Pro Tools Session File Size Explosion!

[innerbooty]

Hi,
I've been working away on a mix in PT 10 HD 10.3. Mac Pro Quad Core. OS 10.9 Mavericks. Been a very stable system for years (knock on wood). Just recently I started noticing that when I saved the session (which I do obsessively) it would take a lot longer than usual. Auto Saves as well. Maybe a second or two or three. Didn't think much of it, just kind of annoying. Just now the session crashed, and after rebooting and reloading the session and trying to save a new copy of the session I was told I was out of disk space on the selected drive. Huh?? Previously had a 2-300 GB free, I think. I was looking at the .ptx session file and noticed it was 233 MB. Zoiks! Never seen that before. And for the last couple of weeks all the sessions saved in the Session File Backups folder were also that large. Hence, I am out of space. I've been working on this mix for a couple of weeks and I am noticing as I look through all the saved copies of the session files I make in my OCD way that on Oct. 1st the session file size jumped from 4 MB to 46 MB. Later that afternoon from 46 MB to 96 MB. Then later that night to 229 MB, where it's been hovering ever since. What the hell?? Any idea why a Pro Tools file session would suddenly balloon exponentially? Not sure I've ever seen that before, even on a session with a zillion tracks and a zillion fades, which is not the case with this one.


Thanks for any tips! - Steve

[Darryl Ramm]

Lots of reasons... but likely a bug in plugins or Pro Tools itself, or incompatibility between them.

You need to free up space and try a save copy in or import the session into a new one. Keep all your backup sessions handy, especially older ones in case you need to roll back to them.

Check you are on the latest compatible versions of plugins you can run.

[innerbooty]

Thanks for the tips. Just made a backup of the whole session to another drive and have free'd up space on my main working drive. I'll try some of your ideas. My plugins have stayed very stable, since I'm stuck in the older versions of all of them due to my legacy configuration.

[innerbooty]

This song has a slow first section, and a faster rocked out 2nd section. Each one is it's own mix, but they are both in the same session. I am working on the slower section now and just deleted all the tracks for the faster section, which I had Disabled. Even without Removing all the Unused audio files still in the session the .ptf file size dropped from 233 MB to 53 MB. Still kind of huge, but definitely better. Wonder what was going on with those deleted disabled audio tracks that made the size so huge...?

[Darryl Ramm]

But now you have an issue that might be telling you the plugins are not stable... or are just brain dead with the amount of data they write to the session file for some operations. It this reoccurs that is one place to look, you might have a plugin(s) that you need to find a substitute for.

[innerbooty]

Ok, thanks, yeah. Will look. My prime suspects are the Lexicon PCM bundle plugs, which I rarely use because they are really inefficient, TOTAL DSP hogs and slow everything down. I re-enabled them for this session, 2 ROOMs and a PLATE. Seems fishy... Going to open up the 4 MB session from 10-1 and then the 233 MB session from later that night and see if I can tell what's different. Although I think I was still tracking then, not mixing yet, so no Lexicon. Hmmm...

[innerbooty]

Ah ha, a quick peak at the Audio Files folder reveals that the day the session size started exploding I spent the whole day tuning vocals with Auto Tune 7. I did nothing else in the session that day, the printed tuned vocal tracks are the only audio files. I just deleted the 3 disabled instances of AutoTune in the session and the file just dropped to 6.4 MB. Seems we have a culprit. You were right about plugins being the issue. Thanks!

[Darryl Ramm]

oh yes Auto Tune is known to do this, I was almost going to use it as an example. If you google around you will find more examples... like this... https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=389974

[innerbooty]

Oh man, yeah. I read that post. The mix I am working occurs a full 66 minutes into the session. So if my 3 instances of AutoTune in Graphical Mode were tracking all the silence leading up to the actual vocals. Wow... Thank you!