Pro Tools Crashes When Relinking Files

[helpihelp]

Hi

I was working on a project located on my mac with no external HD involved. I then moved this folder with all it's contents onto my SSD. When I tried opening the same project from my SSD, I received the relink message. Initially I clicked on automatically relink but after constant crashes I attempted manual relink.

What I then realised after multiple attempts is that there is one specific folder that causes the project to crash whenever I open it from workspace in order to relink it's contents.

So I tried copying the contents of this folder elsewhere and tried to relink again but got the same results. I've also tried replacing the main folder where it used to be on my mac and opening from there. Crash.

My conclusion so far is that the unique ID protools stamps it's files with became corrupt when I relocated the main project folder (but just for a few files) I just want to know if there's a way I can relink these problematic files. I can't even import these files onto a new project. The files themselves cause Pro Tools to crash.

And I've also "Saved Copy As" to a folder outside the main folder and still get the same results.

I've deleted prefs too.

A bit more context, the problematic files are from an ADR session recorded outside the main .ptx which contains my final mix but everything exists within the main folder with all the contents of the project / main session. This is a short film project which began as an OMF.

Pro Tools 2018.12
MacBook Pro 13inch Early2015
2.7GHZ Intel Core i5
8G RAM
OS Mojave 10.14.6

[Darryl Ramm]

Welcome to DUC.

To start with 2018.12 is not officially supported on Mojave. So you are taking a risk there. https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...tibility-Chart. 8GB RAM is also often considered a minimum to run modern Pro Tools, later versions state the minimum as 16GB.

I'm pretty sure there have been at least one bug fix for relinking crashes in more recent versions of Pro Tools. But who knows if that's related to what you are seeing.

Pro Tools crashes exactly how? With what exact error? What do you see in the screen? What is in a Pro Tools log file when it crashes? ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools*.txt ... (but I can't remember when Avid switched back to text based log files and 2018.x was a while ago, but see what is in that log folder.).

Good job on trashing prefs.

What filesystem is on this external SSD? What make and model is the SSD?

What filesystem is on the internal mac drive?

Pro Tools works reliably on HFS+ and APFS filesystems.You should not be running on anything else. Make sure it's not ExFAT which is how many external drives come formatted.

You have to be careful with exact characters allowed in file paths, especially if you are moving between file systems types/copying files around.

What are the exact paths of the session folder and the specific folder that is giving you problems you are trying to import from. Include the full folder name and path. Copy and past that carefully here.

If it's not the filesystems then it may be an otherwise corrupted session. It is not timestamps or any magic on the the actual audio files... there are really no such things that will cause what you are seeing.

If you have any content from the ADR outside the session folder can you at least import say one of the audio files into the session, always use copy on import. Just try something super simple. If not that can you open a completely new empty session and import any of that ADR audio into that session, just as a test, from the same folder that was causing you problems before... what if you move the folder to say your home directory and try with it there.

You do have to be careful with UNIX file access permissions.

[albee1952]

Another option to think about; Copy the session folder back to where it was when it ran good and try to open that(I say Copy instead of Move to avoid any more file confusion). If it does open, count yourself lucky and then do a Save Copy In, (check the box to include audio files) and save this copy to the drive that you want it moved to. I have had similar happen here if I simply drag the session folder to another drive. But using the Save Copy method seems to always result in a working version in the new location/drive