Pro Tools Automation Cutting Out

[Measuring Man]

We are experiencing a curios/annoying problem with our Pro Tools Systems here. It's happen on both a PT24 and a PTMix.

Here the situation...

Automation stopps working. The faders still appear to move but the level doesn't change. It can happen to a couple or all the tracks and there appears to be no clear way of predicting when of why it's happening.

I looked int he history of this group and someone reported something similar years ago and got only vague responses.

To clarify, automation for the tracks is set to READ, the volume is not greyed out and the preferences are all fine in the automation section. If I create a new track and copy the data to it it works fine. However we are dealling with fairly massive Post audio movie sessions and tight deadlines.

If anyone has any suggestions please respond

Thank You

Ted Onyszczak
Measuring Man
Film Sound One

[Measuring Man]

I do keep the sessions pretty trim of extras. By the time they get to the main Mix theater they only have the pertinent files transfered in. The machines got 512MB of RAM, generously allocated.

I have done the track trasnfer thing, but it's time consuming re-openning all those sessions, not to metionion potentially embarassing in front of client.

The speediest solution I've found it to make a template of all the blank track I need and re-import them into the problem session and move all the audio to the new tracks, and erase the old ones.

I just want to kow if this is a real bug, and if so is DIGI doing something about it, or am I just missing something not quite so obvious.

thanks for the speedy reply, please keep the ideas coming.

[Tweakhead]

Go into ProTools preferences and set the automation buffer to maximum (3000k)
Save. Restart.

[Measuring Man]

I do keep the sessions pretty trim of extras. By the time they get to the main Mix theater they only have the pertinent files transfered in. The machines got 512MB of RAM, generously allocated.

I have done the track trasnfer thing, but it's time consuming re-openning all those sessions, not to metionion potentially embarassing in front of client.

The speediest solution I've found it to make a template of all the blank track I need and re-import them into the problem session and move all the audio to the new tracks, and erase the old ones.

I just want to kow if this is a real bug, and if so is DIGI doing something about it, or am I just missing something not quite so obvious.

thanks for the speedy reply, please keep the ideas coming.

[Toko]

Hello Ted !

I had this problem often with the the same type of session you probably have ("fairly massive Post audio movie sessions "). I personaly think that ProTools TDM, has problems to handle massive amounts of automation. This statement is perhaps only true for special configuration but you are not alone with this problem. The initial cause for the problem can be very complex so I only can give you some general ideas how you can solve the problem :

2. Make a copy of the session and test after every step if there is a change in the response of the session automation.
• First check if ProTools has enough memory available.
• If you have a controller like ProControl disable it.
• In order to make the Session less sluggish :
- Remove all unused tracks , also the hidden tracks.
- Remove all unused audio files and regions from the Regionlist
• Select all tracks in the edit window from beginning to end of the session and perform "Thin automation"
• Disable all Plug-in´s
• Remove the Plug-In´s one after another from the session.
• Create a new empty session and import the tracks from the problematic session

I hope I could help you , good luck !

Toko [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]