Please Help! PT 8.0 Audio files are all over the place!

[Falcon491]

So I have to base what I say on my observations.

The 1% is because there have been cases where a bug was involved, but usually they were very obvious. If Pro Tools is doing something like you described, I would think we'd have a huge number of people reporting it. I've investigated reports such as yours in Pro Tools 8 and both of them were validated as being customer error. I'm fully open to the possibility of a bug, but to be able to determine that, I need to be sure you are familiar with file management and can elucidate for me exactly what occurred and when so that we can try to reconstruct the scenario here.

Well, in this case, it is very obvious! The files are gone. How more obvious can you get? I get the feeliing that you want want to flame me instead of actuallly addressing the problem. I will NOT pay for support beacuse it is a fault of the software, NOT OF MY FEEBLE ATTEMPT AT FILE MANAGEMENT!!! What do I have to do to to get DIGIDESIGN'S approval on my file management? Give me a freakin break! How in the world would I know how many people have reported this issue? I create a folder on my audio drive with the name of the artist. I then use Pro Tools to create the session names of the song we are doing by creating a new blank session for each song the artist wants to record which creates a folder with the name of the tune we are recording. If I need a template, I create it in the root folder of the artist folder with no audio files linked to it. I set it to read only as described in the manual and import the tracks into the session by using the import session data command. After tracking and when the artist is satisfied with the takes I make the appropriate backups.

Can you be more specific? How do you know they're to a different song? Is the name of the file indicative of that in some way, or is it just because it's pointing to the audio files folder for a different song? What is the status of the audio files folder for the different song? Where is that?

You have to be joking!! Hmm, how would I know they are to a different song??? Simply by looking at the path for crying out loud! And to be more specific, when I try to link the files that show up in italics in the region list, the tracks are the tracks for the other song listed in the region list!

When you created this session file, how did you do that, exactly? What were your exact steps once you finished the song prior to this one, from the time you saved it up until you started recording in the new session? Did you close the previous session and create a new session? Did you use a template? Or some other method?

Ok, you can look above, but i will tell you again how I did this. I save the session once complete. I did not back up the session at the point in time beause we had expensive session players that were charging by the hour and the client was in a hurry to start the session. So I saved the previous session, twice or more in this case as i knew how critical this recording session was. Then started a new blank session in the artist folder and imported the template by using the import session data command. Record enabled the tracks and started recording. When the client was happy with the recording, the client and the session players came in to the control room to listen to the tracks before we started a new song. So I KNOW the files were there at some point. I even dupliceted the kick track for further processing to show the client a technique I was going to use for the kick drum

I assume, though, that you did not do it for this session?

Here you go again! Of course I did!! I think you ASSUME too much!!

I am sorry if I sound harsh, I am really not like this. This has come very close to costing me a client! It HAS cost me a lot of money to bring in the session players to retrack the parts that have been deleted. My system has cost a lot of money but I treated it as an investment into my business. I have been an engineer for 4 years and have been a software systems engineer for over 15 years. In my entire carreer, I have never seen anything that has deleted files unless the user deleted them on purpose. If you look at the cs2 update it states that Pro Tools DOES delete files! There was a fix for it supposedly. Maybe your engineers need to look at that MAJOR BUG further!!!

[Falcon491]

I feel for you.
I back up every session all the time. It takes time but it has paid dividends in the past many times.

I can't believe the file is deleted.
Do a search for every .wav or .aif whichever you use on the drives and then look for the time stamp from any files that were done at the same time or very close.

Good Luck

Thank you,
Believe me, I did exactly as you described to no avail. I know the sessions should be backed up every time you finished recording. But you should be able to expect some measure of reliablilty to be confident that the files wont be deleted before you have a chance to back up.

[tomhartman]

If there were such a bug, thousands of people would be up here screaming. The answer must lie elsewhere. I have never had this happen and have used PT since the early 90s.

TH

[Falcon491]

If there were such a bug, thousands of people would be up here screaming. The answer must lie elsewhere. I have never had this happen and have used PT since the early 90s.

TH

Congratulations! I wished I had your luck! Everyone I have talked to about Pro Tools all say, this has happened to them at one point. It is not something that can be recreated all of the time. For Support to log it as a bug, it has to have step by step instructions on how to recreate this. I am a programmer myself and have had issues with the software I am maintaining that have intermittant bugs. I know it is a real pain to dubug problems like this. But something has to be done. This problem has obviously crossed many versions.

[Falcon491]

Yes, i have tried this exactly same same thing! I have spent over 30 hours, listening to every audio file that the sysem could find, both on the audio drive and the system drive. I would not be here, make an ***** out of myself if the files were on my computer somehere!! Why is it so hard to believe me? GEEZ!!! Again, everyone I have talked to has had this same problem at some point! It just so happened that it is going to cost me a lot of money!!!!!! Is this just a bug that affects people from Northern Oklahoma? I dont think so. This happens a lot more than what DIGI wants to admit. So, DIGI is there a fix for this in cs3?? cs 4?? Version 9??? 10???? When is this going to be resolved finally????????

[Falcon491]

It's not a bug. I'll put money on the files still being on your system somewhere.

How's your drive's health? Bad sectors?

Absolutely No bad sectors!

Have you *listened* to these files? Their location is irrelevant.

I find that 'Automatically Find and Relink' sometimes does not work.

Manually relinking, selecting 'Find All Candidates' will be more precise. This gives you the chance to audition them also.

Please see the above post...

