Computer Freezes when moving mouse while re-activating tracks

[adrianrobison]

(My computer setup is listed at the bottom of this post) Everyone hates the rainbow spinning wheel of death. I have been noticing that I have been consistently getting it every time that I do this:

Working on a big HDX session, lots of Native and DSP plugins being used. I make inactive some VI instrument tracks to save CPU power being that HDX does not help with VI's. Before making them inactive, I commit the audio to an audio track. Fast forward a few hours or days and suddenly the part needs to change, for example I be wanting to change the chord structure to match a new vocal part, etc. When I go to reactivate the instrument track, if I simply reactivate it and don't touch anything else and wait like 30 seconds, the track reactivates with no issues. But, if I reactivate it and move the mouse AT ALL, even just moving the mouse like an inch on the screen, the spinning wheel of death will appear and never go away. I've sat on the screen and waited for it to cycle thru whatever it is cycling thru and still nothing. Pro Tools just becomes unresponsive and I must Force Quit the application and start again. It's super annoying that reactivating a track has to be so CPU intensive that it bogs my computer down like this, especially since I have a really nice and fast setup. The problem not only exists with VI instrument tracks, but with audio tracks that have a lot of native plugins on it, namely Waves.

All that being said, I do believe that if I stepped into a Mac Pro 12-core $9600 computer I would be fine, but will I? What if the computer is not the problem and its the Pro Tools 11.2 code? I look at my system usage and nothing is being maxed out past 50%. Most of my usage and cores hover around 20-30%.

Anyone else having this same problem?!?!

-Adrian


My setup:
-MacBook Pro 15” Retina, Mac OS version 10.9.2, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Ram, 1TB internal flash HD
-Sonnet Echo Express Thunderbolt 2 Chassis
-Pro Tools version 11.2, HDX Card connected to HD I/O
-Pegasus J2 Thunderbolt SSD HD for session data
-WD MyBook USB 3 HD for VI Samples
-Other devices connected include: Apple Keyboard, Trackpad, MAudio Uno Midi->USB, MAudio AxiomPro 49, and my iLok 2, all connected thru a USB multi port hub.

[guitardom]

I have read somewhere here that this is a bug and only happens on 11.2, can revert to 11.1.3 and it is not happening.

[adrianrobison]

Thanks man, good to know.

I think if Pro Tools had a "status bar" (that shows that something is being loaded) every time you activated a track and/or did a CPU intensive function, it might help. For example, if the status bar temporarily deactivated basic functions (clicking, mouse movement, etc) similar to how opening a session makes you just wait until things are loading. I take it that reactivating a track is very similar to opening a session, things have to load, etc. I would much rather see a progress bar and see that there are things going on behind the scenes rather than get that spinning wheel of death. I dunno maybe thats a dumb suggestion... I just never want to see that wheel ever again LOL

[Shifted Music]

Pretty sure I just encountered this tonight.

terrible.

[JFreak]

Do you have sends or automation on the tracks that beachball the system? I just today found that it is close to impossible to import session settings if the tracks in question have sends or automation. Have to reboot PT before import, otherwise beachball and force quit

[adrianrobison]

Yes, I have multiple sends because I'm running a lot of my plugins with parallel effect aux tracks. I do have some automation, mostly eq filter sweeps, nothing that major. The automation is only on a few tracks. Owning an HDX rig I had figured that those problems would be a thing of the past but I seem to have had just as many problems if not more than my 002 Rack. Ironic isn't it?

[JFreak]

Really ironic. Sadly, PT11.2.0 seems to have lots of automation related bugs. I bet this is one of those... (and this one ate me several hours of studio time just this week)

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Really ironic. Sadly, PT11.2.0 seems to have lots of automation related bugs. I bet this is one of those... (and this one ate me several hours of studio time just this week)

Plugin automation or 'regular' track-type automation (say for levels or mute)?

[adrianrobison]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Plugin automation or 'regular' track-type automation (say for levels or mute)?

I have both plugin and track type automation when mine freezes.

[Michael James]

I've had it happen when reactivating an audio track with no automation, but the track did have clip gain edits. No software plugins--only a single hardware insert and a single pre-fader send....

In my case, it seems like SWOD happens 80-90% of the "make active" attempts, for tracks, inserts and sends. The successful attempts don't seem to follow a pattern--or at least I haven't detected the pattern yet.

FWIW I typically set disk cache to 7 GB (of 20 GB installed memory); hardware buffer 512 or 1024, depending on complexity of the session.

PT 11.2 HDX, Mac Pro 4,1 Nehalem, OS 10.8.5, UAD2 Octo PCIe.