Creating track preset on Master fader -> crash

[Darryl Ramm]

~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools_*.txt is the (default hidden) Library directory in your home directory, not the totally unrelated system wide /Library directory. ~ means your home directory. Pro Tools cannot run without creating those Log files so they will be there.

e.g. In Terminal.app on your Mac type...

$ ls ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro_Tools_*.txt

($ here is the shell prompt, will likely be different for you, you don't type that part).

If you want to access those files via the Finder there are many tutorials online showing how to access the hidden ~/Library folders in the Finder.

---

All this is focused on wanting to make sure say you are not seeing say a track creation assert bug that has a known workaround (run under Rosetta). Or potentially the log file might also finger suspect plugins.

[clipGain]

Thanks for the patience Darryl, I thought I somehow had activated showing hidden folders but I did not know about the dual (?) library directories. These are the last lines of the log file from a specific time where there is a corresponding crash log due to track preset saving

1415.778236,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1415.782699,00103,0d02: Processing TTracker: TControlTracker  
1415.898274,00103,0d02: Performing TCommand: TControlTracker  
1415.898281,00103,0d02: Completed TCommand: TControlTracker
1415.898287,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1417.456872,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1417.468284,00103,0f09: Progress: Checking clips for Clip Effects...
1417.468804,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1417.469975,00103,0d02: Processing TTracker: Reorder Tracks  
1417.471132,00103,0d02: TProToolsDoc::SetCurrentSelection
1417.471137,00103,000f: TProToolsDoc::SetCurrentSelection - start = 2965504 end = 4444161
1417.471314,00103,0b09: SLnk_Manager::SetCurrentSelection: in:2965504 out:4444161
1417.471325,00103,001b: CSync::SyncDevices sync point = 2965504
1417.549734,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1417.553911,00103,0f09: Progress: Checking clips for Clip Effects...
1417.554415,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1417.836733,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1421.065357,00103,00e0: TMenuManager::InvalidateMenus - force=false
1421.074813,13803,0e0f: Access Violation:
Stacktrace:
	0x726f74617265706f : - (unknown @ 0x0)

EDIT: I was asking ChatGpt, and it actually mentioning the crash could come from lack of storage permission. I had not thought of that, although I have set my Documents folder to reside in iCloud. That means Documents/Pro Tools/Track presets directory is also on my iCloud Drive. I guess being able to save plugin settings successfully contradicts that clue.

[Darryl Ramm]

EDIT: I was asking ChatGpt, and it actually mentioning the crash could come from lack of storage permission. I had not thought of that, although I have set my Documents folder to reside in iCloud. That means Documents/Pro Tools/Track presets directory is also on my iCloud Drive. I guess being able to save plugin settings successfully contradicts that clue.

Nice find. But undo the iCloud use and see what happens.

You cannot use iCloud Document/Desktop storage You have to turn that crap off. It's got potential to cause all sorts of problems, including with Session I/O if you are saving them to your Documents folder.

Nothing about Pro Tools is properly designed or suitably tested to work in an iCloud or any other cloud like environment. You just cannot trust any of this. Cloud storage is great for online transfer of sessions between users, downloading them and running them locally. (I zip them up and drop them on cloud storage with permissions that avoids them being unzipped and run from that cloud storage).

This should be noted in the macOS systems optimizations instructions. I've been pointing this out for a long time now. Sigh, I so much miss Jeffro here on DUC who would actually just go and edit obvious things wrong or missing.

[Darryl Ramm]

Thanks for persisting getting that log file.

1421.074813,13803,0e0f: Access Violation:
Stacktrace:
	0x726f74617265706f : - (unknown @ 0x0)

Unfortunately that log gives no simple clue, not even a stack trace. Sometimes problems are so obvious there, not this time.

Be careful in how you are interpreting this, "Access Violation" here is not talking directly about file permissions, it's a virtual memory access violation within the running program. There is no stack trace likely because Pro Tools memory is corrupted. it might, or might not be, that permissions or iCloud related stuff does trigger this crash, but that "Access Violation" error message is *not* telling you it's directly caused by a file access problem. But maybe it is, let us know what happens when you undo iCloud use.

A common cause of memory corruption like might be going on here are plugins, that does not mean I know that's the cause here, it's just the first thing I'd try to exclude or include as a possible cause. If after undoing iCloud you still have problems you can test move all .aaxplugin files out of the plugin folder (/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins), just put them anywhere else for now and just start Pro Tools, it will automagically put back the core plugins. Just test like that and see if the same crash still happens. If you have had third party plugins installed on your Mac for other DAWs in the past that can sometimes leave old out of date/incompatible plugins in the Pro Tools plugin folder that can cause problems.

I also know you are just trialing Pro Tools so I'm not sure if this is a problem you need to solve now. I tried and can't reproduce this failure on my Mac running Pro Tools 2024.10.1 on Sequoia (not using iCloud storage obviously). It was great you gave a heads up here, but reporting stuff on DUC or automatically submitting crash reports is unlikely to actually get Avid to fix any bugs if there is one here. You would normally need to open a support case, but AFAIK you can't do that during a trial. And to be fair to Avid if this is still a bug the above stuff can't solve they likely need some more info on how to reproduce the problem, which support would normally deal with once a case is opened.

[clipGain]

I really appreciate you taking your time with me Darryl :)

Now on the iCloud folder concept: I do not know the technical detail of the implementation, but I would think of it as an area on the local drive just as the other local directories. The difference would be a background agent detecting changes in the files, and uploading (I believe a temporary copy) of them to iCloud, right?

Not saying this scanning and copying procedure could never potentially mess up anything, of course the iCloud drive could have some peculiar permission combination that Pro Tools chokes on in corner cases, even for my installation particularly. If you have technical evidence of iCloud directory issues I am absolutely willing to accept that.

I just think we need to separate the concerns between files being stored locally, and synced to the cloud, and files having a "live connection" to the cloud, working on temp files locally.

I agree on plugins being prime suspects, so I will try that before taking my Documents directory off iCloud. Not having presets etc. automatically backed up in the cloud seems like a real misnomer to me in 2025.

I will deliver a ticket when I start a PT subscription.

Not helpful but:

The ASCII in the error message actually spells "rotarepo", or "operator" backwards.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...d-and-for-what

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...address-is-0x0

[clipGain]

Problem solved (hopefully).

After looking at this thread, I went into Preferences -> Operation and selected the Documents/Pro Tools folder already existing in my iCloud Drive. Now the preset folder alias did not change, that is "/Users/USERNAME/Documents/Pro Tools", but obviously the links to the iCloud Drive location must have been refreshed/ corrected idk in the background.