Field Recorder ignoring some files

[noiseboyuk]

Field Recorder again... I've been doing a clean conform for a studio project successfully for several episodes of a studio series. I create a new project with one clean conform track, and then expand by timecode only (no metadata in the files except time of day).

Today something is amiss. It conforms the first 33 of about 45 tracks correctly, then ignores the rest. I see them fine in file explorer, and they are timestamped correctly.

I've experienced this before (in PT11 I think), and trashing prefs did the trick. This time - no dice. I'm reindexing the whole drive in Workspace, it's very slow and will take a few hours, but I happened to see it had already done my problem folder in the status display - and that's made no difference either.

It must be something to do with the volume indexing though - what else can I try? Thanks.

[noiseboyuk]

No ideas? Anything else I can try when the indexing has gone screwy?

[simonchase]

The only thing I sometimes do that make protools mess up like this is go too fast.

Expand one track at a time, AND before you click expand in the menu, wait. Wait for PT to have a think about all those bits of source media and where their buddies are. I tend to give it 30 seconds per about 20 minutes of material. I’m not at my machine now but it’s possible the task window will give you a heads up.

And as you’re already doing, deleting old catalogs and updating never hurts either.

Hope that works...

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by simonchase

The only thing I sometimes do that make protools mess up like this is go too fast.

Expand one track at a time, AND before you click expand in the menu, wait. Wait for PT to have a think about all those bits of source media and where their buddies are. I tend to give it 30 seconds per about 20 minutes of material. I’m not at my machine now but it’s possible the task window will give you a heads up.

And as you’re already doing, deleting old catalogs and updating never hurts either.

Hope that works...

Sorry I missed this reply, thanks Simon. But I'm a little confused - I just have one conform track and point it at one folder. Do you mean you thin out the folder so it's not making a complete search each time of all media?

[simonchase]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Do you mean you thin out the folder so it's not making a complete search each time of all media?

No. Have a look at this

Once I drop the clips on the FRGT it just needs a few seconds to have a think before it will expand correctly

[noiseboyuk]

Hmm, I guess I have a different workflow. I drop the clips onto the guide track, then select areas to search, then index from there. Task manager usually takes about 20-30 secs to do that, which must be the same as what your method is doing. Of late, it seems to have been rushing that part of the process sometimes doing it almost instantaneously which makes me suspicious, but I always wait until Task Manager is cleared.

[noiseboyuk]

Thread revival. Today I wasn't able to make a single match using Field Recorder, running 2013.3 on Win 10. Trashed prefs, nada. I also tried it on a mac running 2013.1. Again, not one single match.

In desperation I then tried PT 10. Worked first time, perfectly.

Sigh. Looks like I'll have to adapt my workflow to still do this part of the process in PT10. How many years on are we now and still don't have a version of 64 bit PT that works?

[Ray JB]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

Thread revival. Today I wasn't able to make a single match using Field Recorder, running 2013.3 on Win 10. Trashed prefs, nada. I also tried it on a mac running 2013.1. Again, not one single match.

In desperation I then tried PT 10. Worked first time, perfectly.

Sigh. Looks like I'll have to adapt my workflow to still do this part of the process in PT10. How many years on are we now and still don't have a version of 64 bit PT that works?

Hi Guy

I had problems on a recent film with Field recorder functions not seeing BWAV poly files from an Aaton Cantar recorder with current software. I had a master folder of about 5000 files of which PT 12.8.1 would only see 3000. If you looked in the workspace, there were whole rolls missing. Only option for me was to make a session that contained all files dumped onto inactive tracks and import that session to my cutting session before track expansion. This populated the clip list with all files and all worked ok.

I zoned the problem down to dodgy metadata in the files. Many daily rolls had Roll number and Tape ID's with leading and trailing spaces, and PT seemed to hate that.

Is the workspace actually seeing all your location sound files if you navigate to the folders?

Cheers
Ray

[noiseboyuk]

Yes, its seeing them fine, and the metadata seems fine. I conformed from an EDL in Ediload, and it confirms all the tape names match (I'm just using tape names and timecode). But of course the kicker is - PT10 sees them fine. Conforms quickly and normally.

So my workflow for this series will be that I open the EdiLoad generated conform tracks in PT10, conform there, and then import those conformed tracks into the main session in PT 2013.

If I have the patience I'll open a support ticket, but I know it means weeks / months of back and forthing. It gets kinda old after a while.

[noiseboyuk]

A little update here. I recently got a new rig (still PC). Am currently working on a 10 episode series, all conforming from the same media pool. The first episode conformed perfectly in PT 2018, but as the episodes went by the conforming started to get more and more erratic. By the last episode I've just started working on, it was only conforming about 20% of the material. Its like it just got tired.

Fortunately PT10 is still conforming reliably like a champ.

There is clearly something up with the indexing process in PT11+. Once it has seem a folder, it only performs a most perfunctory re-index when it sees it the next time, and I think it's here that things are going wrong. It must think it has a record of the folder, when it doesn't have a reliable one. When I load into PT10, it takes a couple of minutes to index, but there seems to be no way to force a re-indexing in PT11+.