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  #1  
Old 02-23-2013, 03:33 PM
dustin_m dustin_m is offline
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Default Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Our current system is:
12 core Mac Pro
24 GB of RAM
OS 10.7.4
PT 10.3.0 HDX 3
3x 192
1x HD I/O
Sync I/O
OCX external clock


With the loss of TDM and the fact that most plugin manufactures have yet to make AAX DSP versions means we are relying heavily on AAX Native. This means when mixing and loading up a big session we are constantly bumping up against the 4GB RAM limit of 32 bit applications. We've been utilizing the 3rd party app VEP (Vienna Ensemble Pro) to not completely stop our sessions. However it seems being this close to the 4 GB ram limit Pro Tools starts having other odd problems. Here are a few things we have been experiencing:


Zoom crash- do a bit of editing and fades, then zoom into a region. Just as the waveform display should change, spinning color wheel followed by crash.

Tracks not playing- working away then suddenly where did that BG vocal go?? look at the track all signs point that it should be playing. Make track inactive, reactivate, track plays fine again. Sometimes stereo tracks seem to only play out one side, deactivate / reactivate and all is fine again.

Bad mute automation causing regions to mute where they shouldn't be muted- after a " cut time " operation (where some mute automation was cut causing about an 1/8 note of a quick mute) regions before the mute sometimes don't play or play quietly. After deleting or moving break points of the mute at the cut time area all plays well!

Delay compensation slop- after working for a while on a session near the memory wall, with delay compensation at maximum, the timing of some of the tracks seems off by a bit. Something that's really hard to put your finger on but after a reboot the groove of the track works again!!



I'm not sure all of these are related to low RAM. I would love to hear from other Pro Tools 10 users who are working in sessions that are pushing the RAM limit. Sessions where you occasionally get the " Pro Tools is Critically Low on Memory and could not save the session. " error.

I believe there are a few things Avid could do to help this situation.

One, it would be nice to at least know where you stand with ram usage. Add a meter that gives some feedback before we get into the danger zone.

Two, FREEZE TRACK. I know certain things like hardware inserts make this more difficult to implement but on tracks like that if there was a pop up dialog that said "unable to freeze track - hardware insert" or something we would still be able to freeze other tracks in the session. Currently our only alternative is printing the tracks that have a lot of plugins on them. However, printing these tracks gets much more complicated when working in professional mix session. Plugin keying, pan / send automation, grouping, vca masters and others make printing the tracks much more of a chore. Also freeze track would eliminate the need for VEP ( Vienna Ensemble Pro )

Obviously fully 64 bit support would be ideal but I understand that would be a ways off and will take more support from 3rd party plugin manufactures.

Same could be said for AAX DSP plugins

We're in the middle of a major mix session and HDX has completely crippled us. The switch to HDX is costing us tens of thousands of dollars in down time and may result in our record being delayed. Pro Tools doesn't really feel very "pro" anymore.


The most info I've seen on this topic has been here: http://protools.ideascale.com/a/dtd/...ror/31640-3779
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  #2  
Old 02-24-2013, 08:12 AM
DetroitT's Avatar
DetroitT DetroitT is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Mac Activity monitor works for keeping an eye on memory.
10.3.3 / OSX 10.7.5 here and the zoom crash seems gone but was here in 10.2.
Have you tried to simplify clocking from HD I/O pulling out the Sync (non HD?) and OCX?
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  #3  
Old 02-24-2013, 10:53 AM
cjguitar cjguitar is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Yeah, I've definitely seen crashes due to memory issues (but not the others you've listed). There's a few things you can do. Altiverb is the biggest culprit that I've seen. It adds as much as 500MB to Pro Tools memory per instance, probably gets worse when you're loading lots of IR's. It also appears to have a memory leak as well, as the more you use it the more memory grows. I've done away with Altiverb completely as much as I can in most of my sessions. Second thing to think about is if you're working with video, offload the video to another machine. Again, I've seen as much as 500MB additional memory added to Pro Tools when working with video. Third thing you can try is reduce the amount of undo levels, as that all takes up memory as well. Hope this helps for now, these are just the limitations of working with a 32-bit app.
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  #4  
Old 02-25-2013, 02:07 AM
Frank Kruse Frank Kruse is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

If you see PT getting close to 3.7GB it can help to manually delete the undo-cue. But it's obvious that before PT is 64bit we won't be able to use HDX3 to it's full capabilities.
Especially in film mixes where the amount of regions in one reel at 700+ tracks even without plugins is close to impossible to work with currently.

