Manual Reconform nightmare

[garnoil]

I had to do a manual re-comform, there was no EDL available, and I had to reconform a complete *prior to any stem creation* session. So I was re-conforming about 110 audio tracks, very crazy but...not so crazy (or I thought) if I could make one large *region group* that would contain the entire session? Not a bad idea as I could then move the entire "mega group- or segments of it- and then simply ungroup and have all the regions inside available for individual editing. Well, it kind of work but, Pro-Tools simply can not move that many region files (all wrapped inside a very large region group). It crashed at least 30 times in two days. I could only move one segment of the region or I should say make a a maximum of three or four edits before the entire screen would go crazy and PT would either hang beachball for ever) or crash. In an effort to complete the re-conform, I tried everything to lower the load of PT. I deleted all unused regions, remove any extra video files, I made all track (except the dialogue tracks) inactive, I switched the display to "blocks" rather than waveforms, I reduced the "un-do buffer" to 2, I closed all floating windows that were not absolutely necessary, made all RTAS inactive, and changed the buffer size. All this to no avail, it did not improve the computer response at all. I did get the re-conform fully done, but it was 2 days of "make a couple of edits/moves" and the computer would crash requiring a cold re-boot (15 minutes wait every time) and do it again, and again, and again.

I am wondering if there is anything that can be done so that these types of tasks (like major manual re-conforms) which are becoming more and more frequent, can be handled better by PT. I agree and understand that this type of recon, is a major computer intensive task, but considering that many large Hollywood features go through several intensive re-conforms (with many more tracks than what I have as they may have several HD3 systems in sync), may be there is a better way *for a manual re-conform rather than using specialized re-con software requiring EDLs*. Would more ram help?


HD2 accel, Mac 8 core 2,26, Leopard, PT 803, 5 gigs RAM, firewire 800 (video and audio separate drives).

[garnoil]

Sorry digi, can you please move my post to the Post and Surround forum? I really should be more careful where I post but may be after the two days of manual re-conform I am just no longer functioning

Thanks

[Sean Russell]

Been there, done that. It sucks. Did the same thing - region group and edit. Ended up in 8.0 cs3 and was able to pull most of the edits together with only 3-4 crashes a day from the region group losing the stability. That was about three months ago. I feel for you.

[scottgreiner]

I know it's not quite as "nice to look at", but I wonder if a regular old track/edit group might be easier for the computer to handle than a region group (although in theory, it seems like the same thing).

Just curious what the circumstances were that made you have to perform a manual reconform? It is always a bummer...