Protools feeling very tired on my machine

[fork-media]

Something has slowed my machine down..

getting more of those run out of CPU errors on small sessions, and things feel a bit laggy.

I have to work from frame/io a lot so have chrome open. and thats sluggish too, switching Tabs for example.

makes me suspect my systems up to no good.. I had a clear out and got back to 150 gig free on my start up...


I've zapped the PRAM, checked the disk , trashed PT preferences.. I thought I had it a little better, but we have gone glacial again

Where should I be looking these days?

recent installs? hmm I did put resolve 18.1 on as some one asking me if I can use it.

[alexthemusicbloke]

The i7 MacMini is a little long in the tooth now. Around the same level of performance as a 2013 Trashcan which is also a little on the old side now.

All fine until you’re dealing with modern plugins which are often high on CPU use.

What video codecs are you using when you’re working to video? The wrong codec type can cause serious lag if there’s a lot of tween-frames to be decoded. Very CPU intense.

[Bob Olhsson]

I ran into this problem when using old SSDs. They actually do slow down with use!

[Darryl Ramm]

i7 6 core mac mini running monterey 12.3.1 - 32Gig RAM SSD

This is a painfully useless way to not clearly report what Mac you have. What is the year code (e.g. Mac mini Late 2014), or model name (e.g. Macmini7,1) , or model number (e.g. A1347), or EMC number (e.g. 2840)? Yes it can matter. One of those things would help a lot more than nothing, but ideally give all that data. If you don't know where to find all these google for instructions.

edit: did you just edit the signature? Sorry but I missed the "2018" part in the signature on my iPhone. That's indeed enough info (but it's actually "Late 2018").

What size SSD? Original or aftermarket? edit- snip fusion drive question not relevant. Are you using any external drives? For what? What are the make/model specs?

Number one cause of increase in CPU errors is likely plugin incompatibility, including some plugins just installed not even being used in a session. If a problem is happening very periodically it's hard to track down but start by assuming it's a plugin issue and proving it's not. All the standard stuff, trashing prefs, removing all .aaxplugin files, etc.

A great cause of general slow malaise is a plugin with a memory leak, look at Activity Monitor memory pressure as Pro Tools is running. If it's increasing/spiking at times when you are not starting a new app and the reported memory usage of Pro Tools is monotonically increasing then suspect a plugin memory leak.

Google Chrome is bloated, if you have to use it then watch that memory pressure chart. You might be better using Safari?

Besides plugins, turn off all the Apple and Avid crapware you can. Siri, Apple iCloud features, make sure you are not using iCloud desktop/document sharing. Turn off all other cloud/file sharing while using Pro Tools. And do not work from session folders shared with the cloud, even if not being actively synced. Uninstall Avid Link and cloud components. Don't run Adobe Creative Cloud desktop if you are a user of that. Look what stuff is starting up on login (finally easier on Ventura, yeh). Uninstall anything antivirus, VPN etc. If you have lots of drive volumes disable spotlight indexing (don't care what Avid says, mds stuff can run bezerk). In many ways Apple has turned macOS into bloatware with all the crap they have added, I've had machines go nuts trying to reach iCloud when the account was logged out from iCloud. Had it thrash mDNSResolver doing God knows what (make sure the network setup is using a good DNS host, and if using DHCP, have that DHCP server hand out that DNS server info, don't also add it in your local setup, I can't explain that one, but there seems some known problem there with duplicate entries.).

Use Activity Monitor and look for processes consuming CPU, memory (i.e. memory pressure stepping out of the green) and network resources. When using Activity Monitor make sure you are looking at "All Processes".

And the basics: operate with as large a HW buffer size as you can. Can you switch to hardware monitoring? Use freeze/commit. If you have memory available set disk cache large enough to fully cache your session. If low on memory (again look primarily at memory pressure, not free, not memory used etc.) then upgrade it/max it out to 64GB.

[fork-media]

I'm not using any new plug in - just 3 waves IR verbs, and eq7 all from the same template as I have used the last year..

yes I have off loaded the video to a satellite machine ( using 'video-sync5 to carry the DNxHD 36 )

this is a recent development. I was runnign VS5 on the same machine , but due to choking of speeds, I realised I could use a 2013 macmini to play the video..

Is there anything else I can do/try?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by fork-media

I'm not using any new plug in - just 3 waves IR verbs, and eq7 all from the same template as I have used the last year..

**Always suspect plugins**

You don't need to be "using new plugins" to have plugin related problems.

Have you installed any new plugins? Updated any plugins?

Have you updated Pro Tools?

Have you updated macOS?

Have you tested by removing all .aaxplugins and just tested with core plugins (that will be automagically reinstalled). Try some PT demo sessions with the setup as now then with just the core plugins and compare. Test with your sessions by reinstalling one or few plugins you are using and nothing else? And checked you have the latest of those?

[fork-media]

ok will give that a shot.. I did install a VST plug in last week - which I use in Izotope RX advanced editor

Actually I realise the session size is bloated... its 348 mb - usually I think even 70 mB is large,

[fork-media]

now esculating to ' cant connect to playback device '

thats a new one!

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by fork-media

ok will give that a shot.. I did install a VST plug in last week - which I use in Izotope RX advanced editor

Actually I realise the session size is bloated... its 348 mb - usually I think even 70 mB is large,

And one cause of bloated sessions is plugins who can get to write content to a session IIRC Izotope is one of the products that's sometimes noted to cause session bloat. Maybe it's just doing it's usual thing here or maybe it's related to what you are seeing. You can try a save copy in, and see what it does, you might need to look for inactive tracks etc and delete them, consolidate the session, temp move Izotope, that VST, etc. out of the plugin folder, etc. for a test.

[fork-media]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

And one cause of bloated sessions is plugins who can get to write content to a session IIRC Izotope is one of the products that's sometimes noted to cause session bloat. Maybe it's just doing it's usual thing here or maybe it's related to what you are seeing. You can try a save copy in, and see what it does, you might need to look for inactive tracks etc and delete them, consolidate the session, temp move Izotope, that VST, etc. out of the plugin folder, etc. for a test.

Just removed 'youlean' - session now at 12 meg