Archive for the 'bug' Category

Video problems on Pro Tools 8.0.3 update with release of 8.0.4

Published on June 23, 2010 in bug, problem and update. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

Following my posts on the problems with Canopus boxes and Pro Tools 8.0.3 here, here and here as well as the jerky video problems I have posted on and the video compendium I posted about here and here, there has been another interesting post on the Pro Tools 8.0.3 Big Bug thread on the Digidesign User Conference

‘redj’ posted after the 8.0.4 release…

Thanks Avid for the update ! But thereʼs already a mistake…

For me, this bug happened by two ways :
The first one is now resolved (opening a session).
But the second one is not : when I remove video from firewire (deselect Video Out Firewire) PT crash ! But only if video track is offline. If video track is online, it works. Strange. Does anyone can confirm this bug ?

‘TommyT’ confirmed it…

Damn,,, you’re right, Bug confirmed here…
Guess we should change the Thread name to 8.03 Big Bug & 8.04 Smaller Bug :) ….

DigiTechSupt officially confirmed the ‘small bug’ and the work round…

Ok, thanks for the report – we’ve been able to repro this and are looking into a fix. Not sure whose end it’s on yet – us or Apple, but we should be able to determine that shortly and I’ll reply when I know more. For now make sure to keep the video online when enabling/disabling video out FireWire (stating the obvious, yes..!).
Avid Audio Tech Support

iZotope and Pro Tools 8.0.4 don’t get on

Published on June 13, 2010 in bug. 0 Comments Tags: , .

There have been a couple of threads in the Digidesign User Conference and the problem has been traced to an incompatibility with iZotope plug-ins and Pro Tools 8.0.4. In this thread ‘subwoof’ asked….

I just spent 90 minutes with Digi (Avid) only to be told there is an “issue” popping up with 8.0.4 and Audio Suite. On my system, I am getting -7453 errors when trying to preview. On some plugins like Pitch N’ Time Pro and Izotope RX, they simply don’t preview, and then they render out a blank file. Some of the Digi plug ins work, but I get an “Access Violation” error, and sometimes Pro Tools just quits.
I sent in the error log to them, and they are going over it. In the mean time, they told me to go back to 8.0.3 cs2. They also recommended that my colleagues here in town not go to 8.0.4 yet until they do more research into Audio Suite issues.
It may work for you, but have your 8.0 installer disc handy just in cast you need to regress!!

‘SessionKat’ otherwise known as Tim vdB – Digidesign Engineering suggested…

Its likely this is dependent on some 3rd party component(s), as many of us in-house and others can not reproduce unless we have IZotope Audiosuite installed…

Then DGould – David Gould – Product Manager – Audio Post Production – Avid confirmed…

We have discovered a problem with 8.0.4 specifically to do with -7453 errors when previewing iZotope AudioSuite plug-ins. We have today posted a warning about it on the download pages. Thank you for helping to bring it to our attention.
We suggest that iZotope users remain on 8.0.3cs2 until this issue is resolved. At time of writing it is our understanding that this issue only affects users with iZotope plug-ins installed (even if the problem is manifesting itself with other plug-ins). We will provide an update as soon as we have more information.

So there it is iZotope users should say on 8.0.3 or lower until iZotope release an update that is compatible with 8.0.4

iZotope – announce critical Mac OS X 10.6 Patch

Published on May 10, 2010 in announcement, bug and problem. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

iZotope have released this announcement regarding a potential problems with iZotope software causing problems with Mac OS 10.6…

Attention Mac OS X Users:

We’ve recently learned that under rare circumstances, installing an iZotope product or demo and then applying any Mac OS X 10.6 update can cause some computers to experience problems booting. We have identified the cause of this issue and have provided a simple fix below.

Please download and install this patch immediately, even if you have not experienced any issues at this time. Also, make sure you delete and re-download the latest iZotope installers for Mac OS X. Please note that as of today (May 7, 2010), all of the Mac OS X installers on the iZotope website have been updated so that they no longer cause this issue to occur.

iZotope Mac OS X 10.6 Patch
If you suspect your computer has already been affected by this issue and you are unable to boot your computer, please follow the steps to fix in the iZotope Knowledge Base.

