Automation too dense error every time you un-solo?

[Frank Kruse]

Hi,

currently mixing on HDX3 and we get the "automation too dense"-error more or less every single time we un-solo something. Is this normal? Is is pretty annoying because you have to OK it every time. Very distracting in the workflow soloing stuff hundreds of times every day.

The automation is far from dense BTW.

Any way around this?

Thanks,

Frank.

[Drew Mazurek]

Have you tried toggling different "automation thinning" prefs?

Longshot, I know.

[Frank Kruse]

I have done "thin all" across the entire session before we start a new reel and the session contains mainly static EQ auto and only clip-gain so it's pretty light to start with. Almost no volume.

And our Atmos objects are panned outside the box on the recorder via the DFC so no load there.

I think the "thinning after pass" setting is set to default. I think that's "some".

Thing is the same session runs absolutely fine on HDn without these hiccups. So I assume it's a HDX specific issue. It's doesn't happen randomly. It happens almost always.

I've been in touch with another user who seems to see the same thing and thinks it happens when you have more then 256 voices going which we do. But haven't got time to experiment and stop the mix.

Thanks,

Frank.

[thierryd]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

I've been in touch with another user who seems to see the same thing and thinks it happens when you have more then 256 voices going which we do. But haven't got time to experiment and stop the mix.

Hi Frank, today I had some time to test my theory with the "more than 256 voices" and it is not an exact science.
To give some ideas:
I mixed a feature film with 5 reels in one PT session. It's a dialog driven film, so not enormously dense on the fx side. The PT session is about 322 voices with everything active and I got this annoying "automation too dense" bug, from the moment I added the music and made those tracks active (a lot of 5.0 and 5.1 stems). Before that the session ran fine and was just under 256 voices (the HDn and HDX1 maximum, hence my theory). I run with "Smooth and Thin Data After Pass" put at "little" btw. The PT session was "only" 16.7MB (I've had much larger PT sessions in the TDM days).

Now I've mixed a trailer that was conformalised within the supersession with multiple versions of that trailer, bringing that PT session to 49,2MB (larger PT sessions happen regularly with reconforms and moving lots of automation data). I was able to run the trailer at 256 voices, because the music tracks were a lot simpler without stems. I never had a "Automation too dense" message (and I also didn't thin automation after the conform)

So today I tried to activate some of those 5.0 and 5.1 music stem tracks (that had no clips on them btw) and the "Automation too dense" message started to appear when quickly solo'ing things with a session of 280 voices. Only randomly and every so often. And indeed only when un-soloing; when you have one solo active and activate/de-active others, nothing happens. But when you then un-solo that last track, the "Automation too dense" can appear.
When I put the 322 voices back to active, then it is a nightmare and the "Automation too dense" happen very often.

So this is definitely a bug that has to do with higher voice counts on HDX 2 and 3 systems. And it has nothing to do with actual automation being too dense.

All this was tested on PT 11.1.3 with OS10.8.5 on a MacPro5,1 2.4 dual Quadcore with 24GB RAM, 10Gb allocated to cache. I also tried with the cache turned off, but the same error remains.

I like the extra pover of the HDX2 system and it can run a lot heavier sessions than TDM, but this "Automation too dense" messages are literally show stopping while mixing and soloing. To be clear the 322 voice session has no problem playing back, as long as you don't solo things, but that's not the point.

I've mentioned this bug in some other threads and I'm surprised that no more reactions have been posted in this thread. I can't imagine that nobody else encounters this problem. Or is everybody mixing in film still splitting their sessions to multiple PT systems, so no system goes over 256 voices? (that would make HDX2 and 3 rather useless).

Greetings,

Thierry

[thierryd]

To follow up on this, as this bug is really show stopping at times.

Today I created a fresh session with 500 tracks of audio and started building upon that. It played fine…
I added 10 x 5.0 Altiverbs and automated 500 grouped sends + Master faders + VCA…still ran fine.

I don't know what causes this bug in regular filmmix sessions yet.
Is it more complex routing?
A certain plugin?

All this was in 11.2.1 btw which still has the solo bug.

I would gladly send Avid a session that exhibits the problem, if that helps.

Greetings,

Thierry

[clutch]

You may get a better idea of what's going on by taking a look at the Pro Tools log in your home directory's Library/Logs/Avid/Pro\ Tools/Pro\ Tools.0.log.
Sometimes plugins which cause issues will be listed to give you an idea of where to start.

I guess you've tried the basics such as trashing prefs etc? We run some pretty massive sessions here and I've never seen that particular error before.

Apologies for not giving any actual useful info...

[Frank Kruse]

Just for the record:

After mixing FX on 1xHDX3 and 1xHDX2 for weeks we get this bug every time we unsolo while playing forcing PT to stop playing and the user to OK the message. This happens on both HDX3 (different mac pros but same OS and PT version 11)

Plugins used: Spanner, PhoenixVerb, AVID channel strips, Massey 2007.

Plenty of bussing (mainly 7.1), lots of tracks, lots of voices, lots of clips in the timeline.