Long startup and session load times

[Thenewexhibit]

I'm running Pro Tools 2023.12.1 on Mac Monterey 12.7.3 from a bootable Samsung T7 and am experiencing long startup times with Pro Tools and then long session load times as well; perhaps several minutes for a session to load. The sessions aren't particularly larger or with more plugins than anything I've done before. After a session loads, it appears that if I close the session and reopen, it tends to open faster after that. Also, Pro Tools, after quitting and restarting, tends to load faster after that as well.

Anyone else experiencing this?

[ZEUSS]

Yes! Monterey here on 2 machines. Protools will bounce in the dock for a while and then finally start to load with the splash screen. Session load times are also slower than normal......

[ZEUSS]

This is still an issue here on 2 machines. Pro Tools will bounce in the dock for a long period of time and sometimes it won't even go to the splash screen and load plugins etc. I have even reinstalled after completely wiping prefs, checking all installed plugins etc.... It started with 2023.12 here. newest release is not any better.....

Sessions are also taking a long time to load...

[Thenewexhibit]

Originally Posted by ZEUSS

This is still an issue here on 2 machines. Pro Tools will bounce in the dock for a long period of time and sometimes it won't even go to the splash screen and load plugins etc. I have even reinstalled after completely wiping prefs, checking all installed plugins etc.... It started with 2023.12 here. newest release is not any better.....

Sessions are also taking a long time to load...

Essentially the same here. It's random for me. Yesterday, I was working a long time; I even took breaks and the monitor shuts off, and then return to working etc. When I finished working, I saved the session and closed Pro Tools, and before trying to quit Pro Tools, I closed the finder in Mac, and then quit Pro Tools, and it actually closed, so I'll test again like that to see if that helps.

Other than that, load times for the first session take so, so long; probably like 4 minutes maybe on a mix, but this mix is no different than any other mix I've done before; probably less processing in some regards.After I load that session and close it, coming back to it without quitting Pro Tools seems to be a little faster, but the initial loading of the session for the first time can take minutes; 3-4 maybe.
I wonder if it has anything to do with Disk Cache as well. I just increased it yesterday from "Normal" to 3GB, so I'll see if that makes a difference.

[Thenewexhibit]

On another note, I tried the same thing yesterday; closing finder before quitting Pro Tools, and it didn't work. I had to force quit Pro Tools again.

Sometimes, I try to eject my external working drive, and even though Pro Tools has been quit, it will say the drive is still in use. I then have to force quit Finder, and then I can eject the drive, so not sure what is going on.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Thenewexhibit

Essentially the same here. It's random for me. Yesterday, I was working a long time; I even took breaks and the monitor shuts off, and then return to working etc. When I finished working, I saved the session and closed Pro Tools, and before trying to quit Pro Tools, I closed the finder in Mac, and then quit Pro Tools, and it actually closed, so I'll test again like that to see if that helps.

Other than that, load times for the first session take so, so long; probably like 4 minutes maybe on a mix, but this mix is no different than any other mix I've done before; probably less processing in some regards.After I load that session and close it, coming back to it without quitting Pro Tools seems to be a little faster, but the initial loading of the session for the first time can take minutes; 3-4 maybe.
I wonder if it has anything to do with Disk Cache as well. I just increased it yesterday from "Normal" to 3GB, so I'll see if that makes a difference.

So lot of stuff being mentioned here. But to make progress you need to drill into what is happening and troubleshooting things.

If Pro Tools is bouncing in the dock it is likely due to macOS having problems reaching its app signing revocation servers at ocsp.apple.com. Most typically caused by faulty network setups. Try to find this problems and fix them. I and others have written about that many times on DUC. And you won't see this always consistently as macOS likely does not check the app signing on every launch. The problem typically occurs when networks have false default routes to the internet yet are not actually connected to the internet. If stuff is bounding in the dock, one simple test is to completely disable/physically disconnect from *every* network, including WiFi. (netstat -r should also show no external routes when you do this, but OK it mentions localhost/lo0).

If Pro Tools is taking too long loading plugins then has the plugin cache been built? Do you see errors on the splash screen or in the Pro Tools log? Do all the plugins load? Do you see some plugins loading slower than others/than typical? If you trash the plugin cache do plugins load noticeably slower or not? If not then something is wrong with the caching. Pay attention to the new plugin cache in 2023.12 and later and make sure you manually trash those files, PT Prefs 2 is not yet updated to do this. There are clearly folks seeing problems with this new, cough, "improved" plugin caching stuff so focus there, including looking for problematic plugins that break with this new stuff. You can always start by moving all plugins out of the plugin folder, trashing prefs, including the proper plugin cache files, and doing some startup time tests.

Slow sessions startup times can be caused by lots of things, some of the more bizzare cases are caused by bloated session files caused by some plugins writing huge amounts of data into the session file. So always check the actual size of the session file. Some other startup times are caused by plugins being out to lunch. So just trying standard troubleshooting and removing plugins should be done. Sometimes it may be a corrupt session, try doing a save session copy in.

How actually large are the sessions? How large is the Pro Tools disk cache? Does the disk cache seem to load OK? (watch it in the cache meter).

If drives are not being ejected because something is in use there are technical ways to look at that, e.g. with lsof. Solve one problem at a time, but you actually need to do the work to drill into what is going on.