You can improve things slightly by splitting into half reels or working with minimum undos but ultimately this will only improve with 64bit.

Currently it's a ferrari engine fitted into a VW beetle (or vice versa) the weakest part determines the overall performance.

hopefully very soon this will change. it just has to...
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  #5  
Old 02-25-2013, 08:41 AM
ilovemyssl ilovemyssl is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

I feel your pain…. I'm dying here with some of my big sessions.

Once I've had a session open for an hour or so, the biggest issues for me are duplicating plugins causes PT to stop responding, and also the zoom issue as you mentioned… Also, forget about bouncing to quicktime mov file - crashes every time.

I frequently get "memory critically low" errors right after opening sessions..

It's a bit of a joke right now - I rebooted my system 20+ times the other day just trying to get through mix passes on this one particular session.

It's almost embarrassing that we've all spent so much money on such a tragically unstable platform…. and the best thing is we'll all have to fork out more $$$ for PT11 just to fix all of this!!

This is where Avid are all about the $$$… What they SHOULD have done is release HDX / HD I/O's and 64-bit software at the SAME time. That way, everyone could have moved from one fully-functioning platform straight to another. I wish I had been informed of how crippled HDX would be when I traded my HD3 rig… I would have waited a year (or 2!) til it was a fully-working 64-bit system with a decent amount of AAX-DSP plugins available.

The LEAST Avid can do is offer PT11HD as a free upgrade to existing HDX users as a "thank you" for putting up with this garbage.
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  #6  
Old 02-26-2013, 06:30 PM
Mixchump Mixchump is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Dustin, et al...

I feel (and am currently experiencing) your pain. I just finished a major project with an old-school multi-multi-platinum hall-of-famer artist that was extremely frustrated with the bull$4I7 we were dealing with. Headphones-thrown-on-floor, storming-out-of-studio, you're-fired kind of stuff.

1. ProTools bailing out of record while doing a very emotional single lead vocal overdub on a fairly basic session (CPU meter very erratic, 9171's)

2. Trying to lay down a mix and ProTools is crashing in the exact same spot every time. Consolidating (possibly corrupted?) files seemed to help at first, but actually didn't. Turned out that creating a blank session and importing absolutely everything solved the problem. New session was 0.4MB smaller than the original, leading me to believe that the session clearly needed to be purged of 'crap' that clearing the region bin obviously couldn't.

3. Sneaky onset of Delay Compensation Slop... Like you guys, I'm getting the same thing. I'm going to have to re-print the mixes for an entire album that was sent over to mastering (thank God my client caught the problem) because the delay comp is ALL OVER THE ****** PLACE!!!!!!!!!

4. -91xx errors every time I open a plugin window that has a GUI any more complex than a 3-knob plugin. AutoTune EVO, MDW-V5, etc... Throw errors and stop playback almost every time I click on the plugin.

5. Random Dead channels. Like mixing on a poorly maintained SSL.

I tried doing a clean install in Lion 10.7.5 and ProTools 10.3.3 (with SUDO command for persistent 32-bit Kernel), I've tried Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and ProTools 10.3.3. Exact same issues, exact same bugs, same BS.

Honestly, my nerves are shattered and I'm seriously reconsidering my very existence in this business. This has already cost me many days in concessions with my clients, to re-do stuff, re-print mixes, and do client damage control.

The worst part is... What if this is as good as it gets? I feel like the whole Pro Audio business is crumbling around me. My investment in Waves plugins is wasted (about $10K), my investment in Avid stuff is precarious (about $200K in the last 10 years), Apple seems to be abandoning it's pro customers, and the music business is more and more dire every single day.

When I have a good day, I can temporarily forget all this stuff, but then it comes back with a vengeance as soon as I start having #1, #2, #3, #4, or #5 (or all of the above)...

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH
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  #7  
Old 03-01-2013, 05:52 PM
dustin_m dustin_m is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Thanks for all the input. I guess it's nice to know we're not the only ones with these problems. I've been keeping an eye on our ram usage with Activity Monitor all this week and it seems all of those problems have disappeared.

The numbers in Activity Monitor don't always seem to make since but I've found the best way to tell is if you click on the PT process and hit "inspect" then in the memory tab keep an eye on virtual memory size. As long as I'm below 3.5 or so the system feels pretty safe.

