Everyone stop using ARA right now

[trevvahhh]

just chiming in to say this happened to me last week on an ad for a huge brand with on screen talent singing tons of alts, and only at the very last moment luckily found a section where the tuning disappeared and was able to fix.. It said all tracks were corrupted but only a tiny section of one track was pitchy again, and its hard to spot if the performances aren't awful to begin with. stressed me out

ARA is incredible in theory so really hope the bugs get worked out!

[wwittman]

Originally Posted by lesbrunn

+1 for saving unedited tracks and committing. My way around ARA issues is to:

1. Edit very short clips at a time (that way there are no stalls while ARA is saving. I don't even get the ARA saving message.)
2. Render Melodyne edits
3. Commit the rendered clips

Even after doing this I sometimes get those ARA error messages when I open a session, but there's no grief because the edits have been rendered. You can always revisit clips if you need to do more editing, or copy unedited clips for re-editing if you need to.

I admit I’m curious as to what committing does that having rendered melodyne hasn’t already.
Why do both?

[its2loud]

Originally Posted by wwittman

I admit I’m curious as to what committing does that having rendered melodyne hasn’t already.
Why do both?

Absolutely nothing. Committing is redundant to Rendering.

[paul_g]

I decided to give ARA Melodyne a shot tonight and documented my findings in another thread. I learned A LOT! I learned what I was doing wrong and fixed my errors. It's not intuitive, but applying some good old fashion engineering helped me figure stuff out.

Rendering Melodyne wants the full track. So if you have 5 measures of recorded track data before you start playing, then you decide to shorten that track to the first transient; it doesn't like that. Stretch the track back to the beginning where you started recording, then render. You can fix the "dead air" later.

Rendering Melodyne also doesn't like tracks that have multiple edits with cross-fades. Make sure tracks are uptight and cross fades are perfect. Then consolidate your track and then render.

Again, I did a save as version before I started consolidating tracks. Do lots of "Save-As" giving yourself a good fall-back version just in case things go wrong. I had 4 hours of trial and error tonight, so I'm happy I had fall back, and each time I figured something new out.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by paul_g

I decided to give ARA Melodyne a shot tonight and documented my findings in another thread. I learned A LOT! I learned what I was doing wrong and fixed my errors. It's not intuitive, but applying some good old fashion engineering helped me figure stuff out.

Rendering Melodyne wants the full track. So if you have 5 measures of recorded track data before you start playing, then you decide to shorten that track to the first transient; it doesn't like that. Stretch the track back to the beginning where you started recording, then render. You can fix the "dead air" later.

Rendering Melodyne also doesn't like tracks that have multiple edits with cross-fades. Make sure tracks are uptight and cross fades are perfect. Then consolidate your track and then render.

Again, I did a save as version before I started consolidating tracks. Do lots of "Save-As" giving yourself a good fall-back version just in case things go wrong. I had 4 hours of trial and error tonight, so I'm happy I had fall back, and each time I figured something new out.

Interesting. I much prefer working with audio in PT to Cubase, and this list sounds like everything wrong with Cubase when it comes to working with RX Connect - file management goes haywire. Ironically when it comes to Cubase's own VariAudio, that's solid as a rock (and infinitely easier to use than Melodyne in my experience, but that's another topic).

Because of all the problems I see reported on the DUC, I never use ARA Melodyne. When I need to use Melodyne (not often) I use the old fashioned way, and that's been totally reliable for me - no need to commit, change edits etc. The last thing I want to do is turn PT into the worst aspects of Cubase - no amount of convenience saved with ARA is worth this list of caveats and workarounds.

The thread title might seem hyperbolic, but imo it's justified. Until it works as reliably as the rest of PT (no sniggering at the back - it really is more solid than Cubase), avoid ARA. In the meantime, it's worth passing on this list to support in the hope that they start to track down the plethora of bugs.

[Vadym]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

This was literally fine at 11.30pm last night. And now it isn't. And LITERALLY the only thing that's changed between then and now is I managed to get some sleep.

So sick of this.

