Access violation when splitting notes, problem and solution

[helenvee]

I encountered an issue with pro tools, and then I found the source of the issue. I thought maybe I should report it as a bug but on Avid's website they suggest that "In reality, many 'bug reports' end up being something other than a bug. Hardware or software issues with a specific system, compatibility issues, or pilot error are much more common." So I thought I'd post it here and get some second opinions, and see if anyone agrees that I should submit a bug report.

What happened was this:
I had a frozen instrument track. In the event operations window I used Select/Split Notes to split and copy all notes to a new track per pitch. Pro tool successfully created a new track per pitch, but then I got many repeated access violation errors, all some variation of this:

"Access violation occurred, unable to read location: 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF"

I would hit OK, but repeated variations of the error would pop up again and again every time I hit ok, like this one:

"pro tools Access violation occurred, thread cause a DEP violation at: 0x0000002733314627"

The errors would stop, but then I'd click anywhere with my mouse and more would pop up, and then the screen stopped displaying correctly, huge chunks of the screen would be just dark gray until I scrolled and then it would correct itself. When I tried to save the session, I would get this error:

"Could not complete the Save command because Access violation occurred, thread cause a DEP Violation at: 0x0000000010CB1188"

I had to shut down pro tools without saving and start over. A couple of times, when I reopened the session, I found that pro tools had deleted the rendered files for the track I was trying to split, and I had to recover them from my backup drive.

I eventually figured out that I need to unfreeze the track before performing the split notes operation. When performed on an unfrozen track, it works just fine.

My suggestion to avid would be, when someone tries to perform select/split notes on a frozen track, you should just get a message that says something like "this operation cannot be performed on a frozen track. Unfreeze the track first and try again", rather than throwing a bunch of access violation errors that result in not being able to click anywhere on the screen, not being able to save the session, and having to shut down pro tools.