I'm So Tired Of Protools Crashing!!

[sburrows]

Digi, please for the love of God, Make your darn software stable. I have been using protools longer than anyone. I come from the Pro Edit/Pro Deck days. Even that awful piece of crap was more stable than the current crop of junk we are using now. Really I spent over $50,000.00 to “upgrade” all my protools systems from Mix to HD. However when in OS X things SUCK. Wedge crashes galore, Rtaz insts. Don’t work worth a darn and overall system instability. Why? Why? Is it because we are sill not really in a native OS X version. I don’t know, but on fast computers is runs much much slower than OS 9 and OS 9 almost never crashed. Features are wonderful, however stability must come before features. I use Final cut pro. Never a crash. That’s certainly a complicated program. Try running 50 video tracks with all sorts of automation, and all native. Please, you must get this software stable and speedy. We keep buying faster computers to what? Have it bloated down with more sloppy code. You folks know me and I am not a novice to computers or protools. I must have something better. Repeat after me. Protools is not stable. Once you truly understand this simple fact and get off the river of denial, then perhaps you can make protools once again the best product and most stable DAW on the market! When did a windows system become more stable than a Macintosh? Protools is the only program I have consistent problems with. So it’s not my system, or my computer. Face it. It’s Protools .

Frustrated Regards.
Skip Burrows, Sunrise Sound Studios

[Dog BBQ]

Your going to get 12 or more replies to your post about how well their systems run!!!

User error they will tell you!!!

I don't think anyone really has a Solid OSX Protools System!!!!

I haven't worked on one!!!!

My 2¢

[Howardk]

I have not seen a 100% stable OSX system either. . . but have heard from others on the forum that say there systems are rock solid. . . I just haven't seen it with my own eyes and everyone I know personally, that is running ProTools on OSX has, at best, occasional Kernal crashes and Unexpectedly Quit incidents. I just purchased a G4 Dual 1.42 running OSX 10.3.5 and PT v6.7CS8 and at this time I have a couple of crashes a week, and much more often when using SoftSynths. This is about as good as it got on my last computer (G4-933). I have had many cases where a session would crash repeadidly (Unexpectedly Quit). . . creating a new session and importing all the tracks from the session (and a midi export/import to get the markers) solved the problem in these cases of repeated crashes. In summary things are not perfect, but useable until Native Instruments is involved.

[cmaynes]

Hi Skip-


I wanted to say that I understand your frustration, and I would like to offer some help...

Questions-

What mac are you using?, How much RAM do you have in the machine? Also, How much free space do you have on your startup drive?

Did you try running PT without 3rd party plugins?

Is this your first go with PT in OSX?

Have you done the usual repair permissions stuff?

Have you tried making a fresh user account and running PT there?

I (very begrudgingly) switched to OSX in order to use HD, and on my previous machine (933 single G4) found the stability to be a little better than marginal, but when I switched to a dual 2ghz G5 at the end of last year, and I have to say the prformance has been quite excellent- I do work on feature films with lots of tracks running- (generally at least 128 tracks in a session) And I tend to run all the audio AND digital picture from the same HD (an internal 250gb SATA drive).

i know that there a few things to watch out for (firewire mainly) but incompatible plugins and startup items tend to usually be the troublemakers.

Here is a basic rundown of the Mac I have-

Dual 2ghz G5 (2.5gb RAM, Internal startup drive is stock 160gb Apple drive with about 20% in use, second drive is a 7200rpm Hitachi 250gb SATA drive)

PT HD2 accel
ProControl
many plugins
MOTU MTP usb


charles maynes

[sburrows]

Thanks Charles. Well Here goes...
No I'm very very OSX savy been useing it for years.
System Duel 1.25 G4
2 Gigs of ram. Tested all Good
Yea I am useing firewire with Oxford 911 chipsets
Protools HD 4 Acell
Control 24
A pound of hair from my head after i pulled most of it out
Fresh install of the system 10.3.7 many times
All the junk any pro knows to do..
Thanks again!
Regards Skip..

[slangification]

I wonder if it would be possible for ProTools to "validate" a plug-in the first time that plug-in is run on the system - testing it for solid coding to ensure it will not crash ProTools.

It seems like that would be doable.

And, if so, Digidesign should make that happen.

[Mt.Everest]

At the core, Protools OSX is DEFINITELY more stable. Protools only, a few standard plugs, and a well-maintained OSX system. The majority of us feel this way I think. I rarely have crashes, where on OS9, crashes with the dreaded 5 minute restart, were just a daily part of life.

Nevertheless, as Ive ranted about in other posts, it IS seriously sluggish even on todays monster (Apple) computers. Complicated softsynth plugins throw a wrench into the system, and Im just used to wait, wait, waiting for basic operations to take place, such as hiding tracks, deleting tracks, and opening plugin windows.

And yes, we are working in a carbonized app, that is not native to OSX. This sucks. But I wonder, is it even possible for Digi to write an OSX native app under the restrictions of Apples OSX? God I hope so, but you would think they would have done it by now. I think its the secret no one talks about. I think they might be up against a wall.. We'll see.. Maybe in 2012. $50k for a 'pro' system that still records clicks and pops using its best new feature? (ADC). $50k for a 'pro' system that wont allow me to change input monitoring on the fly without killing playback of previously recorded tracks? Ouch, that hurts. Something definitely isnt right in Digiville.

MT

[DigiTechSupt]

I wonder if it would be possible for ProTools to "validate" a plug-in the first time that plug-in is run on the system - testing it for solid coding to ensure it will not crash ProTools.

It seems like that would be doable.

And, if so, Digidesign should make that happen.

Done! Just run the Digidesign Plug-in Validator application located at MacHD>Applications>Digidesign>Pro Tools>Pro Tools Utilities. It will tell you if any plug-ins are incompatible with the Pro Tools version you're running.

[lancejorton]

Thanks Charles. Well Here goes...
No I'm very very OSX savy been useing it for years.
System Duel 1.25 G4
2 Gigs of ram. Tested all Good
Yea I am useing firewire with Oxford 911 chipsets
Protools HD 4 Acell
Control 24
A pound of hair from my head after i pulled most of it out
Fresh install of the system 10.3.7 many times
All the junk any pro knows to do..
Thanks again!
Regards Skip..

i doubt this is it, but i don't think 10.3.7 is supported. only 10.3.6 and 10.3.8. you may also want to run the DigiTest app to make sure all of your Accel cards are good and the cable links work. last, you should make sure you are running the latest PT version. there was a version of PT that wouldn't work with over 1 GB or RAM on G4s or something weird like that.

--
lance

[Seeee]

10.3.6 .7.8.9.10

how many os 9 versions did we really have?

9.0,1,2,3, then 9.04

then 9.1

and 9.2 then 9.2.1, then 9.2.2

in 5 years.

is there a reason why there are DAILY security patches and incremental upgrades on OSX if it's so secure and stable?

how many has XP had? (another COMPLETE OS rewrite (still a gui on dos like osx) sp1 and sp2?