Going NUTS w/ Spinning Beach BALL... pls hlp

[FajitaTone]

I noticed with techtool pro 4.02 that it advertised MANY more drives online than actually are online. What I mean by this is I saw a bunch of repetitive icons in the DRIVE TEST portion. I did not run the test nor pursue the issue as it was mighty confusing and getting late. (I felt like a late night drunk on a bad sitcom OR don knotts in the ghost and mr chicken.)

WASSS UUUUUUUUUUP?

This phenomenon (da daaaaa, da da dah) is from using the Atto utility to format the drives. I f you use the Apple Disk utility to completely wipe the drives (unmount all the little partitions first) meaning reformat the mechanisim from scatch, you will be able to use more of the disk. This applies to ALL drives, SCSI or FW.

"Top" is a list of all active processes and the percentage of CPU they are currently using. if you open a teminal window and type top that's what you'll get.

Good luck to all!


G4 1.25GHz Aluminum PowerBook
OS 10.3.5
13 Slot 32bit Digidesign xpansion Chassis/CardBus adapter
PT 6.4cs5 (cs6 plugs)
MixPlus+ DSP Farm
888|24
ADAT Bridge|24
MIDI I/O
Sync
Command 8
LaCie 60GB FW

All works great!

[Chief Technician]

I have been following this thread for some time, as one of the systems we have has been plagued by this. The system is a 933MHz G4, MIX Plus w/Merle DSP Farm, OS X v10.2.8.

I started doing everything on this system under a different admin user, and although its only been one day, PT has yet to hit me with the beach ball (aka SWOD). I did get one with Safari, but in the context of what I was doing at the time, I was not surprised.

If you haven't tried working under a different admin user, you may want to explore this route.

[Jsalam112]

System:
Dual 1.8 G5 w/1gig ram
10.3.5
6.4cs8
OWC and EZ Quest Firewire drives

Symptoms:
- Much too frequent kernel panic crashes
- Spinning beach ball in record and edit/playback mode (we usually reach for the talkback and tell the artist that the computer is
"thinking" whenever these annoying delays occur).
- Freezing during Auto Tune 4 audiosuite graphic mode

Observation:
These issues seem to arise with sessions that are fairly large in size. Especially, at 96K 24 bit.
I have a project where all individual PT sessions are around 12 gigs each. Multiple takes of drums, guitars and especially vocals.
Sometimes fifteen vocal takes on a single track (channel). There are days that while punching in or editing the spinning ball occurs at almost every pause. Could the computer or the Firewire communication get "bogged down" because it's a single drive setup or there's just too much information for the computer to scan through easily?

Thursday I was working on one of the above mentioned sessions all afternoon. Single EZ Quest 800 firewire drive with several songs around 12 gigs each. Experienced 2 kernel panics, spinning ball syndrome, and Auto Tune audiosuite graphic mode freezes. We've become so paranoid that it becomes a race for us to hit the save button at every move while waiting for the next kernel panic crash which occurs seemingly at random with no rhyme or reason.
That same evening I worked on a different project. 96k 24 bit single OWC mercury elite firewire drive. File size 3 gigs.
No more than three or four takes per track. 5.5 hours of nothing but intense audiosuite graphic mode auto tuning on background vocal tracks. Not one visit from the kernel, not one spinning ball, not one auto tune freeze. The only difference between these 2 sessions was the hard drive or I believe the "density" or possibly the degree of fragmentation due to the difference in file size and number of takes per track (channel).

I purchased my G5 last November and installed my 002 PT LE. Maybe due to the limitations of LE but I never experienced these problems. As soon as I installed my HD3 Accel system in that same G5 my problems began. Yes! LE was uninstalled first.
Is it the PT software...the system software...hardware or the large "dense" session files on firewire drives?

Or could it be the use of a specific plug-in? Channelstrip still has freezing issues.

I've added "Walking on eggs" and "holding my breath" to my list of qualified work skills.

