Still dealing with Spinning Beach Ball

[poncival]

Hello, I keep coming back to search for an answer to this and so far I am still dealing with it. I upgraded a couple weeks ago and it seemed to help but it's happening again. It's a dual 2GHZ G5 with 10.3.6, 6.7, 1 GB of RAM, Cinema display HD 23" with 3 DR Bott active extenders, Ilok etc. This seems to happen whether or not firewire drives are connected. Mostly it happens while in quick punch, I will record for 15 seconds or so, and press stop and then I get the wheel for just long enough for my client to get annoyed and wonder why I am sitting there doing nothing, and then I can press record again. Usually if I take it out of quick punch it will work fine for a couple times and then it will happen again. Also happens in loop record. It seems really unpredictable. i have Journaling turned off on all drives and have tried several other things that people have mentioned on here and none of them seem to do any good. I hate to think about the wasted time I am accumulating waiting for that stupid wheel.

Thanks
John Gray

[crizdee]

Hello John,

Here are a few things i would try! if they haven't been suggested already?

DAE buffer size. CPU buffer size. reduce maximum record time to 5-10 minutes. trash preferences.
repair disk permission. defrag drive.

Are your drives getting near to full? 75% or more!

Is it happening on just one song? if yes load a new session and inport session data from the song you're working on.

It wouldn't hurt to uninstall Pro tools! ther's a soft install option on the CD installer that allow you re uninstall just the program and not the files, then re-install.

I have similar setup to you? except i'm using OS 10.3.5 (10.3.6 hasn't bees officiall qualified yet, though i doubt this is the problem

Regards

Chris

[Noiz2]

I was having random beachballs and some one told me to try disabling Quartz Extreme. So far it's working well for me. This is suposedly a semi documented bug, there are a number of threads on the DUC about it. You can find them in a search but I'll post Apples instructions for turning it off. It seems to have no real effect except maybe for games? But it has fixed the Beachball problem for a bunch of PT users.


To disable Quartz Extreme, enter the following command in Terminal on one
line:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver GLCompositor -dict tileHeight -int 0 tileWidth -int 0

To enable Quartz Extreme after troubleshooting, enter the following command
in Terminal on one line:
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver GLCompositor
------------------------------------------------

[Richard Fairbanks]

John, I don't have any more suggestions for you, but can sympathize. I have occassional spinning balls, too, and have since I got a 2.5Ghz machine in August. They last anywhere from a second to 10 or 20 seconds and during recording sessions (like when doing VO or Foley work) it can be very annoying, but I also see them once in a while during straight mixing sessions. Turning off Quartz Extreme made my problems much worse, so be sure you have researched the apple site to find out how to turn it back on! I don't remember at the moment or I would tell you. What DID help was to follow very closely the Digi tips sticky on this forum, specifically about deleting ALL of the preferences and database files. Between this and a complete reinstall of Pro Tools, things got very liveable for me. The spinners were unchanged by going from 10.3.5 to 10.3.6, so I'd assume the OSX version is not related to the problem. There is obviously some sort of housekeeping going on after recording a take, but who's to say it is Pro Tools or OSX? So much for technical advances and ever-faster cpus!

[Noiz2]

My quote from the Apple site above includes how to turn it back on. Results seem to vary some notice a big improvement some none, you are the first I heard of it worsening the problem. I tried it and it seems to help, mine were so irregular it's hard to tell yet. I put it out because it seems to clear up the problem for some.

Turning off Quartz Extreme made my problems much worse, so be sure you have researched the apple site to find out how to turn it back on!

[poncival]

thanks guys, I disabled quartz extreme about a month ago and it didn't seem to make any difference. Things seemed better today overall after a PMU reset which I did because I was getting the "wind tunnel" effect when trying to boot the G5 and it booted up great after the PMU and I had a great day with only 2-3 beachballs as opposed to 100 or 200. I am beginning to wonder if the video card is causiing my booting problems because I have seen mention of that on the apple site but I am not sure why the whole system seemed to run smoother today after resetting it. I have not zapped P RAM lately or done the OF reset-all command recently, so I am not sure whether those seem to have an effect. Thanks for the help, I promise I will keep posting this again and again until I hear about something that makes this go away. Overall the G5/OSX/HD system is way cooler than the G4/OS9/MIX+ system I have been working on for four years except for the fact that I used to be able to hit space, apple-space during a take and it would be recording again before you knew it, and my clients have gotten used to that pace over the years and now this beach ball is adding a good hour or so to my days. It could only be one of how many things, why is this so perplexing??? Please help DIGI

Thanks again,

John Gray

[Noiz2]

Well, maybe the QE isn't the answer. I got a beach ball yesterday But as I said I get them on the average of one every couple of days (but usually once it happens it will keep happening till I reboot.
1.25 DP MDD G4
10.3.4 6.4.1 (cs2)
768MB

[jepmus]

Some users on Apple Discussion Board have reported that OS 10.3.6 has provided a fix for freezing issues. They have installed 10.3.6, with QE enabled. While 10.3.6 is not yet "officially supported" by Digi, there are users on this forum using 10.3.6 claiming all is well. Below is a link to the thread [very long .. but you may find some valuable information/links here]
http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]
For me, disabling QE did solve my freezes [no freezes for several months]; I'm hoping that Digi will qualify 10.3.6 soon, as I generally stick with Digi-supported configurations.
good luck,
jep

[thevault]

I'm planning on buying a G5/2Gig because my G4dual/1Gig died are there problems with G5/PT to the point I can't run a session? I can't afford a new unstable system at all I’ll lose money!

[Richard Fairbanks]

No insult intended, Noiz2! I just read your post again and you quote the same text as Digi answerbase about how to turn QE off and then on again. I must not have paid attention the first time I read your post. I'm sorry. I learned how to disable QE from an apple discussion. Unless I misread that post as well, the discussion mentioned how to turn it off but I missed the part that said how to turn it back on. After turning it off I had so many beach balls that I used a different computer to log onto apple.com and find out how to remove the file I had created to turn it off (I'm not unix savvy). I think it is important to share the caution I had learned.

Concerning 10.3.6, I am running it. I have perceived no difference in spinner occurances between it and 10.3.5.