Pro Tools 11 on mac not showing waveforms

[digitaltracks]

Hey,
for some reason when i import audio into pro tools 11 on mac the audio waveform is not showing,
the audio file is still there and playing you just can't see the waveform,
anyone have any idea why?

[digitaltracks]

its ok i think i worked this one out,
i was adding the file to the session rather than copying it.
when i copy it the waveform shows up fine.

[joachim]

Originally Posted by digitaltracks

Hey,
for some reason when i import audio into pro tools 11 on mac the audio waveform is not showing,
the audio file is still there and playing you just can't see the waveform,
anyone have any idea why?

Track View set to "Blocks" ?

Originally Posted by digitaltracks

its ok i think i worked this one out,
i was adding the file to the session rather than copying it.
when i copy it the waveform shows up fine.

"Add" or "Copy" does not have anything to do with showing waveforms or not.

Did you try "recalculate waveform" ?

[digitaltracks]

Track view is set to "Waveform",
and i tried recalculate "Waveform" & thats not working either.
still no luck

[digitaltracks]

Ok,
so i tried with some different files & everything worked fine,

possibly just bad files or a bad hard drive.

[DrDub]

Hi

Actually I'm getting a similar problem. If I look in the task menu PT is constantly trying to calculate the waveform overview but never succeeds. Clicking recalculate doesn't help.

PT 11.1.3 on a late 2013 iMac running OSX10.9.2

Any ideas?

[GTBannah]

Me too. It's only a problem if I have to edit the file after I import it. Once, I had to edit in Audacity, then re-import.

[jbjohnson937]

If you are importing from an external hard drive the issue you are having is due to the hard drive not being able to process fast enough to Pro Tools 11. I had the same issue. What I did to fix this was make a folder on the physical hard drive called " Pro Tools Imports" you can name it what you want of course and then I proceed to always add the files I want to import into my session in that folder. Import from this folder on your physical hard drive or any other folder on the physical hard drive and this issue is resolved. I hope this helps you!

[GTBannah]

Originally Posted by jbjohnson937

If you are importing from an external hard drive the issue you are having is due to the hard drive not being able to process fast enough to Pro Tools 11. I had the same issue. What I did to fix this was make a folder on the physical hard drive called " Pro Tools Imports" you can name it what you want of course and then I proceed to always add the files I want to import into my session in that folder. Import from this folder on your physical hard drive or any other folder on the physical hard drive and this issue is resolved. I hope this helps you!

Thanx for the response!

By, "physical" hard drive, do you mean, the "system" drive?

[Michael Zull]

I ran into this problem today and was able to figure it out. I was importing some field recordings from my Sony PCM-M10 at 96/24 and the waveform overviews would not calculate. Same behavior as others have seen, the task manager says it's calculating but the bar never progresses and they never show up. This happened on two different rigs, one iMac running 11.1.3 and another running 11.3 (both non-HD), both on OSX 10.9.5. The drive I was trying to work off was an external USB3 5400rpm spinner drive formatted as exFat (yes I know 5400's aren't recommended but I've never had problems running small sessions off of them). I wondered if, in fact, the drive was just too slow to do the job, but then tried another external USB3 drive. This time a Kingston 128gb SSD formatted as exFat and got the same result, waveform overviews wouldn't calculate.

I backed up the 5400rpm spinner and reformatted it as Mac OS Extended Journaled, tried the exact same operation and, voila, the waveforms appeared immediately. I took the same 5400rpm drive and reformatted it as MS-DOS FAT, and again had no problems with the overviews calculating.

With exFat, I've also had problems with the Workspace not being able to see audio files. I can see them in the Import Audio window but they wouldn't show up in the Workspace, even after attempting to rebuild the database. I copied the files to another drive formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled and the files showed up in the workspace immediately.

No more exFat for me with Pro Tools, apparently PT doesn't like them much.

EDIT: Formatting the drive to MS-DOS FAT worked ONCE for creating the waveform overviews. I copied some more stuff back over to that drive and when I reopened the session a few hours later and tried to import more files, the overviews wouldn't calculate. I just reformatted it again as Mac OS Extended Journaled and it created the overviews fine.