Correct. It's happened to me too a few times. Only once were the files not recoverable from my system: they were on a drive at the studio where the tracking was done.

My point exactly!!! Hmmmmmm. I wondering now who this HASN'T happened to at some point.

[Falcon491]

Sorry, your point just missed the mark. The files were always recoverable unless somebody deleted them.

There's no bug in Protools that deletes your files. Occasionally they end up where you don't expect them to but there are resources available to prevent or rectify this. Standard pre-session methodology is checking your disk allocation. Post-session you can look in the region bin at region file paths.

Hmmm......
These are quotes from digidesign

Fixes included from Pro Tools LE 8.0cs2:

Fixed: Regions Are Inadvertently Deleted and Pro Tools Crashes When Opening Sessions Which Had Their Session Start Time Changed (Item #113177)
After changing the session start time and maintaining time code, Pro Tools will delete additional playlists and crash with a kernel panic after saving and closing the session. You may see any of the following errors prior to the crash: "Could not complete the close session command because basic_string::_S_create" or "Bus error" in thread "Main Thread", at address 0x0."

Fixed: Elastic audio regions may be deleted from disk unintentionally (Item #113242)

• Elastic regions that are the same length as the original audio file may be deleted from disk after performing "select unused" and then "remove unused" files.

These "Bug fixes" directly address Pro Tools deleting files. All I am saying is there has to be a bug that deleted my files. I DID NOT Delete my files and they are not on the disk or the backups. There were there because after the players were finshed tracking, we listened to them. I have not emptied my trash and the files in there are from BEFORE the session dating back to March. I even did a file restore and did not find the files.

[Falcon491]

Well, I see, no reply, just as I thought.

[alex s]

Fixed: Regions Are Inadvertently Deleted and Pro Tools Crashes When Opening Sessions Which Had Their Session Start Time Changed (Item #113177)
After changing the session start time and maintaining time code, Pro Tools will delete additional playlists and crash with a kernel panic after saving and closing the session. You may see any of the following errors prior to the crash: "Could not complete the close session command because basic_string::_S_create" or "Bus error" in thread "Main Thread", at address 0x0."

I would also be interested to know whether this is refering to just regions (which are only references to actual audio files) or actual audio files. If there was a bug which deleted actual audio files I would be alarmed.

Could Tech Support please clarify what this bug fix is refering to.

[DigiTechSupt]

Falcon, I understand your frustration, but let me point out a few things - first, I've been a Pro Tools user for 15+ years and at Digi for over 6. I have heard hundreds, if not thousands, of reports of Pro Tools 'deleting' files, many, many of them with descriptions similar to yours. In all those years, there have been extremely few situations where that has actually happened and those have always been widely reported and typically only occurred in very specific situations, such as the above where you would have received and error message that tipped us off that something bad had occurred.

Now, I'm not saying that you may have some very unusual situation that caused this, but the description of the problem and your description of how you're creating sessions, leads me to believe it was user error. The reason I believe this is that there are hundreds of thousands of PT users out there - if PT was actually deleting files, we'd have a massive amount of reports.

Now I'm trying to help you identify exactly what occurred here, but your tone and insistence that it should be obvious is not helping much. I can't identify the problem if I can't get specifics from you - and by specific I mean very specific details about how you're creating sessions.

What do I have to do to to get DIGIDESIGN'S approval on my file management?

No, you don't, but you do have to understand file management and that's what I'm trying to determine.

I create a folder on my audio drive with the name of the artist.

I'm assuming that's using the Finder, yes?

I then use Pro Tools to create the session names of the song we are doing by creating a new blank session for each song the artist wants to record which creates a folder with the name of the tune we are recording. If I need a template, I create it in the root folder of the artist folder with no audio files linked to it. I set it to read only as described in the manual and import the tracks into the session by using the import session data command. After tracking and when the artist is satisfied with the takes I make the appropriate backups.

Session templates no longer work like that in Pro Tools 8 - you may want to review the section on session templates in the new PT8 Reference Guide. When you say you set it to 'read only', I'm assuming you're referring to the session file, yes? And when you say you import tracks into the session, how are you doing that, given that the session is read-only? Are you making a copy of the template session that's not read-only? If so, how are you doing that? When you import tracks, are you choosing to copy the audio files to the sessions audio files folder, or are you referencing them from their original location?

You have to be joking!! Hmm, how would I know they are to a different song??? Simply by looking at the path for crying out loud!

I'm not joking - I need to know how you know. When you look at the paths for the different files, are they showing paths other than the audio files folder for the sesssion? What is Disk Allocation set to for each of the tracks in the session you're having problems with?

Lastly, this statement from your first post is what leads me to believe that this is user error:

When I started the session Tuesday, I did have allocation errors. I cant exactly remember what I did to fix it. I think I went into the Disk Allocation and set it to my external Audio Drive. Then things were in line and could hear all of the tracks. But now some files are in my System drive in a folder with the name of the song and the Audio Files folder only.

I would ask - what kind of 'allocation errors'? And, if you can't remember what you did, how are we to assume that you did it correctly and/or didn't do something that created this problem? You also say that some files are in your System drive - how did they get there, exactly?

Can you see where I'm coming from with all of this? Believe me, if there's a legitimate problem here, I want to get to the bottom of it, but the evidence so far does not support that. If you can help me identify that there's actually a bug, I'm more than happy to get it logged and fixed, but we need to identify exactly what's happening to cause the problem in the first place.