"Spotlight" with both PT 10 & 11 installed

[RokVox]

Hi AVID,

I see in the article "Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Optimizations and Troubleshooting" that it is now recommended to NOT disable "Spotlight" indexing on Pro Tools HD's.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e.../Optimize-10-8

And with Pro Tools 10, it is recommended TO disable "Spotlight" indexing on Pro Tools HD's.

The problem for me is I have both PT 10 & 11 installed. So what's the best way to go about this?


*See Profile for System Specs*

Many thanks!

[Chief Technician]

Err on the side of caution and disable Spotlight indexing.

I am going to ask a super-moderator to look at that document. I interpret it as v10.3.7 not requiring Spotlight to be disabled.

[RokVox]

Thanks Chief!

As of now... Drives are disabled.

"I interpret it as v10.3.7 not requiring Spotlight to be disabled."

Yeah... That's what I'm getting from this too.

I'll wait to hear back from ya before moving 4ward on this one...

[Top Jimmy]

Pro Tools never required Spotlight indexing to be disabled. It was merely suggested because the indexing process could rob processing power and cause a PT session that was working OK one moment to not work OK the next due to less CPU availability at that given moment.

Pro Tools 11 now uses the Spotlight index for the Workspace browser, that is why it is suggested to not turn it off for 11. The new efficiencies in 11 combined with the increase in CPU power in recent machines should prove Spotlight indexing is no longer a possible PT irritant.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

Pro Tools never required Spotlight indexing to be disabled. It was merely suggested because the indexing process could rob processing power and cause a PT session that was working OK one moment to not work OK the next due to less CPU availability at that given moment.

Pro Tools 11 now uses the Spotlight index for the Workspace browser, that is why it is suggested to not turn it off for 11. The new efficiencies in 11 combined with the increase in CPU power in recent machines should prove Spotlight indexing is no longer a possible PT irritant.

Its not so much that spotlight indexing consuming CPU power, it is more that it generated IO on the drive you are trying to record to, that's why the recommendation was for the audio/session drive only. (Although sometimes it helped to turn it off on other drives like a VI sample drive).

Recent releases of OS X also seems to have significantly changed how spotlight indexes are generated , the last few major OS X releases generate a lot lower IO demand on the drive, they seem to back off and slow down if other things are going on. Maybe too much so--indexing a drive can sometimes take an excruciating long time even on an SSD. That reduction in the IO load/apparent more aggressive rate limiting in recent versions of OS X may also be a reason why indexing is now seen to be OK to leave enabled.

Personally if I was seeing IO related problems on a system then I would still reach for disabling indexing to see if that fixes things. It may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back on an overloaded/under-configured system.

Darryl

[KennaOkoye]

Anytime I try to import a drum file through "Import Audio" Pro tools won't find it, even though I can see it… Please help. Does this have to do with indexing? I can find it by doing a search with my finder. why not with Pro Tools

[nigelpry]

I keep an OSX 'Stickies' on the desktop at home that reminds me to enable/disable Spotlight as I switch between PT 10 (3.9) and 11 (2.1).

The PT10.3.9. read me here …

http://akmedia.digidesign.com/suppor..._Mac_81770.pdf

Still says this …

Spotlight indexing can interfere with long record passes (97151)
There are known incompatibilities with Spotlight indexing drives while recording audio. If you will be recording to a large number of tracks for over an hour, set all of your drives to private in the Mac OS X System Preferences to ensure maximum performance. Failure to do this may result in Pro Tools reporting an error and ending the record pass when Spotlight indexes the drives.

[oortone]

Originally Posted by nigelpry

I keep an OSX 'Stickies' on the desktop at home that reminds me to enable/disable Spotlight as I switch between PT 10 (3.9) and 11 (2.1).

The PT10.3.9. read me here …

http://akmedia.digidesign.com/suppor..._Mac_81770.pdf

Still says this …

Spotlight indexing can interfere with long record passes (97151)
There are known incompatibilities with Spotlight indexing drives while recording audio. If you will be recording to a large number of tracks for over an hour, set all of your drives to private in the Mac OS X System Preferences to ensure maximum performance. Failure to do this may result in Pro Tools reporting an error and ending the record pass when Spotlight indexes the drives.

So this is only true for ProTools 10 (and older machines)?
Can I have Spotlight turned on when running ProTools12 Ultimate (Intel machine) even if I sometimes record hour-long concerts with possibly 30+ channels?