Hi midnightrambler! Sorry to hear you get into this situation.
1. Do ARA edits disappear in the session in fact after this error?
2. Have you tried to use the backup session to recover? Does it help to recover ARA edits?
3. Was any Import Session Data made into the current session multiple times or from the other session with ARA edits (with the common source files)?

[[email protected]]

i've been complaining about this since it first came out. serious issues with melodyne in ara, and it's frustrating when avid keeps saying they can't reproduce it. Clearly enough people are having this problem that it's a legitimate issue. Not only is the loss of ara files a huge problem, but the save time when you're using auto save is insanely slow and totally interrupts the work flow.

[Rich Breen]

Originally Posted by marianna

...
Want to fix this stuff but need to reproduce it to do so.
Marianna

Hi Marianna - The problem is there's nothing to report other than the error message "Some melodyne track data can't be found"; how can we have a clue when a session which otherwise works perfectly on a system that otherwise works perfectly, out of the blue throws this scary error, and the session is otherwise fully functional? Sorry to be vague, but this error message is vague. What we need is information to help us: Where/How is ARA storing its data in the session? In my case the session was not corrupt in any other way - just this error message. Under what conditions does it refresh/re-save ARA data? When it saves it is it saving all ARA data for all clips? Just clips that have changed? Is there something different to ARA data about closing a session vs automatic updating of ARA data during the time a session's open?

I've only seen this error once in a few months of using the new workflow, but once is enough! Working with an important client present, spend half a day editing vocals with ARA, put the session away and work on some other sessions, no crashes, all is fine, then come back to it at the end of the day for a few additional tweaks and it throws the "Some melodyne track data can't be found". To client: "ummm, sorry - I guess we're gonna have to go through this entire track again to be certain we're not missing something..." UGH! That happens more than once and you've lost a client.

As support so often says to us, we need more information to help figure this out - help us help you help us!

thx!
rich

[marianna]

Originally Posted by paul_g

I decided to give ARA Melodyne a shot tonight and documented my findings in another thread. I learned A LOT! I learned what I was doing wrong and fixed my errors. It's not intuitive, but applying some good old fashion engineering helped me figure stuff out.

Rendering Melodyne wants the full track. So if you have 5 measures of recorded track data before you start playing, then you decide to shorten that track to the first transient; it doesn't like that. Stretch the track back to the beginning where you started recording, then render. You can fix the "dead air" later.

Rendering Melodyne also doesn't like tracks that have multiple edits with cross-fades. Make sure tracks are uptight and cross fades are perfect. Then consolidate your track and then render.

Again, I did a save as version before I started consolidating tracks. Do lots of "Save-As" giving yourself a good fall-back version just in case things go wrong. I had 4 hours of trial and error tonight, so I'm happy I had fall back, and each time I figured something new out.

Paul_g

Good stuff of which I am passing along and adding to what has already been posted.....

Thanks
Marianna

[Dizzi45Z]

Originally Posted by lesbrunn

All the more reason why I keep the original tracks. That way, I can easily recall and re-edit short clips that need revisiting. About PT crashing before you commit, you can go back to a previously auto-saved session, and the Melodyne data should be intact if the clips haven't been deleted. Agreed, these workarounds can be tedious, but ARA is really cool if you take the necessary precautions. At least for now, until Avid/Celemony fix these issues.

I also keep the original tracks in the playlist. But almost always, after I carefully Melodyne a track, I'm going to hear spots here and there that just need a little more smoothing out. So having the ability to continue to edit further without having to start over on a piece is ideal.

But I get what you are saying that committing as soon as you can is a good thing. Unfortunately, with the current version of ARA, this requires committing much earlier than I would hope for. Like others, I will likely move back to using the plugin version of Melodyne.

Regarding going back to Auto-save versions, I tried that and even after going back to auto-save versions older than 45 minutes, it still wouldn't open. It was like the version I had been working on would save, but realistically would never open because something with ARA has become corrupted.

It took me over 2.5 hours of importing session data a few tracks at a time and then rendering whatever Melodyne I could before I could finally restore my session completely. After rendering all Melodyne clips, I went into the clips bin and erased all clips that had any Melodyne on them until my project was ARA free.