We apologize for any difficulty this has caused. Unfortunately, this issue was unpredictable and related to a rare interaction between the install process and security measures that Apple recently introduced in Mac OS X 10.6. We appreciate your understanding, and please don’t hesitate to contact us directly with any questions or concerns at support@izotope.com.

Sincerely,
The iZotope Team

iZotope grabbing keyboard shortcuts

Published on March 19, 2010 in bug and tip. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Most of us are probably aware that when you have a Waves plug-in window open that various keyboard shortcuts don’t act the way we expected but I came across this thread on the Digidesign User conference about iZotope plug-in doing similar things. Eric Freeman – ‘lode’ asked….

I know Waves and Sound Toys can be accused of this, but now Izotope is “disabling” the PT hot keys if the AS window is up. I’ll have to click on and move the Izotope window or process a region, then re-click the PT Edit window to regain hot key control. It’s been going on for quite sometime, but am finally posting about it. Anyone else seeing this?

‘hummerZ’ replied…

Just press ESC to regain control.

‘Mundoz’ also responded…

Apparently quite a few AS plugs cause this bug. But yes it’s annoying.

MIKEROPHONICS added…

Happens to me too. Bummer. I also cannot get RX to accept any changes whilst previewing unless I come out of preview, make a control change then select preview again to hear the change. Whilst I’m in full on whinge mode, the preview loops a terribly short region only and doesn’t play my full selection. Why? Anyone know a way around this?

‘izotope-qa’ came in to say…

We’re aware of the quick-keys (A/Z) issue, and hope to roll out a fix for it soon (maybe next patch, if it’s an easy fix). I don’t have a quick fix aside from what I’ve noticed: A/Z seems to recover when you close the AudioSuite window, and you can still re-engage A/Z when the AS window is open (but it has to be re-engaged when you close the AS window… bummer). Also, please contact our support (support@izotope.com) if you run into any other issues if you can’t find a quick fix. We usually have a 24 hour turnaround.

Mike: To address your issues, does your preview issue apply to all RX plug-ins, or just Spectral Repair? If it’s Spectral Repair, it may be a limitation of AudioSuite… because of the way SR works (think of it being like Sound Replacer), we essentially feed new audio to AudioSuite only when you hit preview. This means that, to make changes heard, you unfortunately have to stop and restart previewing. We can look into making this process more fluid.

Also, the small working buffer of Spectral Repair is a built-in limitation that forces users to work in small chunks, since a crash would destroy all the user’s work in Spectral Repair, and we figured that would be heartbreaking on a long file. We have had some requests to make the working buffer larger, and are taking them into consideration.

If you have any other questions or bug reports, please don’t hesitate to use the e-mail link in my account here on the DUC to contact me directly.

–Tedd Terry
iZotope QA

lode replied…

Looking forward to the fix! (I love it when developers answer directly on DUC about their products. Tells me that they value their customers greatly.)

cmaynes added…

Soundminer does the same thing- you have to jump between the edit window and the mix window (I use cmd=) to restore the focus keys operation.

Mundoz came back with…

On the system I have been (PT8, Leopard) the A/Z is greyed out and can’t be engaged unless you do either: Go to Finder window and come back, Open Preferences window and close, and other window actions (not all of them). Other than that, wicked stuff.

‘mampam’ chipped in with…

When WAVEs plugs hijack the quick keys I usually push ESC and all is well.

I agree with Eric that is is great when the manufacturer responds as Ted has from iZotope with an informed supportive post.

ProTools 8.0.3 and Canopus crash problem – update 2

Published on February 26, 2010 in bug. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Things have been a little quiet since I last posted about this one but “Mike the amzing guy” asked Digi if they had made any progress on this and Digi Tech Support came back and said…

All I can get at the minute is that engineering is deep in the investigation of this one. No conclusive cause at the moment, but there’s progress in that initial fix implementation seems to be working.
Until the investigation and fix are complete and verified, I won’t really have much more to tell…

So it looks like progress is being made and Canopus users might be able to upgrade from 8.0.1 at some point soonish.

Jerky video playback in Pro Tools 8

Published on February 20, 2010 in bug and problem. 1 Comment Tags: , .

following on from my posts on the Canopus bug here and here I referred to another thread on the Digidesign User Conference about jerky video playback.

