Spinning beachball ?

[albee1952]

Can anyone offer an explanation for this. Mac Pro quad with Leopard. HD3 with 8.0.3 and all setup by an industry pro. When doing the most basic edits like separate region, I get the spinning beachball which might go away if I leave it for a few minutes, or it might call for a force quit and restart. Yesterday I had this problem several times on a small VO session with 1 stereo track, 2 mono tracks and a master.

[Dogcode]

Hey Albee

8.03 has been a problem for many....Have you tried going back to 8.01? Have you got your processors set properly?..if you have 8 set to 7...No wireless etc??

Dog

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Can anyone offer an explanation for this. Mac Pro quad with Leopard. HD3 with 8.0.3 and all setup by an industry pro. When doing the most basic edits like separate region, I get the spinning beachball which might go away if I leave it for a few minutes, or it might call for a force quit and restart. Yesterday I had this problem several times on a small VO session with 1 stereo track, 2 mono tracks and a master.

Hi,

Difficult to pin point without crash logs, but this is often a plugin (as it usually is) i had this when using some new PSP plugs, just spinning beach ball till i force quit.

Could also be USB/Firewire connected device! try unmounting all unused drives when running PT.

Or even hardware! ram etc.

Spinning beach ball is a sign the OS is trying to process something. are there any other apps running?


Chris

[albee1952]

Thanks for the ideas folks. Its a quad with 3 processors set for RTAS. This particular session had no plugins at all. Just the audio and master tracks with minor volume automation(ducking music behind the VO). No other processes running. No wifi or internet connection(although wired internet in the old room never caused a problem. Since its not my system, I will have to tread lightly on rolling it back to 8.0.1. The only plugins that were not part of the pro setup was the IK classik verbs that I installed(since I am allowed 2 installs with it). The only other 3rd party plugs are SD2 and Waves Diamond and all were installed and updated by the pro(who shall remain nameless until he actually deserves blame). Wish I knew my way around the Mac better so I could dig in and verify some details. I was hoping someone might have hit this wall before and could point to something more definite. I'll keep watching in case anyone gets any new ideas or insight. FWIW, we did have extra firewire drives attached so I will try ejecting those next time around.

[ultrasonic]

Originally Posted by albee1952

...
FWIW, we did have extra firewire drives attached so I will try ejecting those next time around.

Certainly disconnect any extra drives that are not being used.

Go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor, set pop up menu to All Processes, look for something... maybe a process hung up (in red), or something else that is keeping the system busy. FSCK?

Also, go to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy and drag the audio drives into the privacy list. That will keep Spotlight from trying to index them, which can really slow things down.

Hope you get some relief.

[Sean Russell]

Take all the installed extra plugs out. Drop the preferences and make sure to turn off DSP Cache. Then see if you can figure out which plug is causing it.

[albee1952]

How do I turn off DSP cache? Once again, there were no plugins in this session(does that matter?). I may not be on that system for several days so I will print out all the ideas. Many thanks to all

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by albee1952

How do I turn off DSP cache?

In the System Usage window. There is a graphical widget that you can click and then deselect DSP Cache.

[caruso7r]

Originally Posted by albee1952

How do I turn off DSP cache? Once again, there were no plugins in this session(does that matter?). I may not be on that system for several days so I will print out all the ideas. Many thanks to all

Even if you don't have any plugins in the session, you need to pull them to check as PT still loads them when you open any session. EDIT: Your plugins are in the directory:HD/Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Plug-ins.

[Sonny Keyes]

Originally Posted by ultrasonic

Certainly disconnect any extra drives that are not being used.

+1

I've had similar behaviour over the 5 years I've been using this rig, and 100% of the time it's been related to a dying FW drive.

Sonny Keyes
Ricochet Audio
Toronto