vca automation slowing things down

[Matt Chan]

i switched our mixing template to incorporate vca faders for "masters" and "dip masters" (for a final voiceover dip pass). the "master" vca fader controlled the mix group and the "dip master" controlled the "master". i moved any stem processing to actual pro tools master faders, figuring i'd use up less DSP in the end.

we were using this session on a 50 minute show in 5.1 with split music and lots of sound design. i noticed that using vca faders that were controlling 22 stereo tracks inside of a nested vca group really slows the mix process down. by the end of the show on our dip pass, i would have to wait 3-4 seconds before i could start the transport after an automation pass.

i can see why this is happening, since after every mix pass, it looks like the automation has to redraw for the nested vca fader and then the tracks inside of that group.

another pain was when we had to do a reconform of the show. we had just purchased conformalizer and even at its slowest setting, it missed events because pro tools took too long to do a paste action. i had to go event-by-event which kind of defeats the purpose of having auto-conform software.

i made sure i was closing all my extra windows, taking my movie offline, viewing regions as blocks, and also tried region grouping. we also tried upgrading our ram from 1.5 to 2.5 GB but it barely made a difference. we are on Dual 2.5 GHz G5s with Mac OSX 10.4.6 - PT 7.2

anyways, this isn't a bug but it does seem like it might be poor implementation and i just wanted to see if anyone is running into any related problems. in the meantime i'm switching back to auxes for my masters.

cheers,
matt