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  #1  
Old 11-10-2022, 12:22 AM
l.r l.r is offline
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Default recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

Hi everyone,

I'm new here and I'm having a rather spicy issue with Pro Tools.
I'm currently doing lots of remote voice recording sessions. This in itself works like a charm and occasionally I'd have to playback certain passages. This being said I know for sure that my system "works" - I record the audio, I see a waveform, I can play it back and hear that it was recorded properly - what else could you wish for...

Now for some reason the day after the last session when I opened up Pro Tools I couldn't hear these very recorded clips anymore. After a little while of trying around I realized that when zooming way into the waveform it shows an empty file. When zooming out again it shows the very same waveform I had while recording. Also the recorded files in my audio files folder are now just clips of silence (remember I played those files back just the day before - this is without any doubt).

I'm losing my mind over this, just can't get my hear around this one. Anybody experienced this before?

Now normally this wouldn't be that much of an issue as I'm having my voice actors and actresses record as a backup in their DAW as well, but OF COURSE just now the backup recording of one of the voices was corrupted, leaving me with absolutely no usable audio at all...

I would be very glad if somebody could shine a light on this one...

Btw I'm working on Pro Tools Ultimate 2021.12.0 on an 2019 iMac with MacOs 10.15.7 and the remote tool I'm using is session link pro.

Best, Till
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  #2  
Old 11-10-2022, 04:18 AM
Sardi Sardi is online now
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Default recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

So the audio files play silent outside of Pro Tools as well? So silent when played back with Preview in Finder?

What format are these files? Do the audio files seem like they are the correct size?

What happens if you duplicate the files in Finder and then play them? I had a weird issue recently where a regular 24bit file created in PT wouldn’t open in Izotope RX but converting it to 32bit float allowed it to work as expected.


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Last edited by Sardi; 11-10-2022 at 04:41 PM.
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  #3  
Old 11-10-2022, 09:28 AM
smurfyou smurfyou is offline
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Default Re: recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

Definitely check them outside of Pro Tools, do not rely on the waveform. It's possible to get a corrupted WAV file but usually only with a crash or loss of power while recording. I've never heard of a file being written over with silence without user error (like an Audiosuite process set to original file).
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  #4  
Old 11-11-2022, 08:37 AM
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albee1952 albee1952 is offline
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Default Re: recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

Maybe post a screen capture of a track that shows a waveform but makes no sound? Here are some things to consider:
1-an inactive waveform will show, but in light grey and will make no sound. Usually, this would be an inactive track, so try right-click on the track name and see if Make Active is an option.
2-a muted waveform will act the same as #1. With the waveform highlighted, hit Ctrl+M to unmute(maybe you accidentally hit that key combo?)
3-check the track output.
4-was there any other drive(even a USB stick) connected during the recording that is now not connected?
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  #5  
Old 12-05-2022, 12:37 AM
l.r l.r is offline
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Default Re: recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sardi View Post
So the audio files play silent outside of Pro Tools as well? So silent when played back with Preview in Finder?

What format are these files? Do the audio files seem like they are the correct size?

What happens if you duplicate the files in Finder and then play them? I had a weird issue recently where a regular 24bit file created in PT wouldn’t open in Izotope RX but converting it to 32bit float allowed it to work as expected.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The source files (that are recorded to the project audio files folder) are silent in Finder as well yes. The clips are in .wav format and a 4 second audio clip would be 0,5MB which looks fine to me.
The issue now got even more mysterious... To have backups of the recorded clips I exported those right after recording (with "export clips as files"). I could listen to those in Finder and now even those are silent!!

Duplicating doesn't change anything, still silent.
Would you then convert it to32bit with another software because as mentioned the clips in my PT session are silent and exporting them in another format doesn't work either....
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  #6  
Old 12-05-2022, 12:41 AM
l.r l.r is offline
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Default Re: recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

Quote:
Originally Posted by smurfyou View Post
Definitely check them outside of Pro Tools, do not rely on the waveform. It's possible to get a corrupted WAV file but usually only with a crash or loss of power while recording. I've never heard of a file being written over with silence without user error (like an Audiosuite process set to original file).
Unfortunately also the recorded source files in my project audio files folder are empty now...
And the whole thing got even more mysterious. As a backup I started directly exporting all my recorded clips during session - so right after recording I used "export clips as files" and had them safely in my finder. The played back just fine the other day and now those are silent too... all of a sudden...
I'm getting all dizzy over this. It just makes no sence to me...
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  #7  
Old 12-05-2022, 12:49 AM
l.r l.r is offline
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Default Re: recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

Quote:
Originally Posted by albee1952 View Post
Maybe post a screen capture of a track that shows a waveform but makes no sound? Here are some things to consider:
1-an inactive waveform will show, but in light grey and will make no sound. Usually, this would be an inactive track, so try right-click on the track name and see if Make Active is an option.
2-a muted waveform will act the same as #1. With the waveform highlighted, hit Ctrl+M to unmute(maybe you accidentally hit that key combo?)
3-check the track output.
4-was there any other drive(even a USB stick) connected during the recording that is now not connected?
Unfortunately all those suggestions are not the case. I'm trying to send a screen capture but I'm not very familiar with this forum and couldn't find a video attach option here so I'll just send a wetransfer here:
https://we.tl/t-r7WYHzsXPU
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  #8  
Old 12-05-2022, 01:46 AM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is online now
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Default Re: recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

To be clear you are recording everything to sessions not cloud projects? And you are not poking around in the cloud project cache?

The sessions get recorded to what drive/filesystem type and what folder... is that folder within a cloud folder, like iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox etc? Is your desktop shared through iCloud?

What are the macOS/UNIX creation and modification dates/times in the audio file, do they agree with your recollection of when they were recorded? e.g. run ls -lt in Terminal to list/sort by modification times ,or ls -ltU to list/sort by creation times. Or is that time when you were doing something else. Do you gave any backup software/scripts that ran at those times?

Are any backups that you made usable?

It is so easy to make a mistake and save copies of sessions so that multiple sessions end up sharing the same audio file folder in some other session folder. Can you look through all your recent sessions and make sure they all have content where expected (hopefully within their own session folder hierarchy).

It seems unlikely that Session Link Pro could/would cause this? So can you reproduce this just playing with local test sessions?

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 12-05-2022 at 08:02 AM.
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  #9  
Old 12-05-2022, 07:50 AM
Rich Breen Rich Breen is offline
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Default Re: recorded audio files are completely empty after restart of session

There's lots of possibilities, but as Darryl hinted, I suspect you're recording to an internal drive and have "Desktop and Documents Folders" checked in your System Preferences -> Internet Accounts -> (your iCloud account). If not that, then some type of cloud-based folder.
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