Sessions taking a loooong time to load

[DontLetMeDrown]

I'm curious to know if your session loading is taking longer than usual in the newest versions of PT.

I have a 10th Gen intel PC with 128GB of RAM and 3 internal M2 NVME drives. Everything on this PC is ultra fast. On 2022.4 and 2021.12, my sessions have been taking longer than ever to load. The majority of the time, the loading bar says "Restoring tracks". I printed a report from the file menu and found that my heaviest session has 273 plugins, which puts the CPU meter around 35-40% but the LOADING. OMG almost 4 minutes to load this session which is a 5 minute song with just under 100 tracks.

I've removed and cleared all unused clips. Updated ilok plugin manager. If I put all plugins into the unused folder, the session loads in 1 second, so that is my clue that this is definitely plugin related. I've narrowed it down to the plugins in the spreadsheet below. Pro-Q3 and Arouser are my most-used plugins, but if I put them in the unused folder, the session load doesn't speed up at all. Is anyone else experiencing this with any of the plugins on my list? That might help me narrow it down. It takes forever putting 1 plugin in the unused folder and relaunching PT, rinse and repeat. Any help is appreciated. Below is a link to the spreadsheet showing the plugins active in the session. If you've read this far, thank you!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/psqab...yn7qxlvw7at2ha

[Darryl Ramm]

Nice troubleshooting start there. Remember plugins can screw with your system just by being installed in Pro Tools, you don't necessarily need to instantiate (i.e. insert) them.

So just work through adding and removing plugins in groups until you triangulate on one (or more). Do a binary search (put half back, no change, put the other half back, if there is now a change, remove half of those and so on). No need to do a slow linear search.

And I wonder if you have a sample based VI somewhere which might be lost, maybe trying to pre-load samples. (you might also just try unmounting any separate sample drives).

If you can't find it by doing that...

Can more basic info, like a Sandra report.

What is disk cache set to? What does the disk cache meter show as the session starts up.

[SKI]

Yes I woke up one day and the problem started.
The closest thing I have to anything on your list would have been Inflator but mine was the UAD version.


I eventually noticed only certain sessions experienced the problem so I started loading ones that didn't experience the problem over and over.
After that I let the problematic sessions load several times and the load times kept getting shorter and shorter until they started loading normally.


Funny part was mine started when my Support Plan expired and the sessions that had the load issues had HEAT enabled.


I know that didn't really help but watching a session take that long to load was a maddening experience to say the least.


Windows 10, 8th Gen 3 SSD's 32GB PT 2021.12
System is once again snappy

[DontLetMeDrown]

Thank you both. I was planning to continue some testing this morning. I was eager to see if Heat was enabled by accident and when opening the session today LOW AND BEHOLD- the same exact session is opening in less than 10 seconds today with absolutely no changes made. Verified that heat is turned off. Not sure wtf is up with the session loading time changing all of a sudden. Very perplexing, and now that it's currently working, I can't test out the group binary testing the Darryl recommended. I'll have to wait up until the problem pops up again. Very confusing

[Darryl Ramm]

Do you have any antivirus software installed? Disable or uninstall it.

Startup times change if you are connected to the internet or not?

[PMF Media]

Hey, I had a similar problem a while ago that was becoming progressively worse over time, I was finding that sessions were taking longer and longer to open. I narrowed the problem done to Waves Renaissance plugs (I notice you have RBass on your list) I actually ended up getting one of the tech support guys from Waves to remote in to my machine and even then it took him more than an hour to find the issue, unfortunately I can't tell you exactly what he did/removed but it did clear up the problem, I've since moved to a new machine and have done a fresh install of all my Waves bundles and the problem hasn't appeared again, maybe try removing any of the Ren bundle and see how you go, if that turn out to be the issue I'd suggest contacting Waves for a fix.

Hope this helps.

[Sonopolis]

Are you using Waves V13 plug-ins? i had an issue with slow loading of tracks in sessions with these.

There was a Waves server element related to the new presets manager missing. Another indication was a spinning wheel each time I opened the presets menu of any Waves plug-in. Waves support was very helpful and fixed the issue.

[DontLetMeDrown]

Really appreciate everyone's input. Yes, I am using some Waves V13 plugins. I forgot I actually updated some Waves plugins through Waves Central about 2 days ago right after my post here, so maybe that was what got things back to normal? I also did the "Waves Cleanup" in hopes of solving the problem. In hindsight, I have a clear memory of the loading bar stopping for a long time while loading the bass track which had RBass on it. Well maybe this info will help someone else who runs into this problem.

[hoodwinked]

Originally Posted by DontLetMeDrown

Really appreciate everyone's input. Yes, I am using some Waves V13 plugins. I forgot I actually updated some Waves plugins through Waves Central about 2 days ago right after my post here, so maybe that was what got things back to normal? I also did the "Waves Cleanup" in hopes of solving the problem. In hindsight, I have a clear memory of the loading bar stopping for a long time while loading the bass track which had RBass on it. Well maybe this info will help someone else who runs into this problem.

not sure if you got this fixed, but I had a similair issue with Waves plugins. Would take forever to load. Waves told me it was their "Waves Local Server" that was the problem. I followed these instructions and it was gone, not sure if you are on MacOS or not.

1. Open Activity Monitor.

2. Select WavesLocalServer and quit its process.

3. Navigate to:
Mac HD > Library > Application Support > Waves and zip the WavesLocalServer folder. Remove the original folder.

4. Restart your computer. The Waves Local Server won't load this time.
Launch Pro Tools and test if the issue persists.

[SKI]

My sessions never started loading slow again and my Waves plugins (lots of them) are V13 and authorized to a USB device.

I am just glad that once they started loading properly I never saw another issue with my sessions loading slowly.


In the past I have seen Waves cause issues for people with loading but in those cases the delay was in opening PT initially and it would stall on the loading of the Waveshell.

Had never seen Waves slow up loading a session but I can see how that could be a cause of slow loading.