unreliable automation

[tomcat]

so annoyting. mixing a tack the other night, up late and needing to sleep. I would make passes through sections of the song and they sounded good, with my ifngers on the faders of my procontrol. the automation wasn't playing back the moves though. sometimes it would but very often it wouldn't. i checked my pref. 3k allocated to auto.
touch mode enabled.
seems random. sometimes works, sometimes dosn't. a little better after a restart.
I haven't used 6.1 in a working post situation yet, but i am afraid. If this happens in a mix with a client, i would have to tell them i simply don't actually have a studio anymore, return his money and ask him to leave.
don't want that.
Anyone else see this?
The battle i had in 5.3 was automation that kicked in late. I would have to have a change happen, for example in an eq parameter, BEFORE the region that i wanted to affect. if the region was selected as the beginning point of the automation, the sound would be uneq'd for up to 2 seconds before the automation kicked in. I don't know if this happens in 6.1 yet.


10.2.6
6.1
g4 450dp
HD2