Sudden weird Slip Mode editing anomaly in PT 2021.6.0

[innerbooty]

Greetings,
I have a fairly large audiobook Pro Tools session I've been working on for a couple of months now. Lots of MX and FX cues, sound design. All has been normal until today. This morning I opened up the session, went to the Edit window in Slip Mode, put the cursor on the narration track and pressed Option-Shift-Enter to select the entire narration track from that point to the end of the session. When I dragged that selection to the left to move it forward a teeny bit, it jumped to left as if it was in Grid Mode. It insists on shifting it by exactly 1 sec. I cannot do a freeform Slip Mode shift. If I drag a chunk of audio without selecting all the way to the end of the session, it works as expected. Even if I disable the Grid resolution window, or change the resolution to Samples and make it 1 Sample, as long as the selection includes through to the end of the Session, it still insists on moving the audio by 1 sec increments. If I do that move, and try to move it again, it moves it another second earlier. However, if I try to move it one more time, it lets me move it in proper Slip Mode. This happens on any track in the Session, as long as I am selecting through to the end of the session.

I do this "Select to the End of the Session" then Move in Slip Mode procedure a zillion times today, so this is super frustrating. Any tips would be appreciated!

BTW - this does not happen in other PT sessions I have opened this morning, only this one.

BTW 2 - When I bring back up a Recovered backup copy of the session from when I last worked on it a week ago, the Slip Mode / Select To The End of Session / Move Clip, works exactly as it should. But it seems that as soon as I do a Save As, to create a new working copy of the Session, this weird bug kicks in, and it insists on by shifting in 1 second increments. So weird. And annoying...

[Sonopolis]

Well my first idea was that your Command key was stuck but obviously that's not the case if other sessions work. As a workaround you could maybe use Alt+h to shift the selection earlier.

[innerbooty]

Reporting back after almost two hours on the phone with Avid Support. Nice enough guy, but honestly I did not feel like I was in expert hands, at all. I rarely call Avid Support, so I'm not sure what the norm is. I'm an Ultimate HD user. He was mystified by my issue, which is actually a weird issue. He first trashed Preferences, and Pro Tools hung before even beginning to load. He tried to put the old saved Preferences back in but they wouldn't take. Got Pro Tools loaded after re-registering all my plugins, but only after 3 long attempts, and having to pull all my iZotope plugs cuz PT kept hanging on them (even though I've been working fine with them for a long time)...

That didn't work. After much poking around without much direction, still no luck. Multiple attempts at Importing Session Data into new Sessions didn't work. I kept trying to ask him to look at the Session Start and Length, which I thought could be culprits because this error only occurs when selecting audio to the end of the session. (I'm not good with timecode, and I never change those default settings) I also pointed out to him that when selecting audio to the end of the session, the highlight actually extended slightly beyond the end of Session demarcation, into the gray zone. I had noted that the Session Start Time was set at 00:59:50, which seemed weird. Finally he kind of stumbled into a fix, which was somehow creating a new Session with a start time of 0:00:00 and Importing from the 0:59:50 Session into that one. But he mistakenly thought that part of the fix was resetting the source import session to a Start Time of 0:00:00:00. But when I checked later, that value did not save in the Session, and it kept reverting back to 0:59:50 and not working, but he wasn't checking to see if those values were saved after closing the Session Setup window. So the real fix was importing into a new blank Session with a Start Time of 0:00:00

Sorry, that was long-winded. Just not impressed with my support experience.

Question -- where does the default Start Time for a New session come from? I think if you accidentally select "Last Used" I/O Settings when starting a new Session, it actually also uses the Start Time for the last used session (which for me had somehow become 0:59:50) as well as the I/O. Is that as it should be? Is there a reliable way to force a default back to the 0:00:00 Start Time for New Sessions? Should you be able to modify the Session Start time from within the Session Setup window?

Anyway, I'm back working again, but only by the skin of my teeth, I feel

[innerbooty]

Just stumbled upon the "Current Timecode Position" menu selection, which leads to the "Redefine Current Timecode Position" dialog, which does in fact allow you to modify the timecode for the start of the session.

[smurfyou]

Originally Posted by innerbooty

Question -- where does the default Start Time for a New session come from? I think if you accidentally select "Last Used" I/O Settings when starting a new Session, it actually also uses the Start Time for the last used session (which for me had somehow become 0:59:50) as well as the I/O. Is that as it should be? Is there a reliable way to force a default back to the 0:00:00 Start Time for New Sessions? Should you be able to modify the Session Start time from within the Session Setup window?

Anyway, I'm back working again, but only by the skin of my teeth, I feel

Yes it will pull it from the last session I believe. Workaround is to use a template. But you should definitely be able to set it from the Session Setup window. What is your Session Length there?

[innerbooty]

Screenprint of my Session Setup attached. No, modifying the Session Start Time from within the Session Setup window does not work. It won't save. Earlier attempts at changing the Start Time or End Time gave me dialogs saying it couldn't be done because regions were outside the range, or something like that. But moving the cursor/timeline to 0 and then using the Redefine Current Timecode Position dialog, I can set the timecode from 0:59:50 to 0:00:00, and that value saves and resets the Session Start Time.

HOWEVER - when I tried to do that to fix the original messed up audiobook session, I got another dialog saying regions were outside the bounds and it couldn't change the time, although it went ahead and did it anyway. But I STILL got the weird behavior when trying to shift audio that I had selected to the end of the session. So, last thing I did was to select the All Group, and delete all clips and automation from just past the end of the audiobook to the very end of the session, which somehow extended slightly into the gray zone beyond the session end time. Pro Tools nether world. Ghost clips. After I did that everything now seems to work normally. Time for a drink...

[Sonopolis]

Welcome to the world of unsolved support cases! To me it looks very much like you had some corrupt data in the session file. Have you sent them the (empty) session so they can check?

I had similar issues with PT crashing when playing over a certain spot in the timeline (malicious plug-in automation, video not playing from a certain point or specific clips not being trim-able at a very specific timeline position.

25-year old code, all that I'm saying

[innerbooty]

Yeah, I think in my case it was a double whammy of a bizarre Session Start Time of 0:59:50 somehow creeping in as the default of my new Sessions, combined with "ghost data" somehow getting placed beyond the end of this particular Session. I feel like I would have been better off working on it myself for a bit longer before calling support. Then had to postpone my celebratory cocktail when I discovered that all my UAD plugins were on and enabled but not doing anything at all, as if bypassed, but they weren't bypassed. Thankfully a full shut down and restart solved that. Anyway, deeply unimpressed with the quality of the tech support. Unsolved for sure, although he was anxious to call it solved and just get off the phone. There had been talking of emailing an empty version of the Session over to them, but that was before it was "solved"