[jamieboss1]

Aluminum,
Has this issue been resolved?
Having the same problem with G5 HD2 config...
Thanks,
Jamie

[Aluminum Jockey]

Hello everyone. Sorry I've been away from this thread for some time... I had thought it was dead and had moved my comments and findings over to the one started by jonathan about quickpunch. We haven't been able to fix it... and I can honestly say we've tried everything except for logging in as a new user - as suggested by digi.

Thanks for everyone's input... I think we're gonna eventually find the problem...

In the meantime... we're at the mix stage of a record, so we're unlikely to be using quickpunch for the next couple of weeks. Once we make it to the other side of crunch time pressure ... we'll be able to try testing this problem from scratch. I would encourage anyone to try and create the problem from scratch so we can get to the bottom of it.

best,

AJ

ps - digi, thanks for staying on this one. I know there are a couple guys at tech support who have been watching.... keep us posted.

[Jsalam112]

May be premature but continuing in the direction I hinted at in my 9/4 post I've come up with further indications that the problems may be directly related to the size of session on a single firewire drive.

System:
Mac dual 1.8 G5 w/1 gig ram
10.3.5
PT HD3 Accel
6.4cs8

All sessions are 24bit depth at 96K. Single firewire drive. I've used 800, 400 firewire and the G5's internal drive.

- 13 gig session with many takes per track:
Constant spinning beach ball, (2) kernel panic and Auto Tune freezing in audiosuite graphic mode.

- 8 gig session with multiple takes on tracks:
NO spinning beach ball, (1) kernel panic and auto tune freezing in audiosuite graphic mode

- 3 gig session with multiple tales per track:
No problems.

I then went to the same 8 gig session and bounced all music down to a stereo file. I opened a fresh session and imported the vocal tracks from the 8 gig session. This shrunk the session down to 833 meg.
No spinning beach ball. No kernel panic and I have been using Auto tune for 2 hours without a single incident...so far.

maybe??? memory allocation VS firewire communication or drive speed and amount of data that needs to be scanned. Computer may get "bogged" down and choke or at least hiccup when sessions start to get too dense. Perhaps it's too much data for the computer to scan efficiently while attampting to perform other tasks such as heavy audiosuite processing i.e. auto tune in graphic mode, punching in.

possible fix(s)??:
- faster drives
- faster communication
- more ram needed or better disbursement of that memory when using Pro Tools.
- sessions should be limited to a reasonable size.

[anodecathode]

System:
Mac dual 2.0 G5 w/2.5 gig ram
10.3.5
PT HD2 Accel
6.4
Western Digital SATA

I'm getting this ungodly error on 16 bit sessions too.. Its timing really seems completely random.. I have also had 6 kernal panics. When I get the Spinning Beach Ball my system never recovers. I have to hold down the power button for about 10 seconds.. The clients just love this one!!!


signed:
miss my mix plus..


(from my panic log.. note: its the same errror every time)


Tue Aug 31 21:19:39 2004


panic(cpu 0): thread_invoke: preemption_level 1

Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000836E4 0x00083BC8 0x0001EDA4 0x0002AD04 0x0002B300 0x0008D984 0x000138A4 0x000219E8
0x006A2E1C 0x006A2D4C 0x006AAF00 0x006AAFF0 0x006A8564 0x006A84C8 0x0077AC3C 0x00276888
0x00096210 0x000945AC
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.digidesign.iokit.DigiDal(6.4)@0x6a1000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(1.4)@0x394000
com.apple.driver.AppleMPIC(1.2.3)@0x779000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x316A6C80)
PC=0x0008D828; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x141B1000; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x0001CD7C; R1=0x1EE4BCB0; XCP=0x00000014 (0x500 - Ext int)
Backtrace:
0x0001CD94 0x0001CECC 0x00042084 0x00021668 0x0001BCE8 0x0001C0F0 0x00094358 0x7D8903A6
backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFDAD0

Exception state (sv=0x34EBDC80)
PC=0x900074C8; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x016F8048; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x90007018; R1=0xBFFFDAD0; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 7.5.0:
Thu Aug 5 19:26:16 PDT 2004; root:xnu/xnu-517.7.21.obj~3/RELEASE_PPC