Is there any way to bounce/export a full mix to hard-disk without doing it Real-Time?

[Shutz]

I run an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with an SB Audigy Platinum EX under Win98SE.

I have tried the "Bounce to disk" option, but it always needs to play everything back real-time, and after a while (less than 2 minutes, often less than 1 minute) I get an error popup saying that PTF has been holding up interrupts for too long. It suggests increasing the buffer size, but of all the options, but I'm already at the highest one (8000 something).

I just want to export my final product, with effects and all, to a WAV file I'll be able to burn to CD or encode to MP3 (with non-time-limited software...)

My mix has 4 tracks of audio (3 of which have 3 effects on them, and the fourth one just sends to an aux input where I add delay.)

I've tried disabling or closing everything in my system tray, and booting with as clean a system as possible, but I can't get a real-time bounce to work. I've even tried bouncing all my (effected) tracks to new audio tracks, and just trying to mono-bounce a soloed track I got the "interrupts" error after less than 1 minute.

It's a shame that I can't do an "export mix to WAV", because that was the easiest part to do in DigitalSoundPlanet's Quartz Studio Free -- which I used to use before I found this. If I can't get a digital copy of my work so I can "master" it, PTF is useless to me. Shame, because it sounds much better than the mix I'd done with QSF.

[Bastiaan]

make sure you enable dma on your harddisks.

Bounce to disk is indeed the only way to do your bouncing in the computer. Have you tried the bouncing option with the conversion after the bounce instead of during bounce.

Your system should be able to handle it. I have an athlon 1700+, and i am able of running something like 30 tracks with eq on most channels and some limiters, compressors and reverbs without any problem on a digi001....

Are you running the right drivers? I've heard here that the KX-drivers are quite good.

http://kxproject.spb.ru/

Its a good idea to shut down stuff you dont need from the bios. Then i mean stuff like printer port/parallel port/usb etc.

[Shutz]

I agree that the KX drivers are showing promise, but I really can't use them until they support all the required features for gaming (including EAX). I play a lot of games, and I work in the PC games industry, so I can't turn my main machine into just a studio.

For the same reasons, I can't disable USB, because I have devices I regularly use on that bus.

Thanks for DMA tip, though. I'd recently reinstalled Win98SE, and didn't check whether my hard drives were DMA-enabled, and they weren't. I'll reboot, and see if anything works better now.

Also, comparing your machine, which seems to be fully configured just audio work, and which uses a Digi 001, with a plain-vanilla (albeit powerful) PC like mine for audio performance is not really relevant at this point (although, since you didn't know at first that I wasn't building a dedicated audio workstation, it is perfectly excusable).

I get the feeling that Pro Tools Free hasn't reached the right audience yet. If Digidesign could refine it a little bit more so it will be more compatible and user-friendly (how about some tooltips? experienced users could turn them off but guys like me would have wasted less time in the not that friendly docs that can be downloaded separately...) to encourage "starving artists" to learn their software and start recording well enough that they might later become clients for PTLE or other Digidesign products.

Anyway, thanks for the help, but I still think it's weird that they won't put in a non-real-time render audio feature. The only problem I can see is that their effects plugins are all built for real-time work, but don't they have non-real-time counterparts too?

As a programmer, I don't see why that feature would be hard to implement, since they already have all the components. All that's left is to link everything together...

[Bastiaan]

The reason the havent got a non realtime bounce has to do with the higher systems like digi001 and up to tdm.

There you can assign in/outputs as effects sends and returns, and once you use outboard stuff its not possible anymore to do it non-realtime. Its a pitty though they didnt give us the choice, trhats true.

The reason they dont put that much effort in ptfree is that it is free, and they need al their resources now for other products. And win98 is a "dying platform". Digidesign told somewhere that they do plan a winxp version of ptfree, but that has to wait till they can spare the time... [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

I think they should develop the free software a little bit better, since it serves as a demo for the higher systems, and if the demo isnt good they "scare" people awaty from their other products.....but hey what can we do about it....

[odysseys]

Originally posted by Shutz:
I run an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with an SB Audigy Platinum EX under Win98SE.

I have tried the "Bounce to disk" option, but it always needs to play everything back real-time, and after a while (less than 2 minutes, often less than 1 minute) I get an error popup saying that PTF has been holding up interrupts for too long. It suggests increasing the buffer size, but of all the options, but I'm already at the highest one (8000 something).

I just want to export my final product, with effects and all, to a WAV file I'll be able to burn to CD or encode to MP3 (with non-time-limited software...)

My mix has 4 tracks of audio (3 of which have 3 effects on them, and the fourth one just sends to an aux input where I add delay.)

I've tried disabling or closing everything in my system tray, and booting with as clean a system as possible, but I can't get a real-time bounce to work. I've even tried bouncing all my (effected) tracks to new audio tracks, and just trying to mono-bounce a soloed track I got the "interrupts" error after less than 1 minute.

It's a shame that I can't do an "export mix to WAV", because that was the easiest part to do in DigitalSoundPlanet's Quartz Studio Free -- which I used to use before I found this. If I can't get a digital copy of my work so I can "master" it, PTF is useless to me. Shame, because it sounds much better than the mix I'd done with QSF.

You can buss the session to 2 audio tracks,record it into them and then export the resulting regions using the Export Selected As.. in the audio regions menu.Maybe this will help.

[Driven1]

One last suggestion on this subject. It's still realtime but if PTFree doesn't crash during normal playback and you have a second soundcard (AWE 64 for example,you can just take a line out from your main card and plug it in to the line in of the second card and record to wave from that card. Make sure that you have the Main card set as the Wave out device and the second card set as the wave in device in your multimedia prefs when doing this. This also opens up some other hardware possibilities for final mastering. I prefer to do my finals this way.

If you don't have a second card and plan on installing one be aware that you may not have enough IRQ's available and may need to sacrifice another piece of hardware to get it installed.

On preventing crashes...

1.) If using an SBLive card be sure you're using either APSLive or KX drivers (if you can get them to work on your system) SBLive OEM Drivers simply do not work well with PTFree. You can find these drivers at http://come.to/sblive. It has been found that the APS drivers are the easiest to get working but are a little more limited feature-wise than the KX drivers. Some people have had success loading the KX drivers but have had to do a lot of goofing to get them to work. Apparently, once they do work they're great.

2.) Make sure that DMA is enabled on your Hard Drive(s).

3.) Make sure that auto-detect is turned off for CD-Rom drives.

4.) Have PTFree shut down, go to C:\Program Files\Digidesign\DAE\DAE Prefs and delete the DAE Prefs folder then go to C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Digidesign and delete the Preferences.PTP file. These will all be re-created the next time you start PTFree.

5.) While in a session go to Setup > Preferences > Operation and at the bottom set the Open ended Record Allocation to "Limit To" and set it to a reasonable amount of time for the session.

This has all been gathered from much time spent on the DUC and PTFree has run great ever since.

The Driven [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]