7.2 plus film score = a lot of crashes

[sharp11]

I just finished the remake of Brian DePalma's 1973 cult classic "Sisters".

It was a very intensive score with many, many tracks, plugs and QT running entire reels, five in all.

I never felt really confident during the whole process as PT would often crash at inopportune times, actually, usually during recording.

The crashes were hard, the entire machine would freeze forcing a shut down and reboot.

Other bugs were present that have been present for quite some time, for example, why does my cursor sometimes jump miles down the timeline for no reason at all? And I still sometimes get a pop at the end of an audio file.

I still get the error where PT loses communication with the audio interface, this often while assigning sends with plugins open. This had the result of me avoiding setting up sends for stem recording as I could never be sure when the audio interface would quit being seen - a real productivity killer as I had to limit my routing to my eight-in and out interface.

All in all, I felt like I was navigating landmines, never certain when some calamity was going to strike.

Disappointing to say the least.

G51.6
HD accell2
Soundtoys full tdm suite
digidesign plugs
7.2
QT pro

Ed Dzubak

[Jaylaca]

Ed,

I have the same computer you do and wanted to offer a couple of things. I'm running 6.9 on Panther, not Tiger. Everything else is the same.

Two points.

1. HEAT! The ATI Radeon 9800pro AGP graphics card melted my Core card. I now keep PCI slot 1 empty and use PCI slot 2 & 3 for the core & process cards. Of course Mac is now touting the xtra space they give you between slots in the new PCIE only Mactels.

2. Video Card. My old (stock nvidia) video card was not seated correctly in the AGP slot. I'm surprised it didn't hose the whole computer, but it sure did cause random crashes, hard ones, and sluggish performance when graphics got more intensive. It would crash 2 or 3 times a day.

Maybe something in here will help.

Cheers,
Jason Lord

[Sonny in London]

I'm afraid I can't comment on your system stability, but I'd love to know your composition methods.

What, if any, acoustic instruments did you record? With what mics/pres/outboard?

What, if any, VIs did you use?

What, if any, plug ins did you use during mixdown?

Did you complete the project from start to finish, right to mastering, on your own? All within the Pro Tools environment?

What, if any, control surfaces, controllers or MIDI gear did you use? How about monitors?

Did you use any scoring software? If so, how did you integrate it with your PT sessions?


I compose music for picture as well and I'm always interested in other people's techniques and workflows, especially in PT7.


Cheers


Sonny


P.S. I'm not sure, but I believe that there are currently some problems with the SoundTools plugs. It might be an optimisation issue with PT7, I really can't confirm, but you should definately see if this might be a cause of some of your problems.

Peace

[bigbadhenchman]

I just finished the remake of Brian DePalma's 1973 cult classic "Sisters".

Ed Dzubak

What a coincidence.

We're mixing that right now.
I just finsihed the Dialogue premix of the last 2 reels.

[sharp11]

Wow, that's a lot of questions, but I'll do my best to summarize.

The score features live piano, voice and cello and a ton of sound design and synth xfx.

I worked with a very talented composer from Montreal named David Kristian - he's a wiz at sound design and vintage synth programming. He did some very cool things using a lap steel and a specially prepared wand.

I recorded a lot of prepared piano using my Yamaha C5 (6 foot 6 grand) - this included dragging wind chimes, guitar picks, fingernails etc. across the open strings. Also, as serendipity would have it, my Bb bass string went bad necessitating a string change- this involved snipping and pulling the dead string through - all of which found its way into the score!!!

We did a lot of similar mucking up of the cello, including liberal usage of Amp Farm .

We hired Kazu Makino from Blonde Redhead to do voice and voice xfx, she was wonderful - in one five hour session, she sang the theme, the closing bits and a lot of stuff during the body of the movie - we did some cool things with her voice using Echoboy and a lot of feedback looping.

Most of the pad sounds in the movie are a combination of prepared piano and synth; the main synth I used is my Korg Oasys - I also used an Access Virus and a Novation supernova. My partner used a Triton and a vintage Moog Source.

Mics used were a vintage U47, a Charter Oak 538b, a pair of KM184's, an AT4050 and an AT 4033 all fed into an API 3124 and a pair of Summit MPC100a's - a simple setup.

Everything is mixed to separate stems for the guys at Post Modern Sound in vancouver - I used next to no compression or limiting, but plenty of Revibe and again, Soundtoys Echoboy, Filterfreak etc.

My monitors are Dynaudio BM15a's, I used no VI's save for the TDM Virus and no commercial scoring software (I wrote all the cello parts by hand).

We were going for an homage to the great horror film scores of the early 70's, primarily the Italian exploitation kind of stuff.

Hope that answers some of your questions!!

Ed

[sharp11]

Hey Cool!!

I hope you enjoy the score and write me if you run into any problems!

Ed

[DigiTechSupt]

The description of your problems lends me to believe you still have incompatible plug-ins installed.

This is a critical issue - if you have even one incompatible plug-in in the plug-ins folder, you can see all kinds of problems in Pro Tools.

Update or remove any incompatible plug-ins, trash preferences (a must), then try again.

[Sonny in London]

Fantastic, thank for that.


BM15As eh? Nice.
Actually you have some great gear and it sounds like you had a lot of fun with the score.


Peace


Sonny

[minister]

well...it must be becasue you are trying to replace my hero, bernard herrmann's score! shame on the filmmakers!!!

i have 7.2 and am scoring a horror flick as well. pretty connected place here.... starting to get lots of tracks, but i don't have the problems you do. right now it is full drum kit, bass, percussion, oddities, cellos, guitar, then lots of VI's from East/West and NI.

i think DIGI may be on to something with the plugs not being current... and i assume your system is clean.

i have :

dual g5 2.5
6.5 GIG RAM
OS 10.4.6
HD|2 ACELL
SYNC I/O
PT 7.2


i don't have sound toys....

[sharp11]

Thanks for the reply, but the only additional plugs I have are the full Soundtoys TDM suite - and the latest version at that.

Also, I've upgraded all my digi plugs.

I do think there is a problem, just a hunch, with the Soundtoys stuff and frankly, as a company, they're not very forthcoming about this. One of the things they say is it's a problem with Digi's eq 3 plug not being compatible with their plugs.?

I've gone through many upgrades - problems always seem to surface after situations like this, it's probably time to do an entirely clean install........

Ed