Live show Recording ProTools Nightmare

[mwingerski]

I was recording a band tonight at live show on 26 mono tracks.
I use a magma chassis with 96io and a powerbook g4 1.5 ghz... lacie d2 FW800 drive all of which i have used and tested hundreds of times.
SO tonight I'm recording a show and the system works perfectly fine for the two opening acts...

When it comes time to record the headliner, after about 10 minutes of recording i watched all the meters freeze and the spinning beach ball came on the screen.

Opened activity monitor and saw no disc activity so i had to reboot the machine.

Came back online (missed a song while it was doing so... thank goodness for non-digidesign backup systems...)
and started recording again... seemed fine for about 6 minutes and then pro tools simply stopped recording and gave an error that said "too much automation data being written (error -36). Try thinning some automation data"

So i went to automation enable and turned all the automation off... started recording again.

A few minutes later, same problem
So i turned off automation on all the tracks themselves (even though I'm recording and theoretically there is no automation being written. Still got the same error FIVE TIMES through out the couse of the set.

I've searched a bit and can't find anything in the DUC about this sort of thing. Does anybody have any suggestions of why this would happen when the system was functioning perfectly well beforehand.
Plenty of drive space by the way...
160 gb drive and there were at least 50 GB of free space when the recording started.
recording at 24 bit 48k

[sirpucho]

Hi you only have 31% of a drive left they get less and less efficient as you fill them up. I would not myself do a live recording multiple tracks and potentially long sets to such a full drive. I don't find Lacies reliable either.

This may not be your problem anyway but my personal advice is you are pushing it drive wise regardless of any othe issues.

You aren't mixing 400/800 are you ?

Hope this helps even though not directly your problem

[sirpucho]

Hi you only have 31% of a drive left they get less and less efficient as you fill them up. I would not myself do a live recording multiple tracks and potentially long sets to such a full drive. I don't find Lacies reliable either.

This may not be your problem anyway but my personal advice is you are pushing it drive wise regardless of any othe issues.

You aren't mixing 400/800 are you ?

Hope this helps even though not directly your problem

[Andi R]

how big was your drive?
I too think the drive got too full.
Only fill the drives up to 50 %; use multiple drives if neccesary!
I do live Recs with PT regularly, and never had a problem, but I NEVER record more than 16 Tracks to one 250 GB drive.

[JFreak]

I NEVER record more than 16 Tracks to one 250 GB drive.

The capacity has little to do with how many tracks can be recorded at once; however, I ALWAYS record to an empty drive and let the capacity be a deciding factor on how long I can safely record on single pass. I too agree that hard drives shouldn't be used to their full capacity, especially on a live situation which doesn't forgive any mistakes.

A regular 7200rpm hard drive can easily take 32 tracks, and a faster 10krpm even more. Just start with empty drive so the system can optimize the writing process. It will also help if you can limit the recording time to for example 90 minutes or so (one file fits into one cd or six files into one dvd, or however you wish to backup), which means that files that can hold the whole 90 minutes will be allocated from the disk before anything gets streamed into the files.

Yep. Empty drive is your friend when you record live gigs.

[Andi R]

The capacity has little to do with how many tracks can be recorded at once; however, I ALWAYS record to an empty drive and let the capacity be a deciding factor on how long I can safely record on single pass. I too agree that hard drives shouldn't be used to their full capacity, especially on a live situation which doesn't forgive any mistakes.

A regular 7200rpm hard drive can easily take 32 tracks, and a faster 10krpm even more. Just start with empty drive so the system can optimize the writing process. It will also help if you can limit the recording time to for example 90 minutes or so (one file fits into one cd or six files into one dvd, or however you wish to backup), which means that files that can hold the whole 90 minutes will be allocated from the disk before anything gets streamed into the files.

Yep. Empty drive is your friend when you record live gigs.

well, yeah, that´s exactly my point, but I also think that wee agree that you can record longer to a 500 GB disk than you could with a 80 GB one?
so the capacity has something to do with it...
and I always leave at least 30 % of the disk free, and always start with a fresh formatted drive. This is crucial in my opinion!
Shure can todays disk handle lots of tracks, in fact mine can handle 130 tracks easily, but I´d NEVER EVER do it in a live situation! (and also not in the studio, by the way, I just tested that one day.)

this doesn´t help you for this time, but maybe hopefully for your next live gig... remember: you only have one shot!

peace,

Andi

[25ghosts]

i second that....16 tracks per 800 firewire seem to work very reliable!

you might wanna take the time and closely read the compato list....in there are many info 'bout firewire and track counts. Also if u b using firewire800 there are certain rules to it like: the drive has to use the Oxord 912(dont hang me up on the name dont remember quite) chip and I think there was something bout mixing fire 400 and 800 on one bus etc....

also it might help to regularly defrag your disk if it is being used alot

[RobMacki]

Sorry to hear about your nightmare.
What was your Record Allocation set to?

[hintza]

"too much automation data being written. Try thinning some automation data"

So if the drive is too full, why this error? I've done sessions, tests and recording with 24+ tracks to a much more than 50% full drive without any problems - AND at higher sample rates. We all know that the digi compato guides are BS - of course you can run more than 24 tracks off one firewire drive, and of course you can record more than 24 tracks TO a firewire drive. I've never had an issue with drives with other sessions on it, or a lack of space (until I run out of space) - I think that it's an easy excuse to say that a $30,000 system can't record 24 tracks of audio to a firewire drive because it ONLY had 100gbs..... come on!

I think that it's an issue with PT 7 - but only the magical digi people can answer that...

[Andi R]

So if the drive is too full, why this error? I've done sessions, tests and recording with 24+ tracks to a much more than 50% full drive without any problems - AND at higher sample rates. We all know that the digi compato guides are BS - of course you can run more than 24 tracks off one firewire drive, and of course you can record more than 24 tracks TO a firewire drive. I've never had an issue with drives with other sessions on it, or a lack of space (until I run out of space) - I think that it's an easy excuse to say that a $30,000 system can't record 24 tracks of audio to a firewire drive because it ONLY had 100gbs..... come on!

I think that it's an issue with PT 7 - but only the magical digi people can answer that...

well, yes and no.
PT needs space on the disk to allocate to.
it simply doesn´t work with full disks, and PT is not the only system that doesnt.
the compatoy are not total BS, the have their eligibility, but their are very "pessimistic"; but if you do as they say, you won´t have a problem.