOID statements when PT is running badly - but thats all I can tell you - you can find them on my other posts about this.

[Darryl Ramm]

You can empty out all the plugins, and Pro Tools will magically put back the default ones, a nice way to get a clean plugin install and remove anything you missed and accidentally left there (I am always surprised by some freebie or demo plugin I find hiding there).

Darryl

[propower]

Yes! I tried to delete MAster Meter from the AAX folder because of what someone wrote about it but PT kept putting it back when it launched!

[Darryl Ramm]

Don't you hate smart software. If I expected a plugin was really faulty even from Avid I'd try to find if leaving an empty file with that file name or similar tricks would stop Pro Tools reinstalling it or whether it checksums etc. the files (which I'm guessing they do, but who knows). Don't have PT 11 in front of me to try. Or go find the code that does the reinstall and try to neuter it. But hey that's just me.

And actually the automatic reinstall is a very nice idea. It just lets support ask customers to blow away the entire plugin directory and know everything 3rd party has gone.

[propower]

Just triple checked this - totally clean install ! The last one did have Revibe II in it but I removed it, trashed it, restarted PT and did the test again. It took 8 minutes in real time but the bug is still there. I edited the video down to 2 minutes... I don't run QT well enough to make it look good but you will get the idea!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpNlBU5zVxA

[Darryl Ramm]

Brilliant, hope this helps draw attention to this problem.