Pro Tools 9.05 HD session takes forever to boot

[DAEerror]

I've just purchased a new macpro and upgraded to Pro Tools 9.05 on Lion.
It worked fine to start with but now sessions are taking an age to boot up. I seem to be waiting endlessly for PT to locate audio files and video files before the session finally pops up. If anyone has any ideas on what's causing this it would be greatly appreciated.
A

[hotsizzlemusic]

same exact issue here on 10.6.8 running 9.0.5.....new mac pro.

Looks like it happens on windows as well. this has been going on since 9 for me

the only solution I found is to right click & force quit the application from the dock and reload again...seems to work fastest then.

avid please fix this! It happens when changing sessions or importing session data too.

[suicune]

Have either of you tried trashing prefs and databases yet? The only time I ever had that problem it fixed it immediately.

[DAEerror]

I have tried trashing the prefs but no luck yet. I've found it to be a network related error. I'm connected to a local network of machines and when I disconnect all the sessions boot normally. Reconnect and for some reason Pro Tools seems to want to connect somewhere and scan for ages for audio and video before the session eventually opens up.

[DigiTechSupt]

I've seen previous reports of similar issues, with one user chiming in with a possible solution:

...change my DNS server settings for my network connections to a fast responding one, namely Googles DNS server at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
This took care of my problem all together.

Would any of you be able to try this and let me know if it helps at all?

[BrianJArmstrong]

don't know how DNS server info would help or hurt Pro Tools, so I wouldn't mess with that unless you really know what you're doing and if its officially offered as a solution.

I have upgraded my MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) to Lion and when I try to open Pro Tools, it gets stuck loading the last plug in and then quits. It was getting stuck on X-pand! so I removed that, and then it quit when trying to load X-Form. I realized it was just whatever plug in was last in the list.

Trashed preferences and it worked, but once I shut down Pro Tools, it wouldn't open up again.

Help?

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by BrianJArmstrong

don't know how DNS server info would help or hurt Pro Tools, so I wouldn't mess with that unless you really know what you're doing and if its officially offered as a solution.

I have upgraded my MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) to Lion and when I try to open Pro Tools, it gets stuck loading the last plug in and then quits. It was getting stuck on X-pand! so I removed that, and then it quit when trying to load X-Form. I realized it was just whatever plug in was last in the list.

Trashed preferences and it worked, but once I shut down Pro Tools, it wouldn't open up again.

Help?

It would help because Pro Tools uses OS services to poll attached drives, including networked drives. 'Virtual' drives, like MobileMe, etc. use DNS services provided by the OS and your ISP to poll for the drive - if the DNS service is slow, it can take the OS a long time to poll for the drive, causing hangs in Pro Tools. By changing the DNS servers to faster ones, it will take less time to poll for the drives.

It's not officially offered as a solution as it may not work for everyone, nor have we tested it specifically since only a few people should ever see this kind of issue.

In your case it sounds like you may have more than one plug-in that's incompatible or your iLok drivers are not up to date. You can verify compatibility of installed plug-ins by comparing them to the Plugin Grid (linked in the header of the forum) and updating or removing any of them that are not the minimum version listed. If you have one that's not listed you can contact the developer to find out if they've tested it and which version they tested with. After updating/removing plugins be sure to trash preferences so that all plug-in data can be recached.

[ChuckS]

Something that may be of interest as far as DNS goes . . . I noticed that if you have an AirPort and an OSX server in the same network (Lion in my case), the OSX server reprograms DHCP Primary DNS on the AirPort to point to the server (secondary address was OK). If the server is then shutdown or taken offline, performance issues appear on other devices. I believe there is an option in the server config to stop this behavior, but haven't had a chance to investigate - I've just manually configured the correct DNS servers. Anyway, don't know if this is relevant to any others having DNS issues, just something to check out.

Edit: Additionally the DNS setting for server adapter was set to the loopback address (127.0.0.1). I have reset the AirPort and the server adapter and both have survived a power cycle with the correct DNS settings. I'm not sure how this happened except that the server OS tries to manage this stuff behind the scenes. I also deleted any stored passwords for the router and disabled all SNMP functionality on the router/extenders.

[BrianJArmstrong]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

In your case it sounds like you may have more than one plug-in that's incompatible or your iLok drivers are not up to date. You can verify compatibility of installed plug-ins by comparing them to the Plugin Grid (linked in the header of the forum) and updating or removing any of them that are not the minimum version listed. If you have one that's not listed you can contact the developer to find out if they've tested it and which version they tested with. After updating/removing plugins be sure to trash preferences so that all plug-in data can be recached.

I did a clean install of Snow Leopard, and immediately updated to Lion so it was a fresh installed machine. Reinstalled Pro Tools 9.0.5 (using full installer) and then installed Complete Production Toolkit 2. Pro Tools ran last night almost flawlessly. Had to update the playback engine a few times to allow it to play, but other than that, it was fine. Opened it up this morning and is doing the same thing. I haven't installed any third party plug ins at all. It keeps getting stuck at XPand! and then shutting down.

Thanks for your continued support.

PS, interesting note about the DNS server info. As an attempt to circumvent that, I turned off WiFi so that I was not connected to any network, and still had the issue.

Would it help if we had a place to submit crash reports?

[DigiTechSupt]

Originally Posted by BrianJArmstrong

I did a clean install of Snow Leopard, and immediately updated to Lion so it was a fresh installed machine. Reinstalled Pro Tools 9.0.5 (using full installer) and then installed Complete Production Toolkit 2. Pro Tools ran last night almost flawlessly. Had to update the playback engine a few times to allow it to play, but other than that, it was fine. Opened it up this morning and is doing the same thing. I haven't installed any third party plug ins at all. It keeps getting stuck at XPand! and then shutting down.

Thanks for your continued support.

PS, interesting note about the DNS server info. As an attempt to circumvent that, I turned off WiFi so that I was not connected to any network, and still had the issue.

Would it help if we had a place to submit crash reports?

Please send me your AvidLogFiles folder located at MacHD>users>your account>Library>Logs>AvidLogFiles. Zip it up and email it to me at: vi [at] digidesign [dot] com. Please include a link to this thread in the subject or body of the message.