Regions truncaded or deleted *files too small?*

[garnoil]

I just closed a session (that worked perfectly) and now when I re-opened it it says *some regions were deleted or truncated because they refer to files that are too small?*...what is this? Why are these regions all of the sudden too small or truncated?

Mac dual 2.3 Gigs, 6 RAM, No un -sopported plugs, PT 8.01

[Postman]

I have no idea. I do not think it is a problem specific to 8.0.1, though. The message is very alarming, I have seen it every once in a while for many, many years, and yet there are never missing regions! There is a certain amount of checking and cleanup that happens when a session is opened, and things like regions that have zero length, or are not otherwise complete, are removed. Of course, those kinds of things shouldn't be there at all but they sometimes happen for reasons I do not understand, and are not actually on the timeline. They usually show up after an omf/aaf import, not when opening a session.

Have you found anything actually missing?

[garnoil]

No I didn't import anything in terms of OMF, I just saved and closed the session, then re-0pened it the next day, and there it was. Not sure if anything is missing yet, its a very big session (feature film 160+ voices). I'll know when we start mixing in 2 weeks.

G

[Frank Kruse]

The best thing about that message is that it gives you no clue which regions were dropped.
Great fun when you have 6 reels and 100+ tracks of dense edits in one session.

At least they could program PT so it outputs a text-file listing what was actually dropped.

[Postman]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

The best thing about that message is that it gives you no clue which regions were dropped.
At least they could program PT so it outputs a text-file listing what was actually dropped.

I totally agree. I've submitted feature requests for that more than once, I'm sure you have too. The only positive I can think of is that there is almost never any actual sound that is deleted, although I recall a couple of times over the years when I found that a sound or edit was missing, but could never be certain just exactly when it was dropped, maybe I did it accidentally. Which, of course, is why it would be nice to have a a listing of what triggered the error message!

I believe the guiding lights of development do not fully appreciate the fear and frustration this message causes in gigantic sessions. It would be like a message from one of their compilers saying that lines of code may have been removed, leaving them wondering IF there was something actually dropped, and WHERE it was dropped from. There is no human way to scan around and figure it out quickly.

[jahtao]

This is an artifact of substandard programing. Our complaints fall on deaf ears! I just ignore it and hope for the best... what other choice do i have?!

[garnoil]

Yes, I found the missing files. The film that I am working on has several short audio files of the sound of a security card being swiped across a scanner. These files are no longer in the session. May be I'll find more missing files later?

Thank you

[PaulV]

Yes that's an alarming and mysterious message, but it really is harmless 99% of the time. It generally means that empty or hidden regions (frequently fades) were cleaned up from tracks. Occasionally through the course of editing, empty regions occasionally get created, and during session open we make a pass to clean these up, as they tend to bloat the session unnecessarily. This message can also show up if you shortened a file that a session was referring to, using some third party app, but that's pretty obscure.

That said, we show a very poor message when this happens, and doesn't nearly tell the whole story. It's pretty bad; I'll fix this today. (How's that for results)

In the meantime, if you have a session that gives you this error (like maybe there's an autobackup lying around still that does this?), please send it to me at pt_transfer (at) digidesign . com.

[Postman]

Originally Posted by PaulV

Yes that's an alarming and mysterious message, but it really is harmless 99% of the time...
That said, we show a very poor message when this happens, and doesn't nearly tell the whole story. It's pretty bad; I'll fix this today.

Hi Paul, it is that 1% that we are talking about! More than changing the wording of the message itself, we NEED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT REGION (not filename, but region name) AND WHERE ON THE TIMELINE the deletion occurred. It would also be extremely helpful to know why it was deleted. If (for example) PT is looking for a file that is 1 sample shorter than the region says, we can know what the problem is. We could also quickly scan a list and determine if nothing needs to be looked at manually.

An offer to save a text file with this info would be very helpful.

Thank you for listening.

[Frank Kruse]

This is semi-related but also requested multiple times:

An option to save a text-file with off-line media. List of region and file name and the last location (just the same info that is shown in the relink window).

We´ve been e-mailing screen-shots of the relink-window for years now.

Thanks!

Frank.