If it's more, we've been printing the tracks we can (tracks with a bunch of plugins) and only using virtual instruments inside of vienna ensemble pro. It gets tricky and time consuming on large mix sessions where you need to match all routing and be aware of key inputs to plugins and all. As well as the fact that our vocals are often using the most plugins and are the most likely to be tweaked down the road. (Still, the best solution in this waiting period for 64 bit and AAX dsp 3rd party support would be freeze track!!)

What I don't understand about Activity Monitor is sometimes the virtual memory size and real memory size add together to be over the 4GB limit. Not sure if this is a GB - billions of bytes / 1024 kind of thing or what.

Anyway, I'd really like to get a definitive list like this from AVID: https://www.ableton.com/en/articles/...out-of-memory/ (Maybe it's out there and I've just missed it somehow??)

It's frustrating when you spend $400 on an app and they give you all the tools to get around these problems and helpful info on how to deal with it, but you spend $20,000+ on hardware and software and...
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Old 03-05-2013, 12:18 AM
ilovemyssl ilovemyssl is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Quote:
Originally Posted by dustin_m View Post

it's frustrating when you spend $400 on an app and they give you all the tools to get around these problems and helpful info on how to deal with it, but you spend $20,000+ on hardware and software and...
Agreed!!
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  #9  
Old 03-05-2013, 10:42 AM
bashville bashville is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Thank you for the comment about the multiple undo's. Hadn't thought about that one. I'm running HD-Native, but I think a lot of the CPU errors are similar with the situation in HDX.

In case not everybody is aware of these other adjustments people have tried:

In Mountain Lion, you can Google for the command that kills the Notification Center activity. That's helped people.

On a hyper-threaded Mac, setting the core usage to one less than half the available (if you have 4 physical cores that look like 8 in the selection window, try setting it to 3). That has something to do with possible problems PT has dealing with the virtual cores.

Rolling your system back to Lion. I just migrated my last Mountain Lion Time Machine backup into a virtual machine in Parallels, and am running Lion as the main host OS with only music programs (plus Parallels) installed. Open Parallels for day-to-day business stuff. Wacky. But PT feels more solid so far. I haven't done a lot of VI work since then, though. This is on my laptop.

Besides Vienna Ensemble Pro, using Reaper in Rewire mode for VI hosting.

Besides using ProTools, using Reaper(!). Good luck learning that multi-headed hydra, but VI's scream on it by comparison.

Good luck!
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  #10  
Old 03-05-2013, 02:17 PM
dustin_m dustin_m is offline
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Default Re: Pro Tools HDX useless?!?!?! major RAM usage problems 32bit

Quote:
Originally Posted by StewartFang View Post
Hey dudes.

I'm gonna guess that every single one of you having problems are using waves and sound toys plugs in your sessions....also 10.8...bad idea for now


A couple of questions also.

1. Why the heck would you change a complete system in the MIDDLE of a mix...that is user error.

2. Why are there many folks with HDX 3 and up rigs reporting that their rigs are flying with no problems in post and music situations with large track counts?


...final note...there have been reports of sync I/O not playing well...check into that as that may be the source right there....and not one of you with HDX has included the system details you rate running it on...why is that?

Oh and I almost forgot THE BIGGEST problem is SLATE VCC...that thing will kill you on PT10/HDX...esp if you use the Neve setting...non AAX plugs report DC randomly incorrectly

Hi "dude"

I'm still in 10.7.4. I am using Sound Toys and Waves plugins, as are most professionals in any DAW.

1. We didn't change systems in the MIDDLE of a mix. We have been writing on this systems as well. The problems with RAM didn't show up till mixing when more strain was put on the system.

2. Evidently they don't use as many plugins as we are. This is a real limitation for any 32bit app. We are using even fewer plugins than we have in past mixes on our TDM system. But, now that many plugin companies still need to update their plugins for AAX DSP, we are hitting a wall on RAM usage.

I've spoken with Avid techs and even had them come out to our studio no one from Avid seems to see any problem with the Sync I/O (Not sure how the Sync I/O would use up more RAM but whatever)

I simply forgot to mention the rate. We are working at 48kHz 24bit.

And we don't have Slate VCC.

Thanks for your input though. I'm assuming you're not experiencing any problems with your rig then?




For anyone else pushing there system a little harder you may want to check out this app the guys from Avid turned me on to: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/memo...51444120?mt=12

You're able to monitor and clear out ram being used in an app. This is helpful as not all plugins will return the ram they were using. I've been quitting Pro Tools when switching session to try to get around this but this app should help for that. I've been told it's best to only clear the ram when your session is closed but Pro Tools can stay open.

Cheers,
Dustin
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