PT7 HD3 - Delay before Playback Starts - after session open for a few hours

[warrickmarais]

Hardware MAC G5 / 4Gig RAM / Tiger 10.4.11
Protools HD 7.3.1 (cs7 update)
Magna Chassis
HD 3 System
GT103 - External firewire drive. (Session resides on the firewire drive!)

Running a standard radio session with no video, only about 15 Tracks.

After working in the session for a couple of hours with everything running smoothly, suddenly there is a delay before protools begins to play. Workflow is drastically cut down because now I have to wait every-time I press play.

Closed the session down , and reopened with no resolution.
I did notice that the session does take I while to load, (About 10 seconds) , but it is not a complicated session.

This machine has been completely reinstalled , with a new fast Seagate internal OS Drive, in an effort to resolve the issue.

Any ideas would help, I have run out of things to try.

Regards

Warrick

[PhilBuckle]

Don't know if it's related but today I noticed that with 4 stereo tracks in record mode and on input that I was getting the 2 second lag before play would start. When they were not record armed then all was normal.
I haven't noticed this behavior before.

[1m1]

Check to see if the two bar countoff is enabled, that could cause this issue.

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by 1m1

Check to see if the two bar countoff is enabled, that could cause this issue.

Yes, open the transport window and check the countoff and the pre roll. its possible to accidently hit a qwerty key and engage one of these.

If not then sound like a hard drive access issue. make sure you unmount all drives that are not used or slow USB drives, anything thats connected ipods etc.

Chris

[emilano]

I have this problem on one of my machines and i'm actively trying to figure it out... For me it was not trashing prefs, or setting the system sound to built in rather than core audio (which digi says was causing problems). It also doesn't seem to be any of the playback engine or cache settings.

mine is HD3 7.4.2 on a new quad core 10.5.4 system so it could be a different problem from yours all together.

Its about 3-4 seconds after hitting play until it starts to roll, and a second or two upon hitting stop.

[bmuth]

I experienced the same delays in both entering playback and record. It only occured when rolling from a dead stop.

After trying every combination of buffers and drives, I went to the preferences and switched "open ended record allocation" from "use all available space" to a reasonable time limit (I use 15min) and the delays disappeared.

I'm guessing it's taking the time to allocate the entire rest of your (probably huge) hard drive for recording, causing the delay.

try switching that pref around and let me know what happens!

-Brian

[warrickmarais]

Originally Posted by bmuth

I experienced the same delays in both entering playback and record. It only occured when rolling from a dead stop.

After trying every combination of buffers and drives, I went to the preferences and switched "open ended record allocation" from "use all available space" to a reasonable time limit (I use 15min) and the delays disappeared.

I'm guessing it's taking the time to allocate the entire rest of your (probably huge) hard drive for recording, causing the delay.

try switching that pref around and let me know what happens!

-Brian

Hi Brian

Thanks , I will let you know if it makes any difference.

Regards

Warrick

[s.d. finley]

Originally Posted by crizdee

Yes, open the transport window and check the countoff and the pre roll. its possible to accidently hit a qwerty key and engage one of these.
Chris

I do this all the time...... I bring up the transport and just clear it.

[emilano]

Mine turned out not to be the record allocation, but was just plain dumb. We had done a digibeta layback and had the transport = protools button on the transport set to "machine" checked off under the online menu. This is not the same as pressing the online button (leftmost button on transport). There is no visual indicator that this was active, but as soon as I unchecked it, playback returned to normal. Nice! Hope that helps someone else as well.