Well a guy (bedubya) has posted here a very comprehensive report on tests he has undertaken in his facility so here it is…

I work at a large studio and I have done extensive testing on this problem being that we are seeing it consistently.  I have used a G5 with PT7.4 as a dedicated pic playback device without issue for many years.

We decided to turnover one of our stages completely to PT8 using Satellite to latch everything up, but when we went to play picture (wild, no Satellite) after freshly installing 10.5.8 (subsequently 10.6.2), all flavors of PT 8.0cs3-8.0.3cs1, we noticed the stuttering video cadence.

We reverted back to 10.4/7.4cs10 and playback was smooth playing wild as well as latched up to timecode.  I decided to up the ante and installed a brand new Quad core 2.66 Mac Pro with PT8.0.1cs1 (subsequently 8.0.3cs1) on Snow Leopard (shouldn’t work, but it does) and video playback was consistently stammering.  After reading all of the various threads on this user conference, I started trying everyone’s suggestions.

The only thing that proved helpful was the Quartz Debug app. This helped explain everything… Leopard defaults the “beam synchronization” to automatic which would explain why when testing we could run the video a few times with no issue and then it would look really awkward for the next few playbacks.  Forcing the beam sync on causes an exaggerated playback stutter and disabling it altogether let the video payback without stutter BUT(!) it causes a tear horizontally across the frame at fast pan or travelling motion through the frame. It definitely is night and day performance from enabled to disabled beam syncronization, but the tear is not acceptable either.

I used four distinctly different CPU’s (older to brand new out of the box)… a PCI-x G5 w/ATI video card, a PCI-e G5 w/NVidia video card, an older Mac Pro Quad w/ATI video card, and a brand new Mac Pro Quad w/NVidia card.  The PCI-x CPU works with 10.4/PT7.4 very smooth playback, but same hardware with 10.5/PT8.0-8.0.3cs1 stutters.  We use DVCProHD 1080 that we generate ourselves from Avid DNx source files for most of our stage playback with some DV for standard def.  Same hardware and video files that work in 10.4/PT7.4 do not work when that system is running 10.5 or 10.6 and PT8.  I have spent an entire week going through all of the motions and confirming and reconfirming the symptoms.

I can tell you that there is something wrong with how graphics in Leopard works.  It’s very real.  the best way to test this is to look at film company logos, ie, Universal, Fox, WB logos.  Travelling panning shots look horrific.  And I’ve tried it all… lower resolutions, hiding the ProTools windows, hanging the video window over the edge of the main screen, using actual size instead of filling the screen with video window, creating boot drives of various combos of Mac OS and PT, video cards, video window on main screen, various codecs (older and newer versions), Intensity Pro card… everything everyone here has suggested.  Quartz Debug almost nails it if not for the tear.

I have a test bed set up at my desk and I have resources if anyone has any suggestions (good ones) to try.  This is critical to our business and needs a quick resolution as our clients would like to see the video they provide play properly on a 30′ wide screen when the director and producers show up.  Hopefully the alarm bells are ringing there at Digi because they are ringing here on the lot.

ProTools 8.0.3 and Canopus crash problem – update 1

Published on February 16, 2010 in bug and problem. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

There have been a number of posts added to the thread here on the DUC since I last posted here about it. Here are two more work rounds suggestions.

First one is from SOUTHmsd…

I had clients make a surprise pop in yesterday since editorial is right down the street. I generally work (when i’m by myself) with a qt file in the session on one of the host screens. I updated from 8.x.x to 8.0.3 last thursday. With 30 minute’s notice, I started prepping the sessions for playback on the big screen. That’s when I discovered the issue. My fix for this mega-annoying bug was, before switching between sessions remove the dv file from the regions list. Then import again on the fly when reopening. It looked a lot better than jumping behind the desk and yanking cables out and putting them back.

and the second from JimLeb…

My Canopus runs off of AC (not the Firewire for it’s power). I set up an X-10 remote control and an appliance module to turn the box off every time I launched a session. I’m happy being back on 8.0.1cs1. Outside of having to unmount drives within ProTools, I don’t feel like I’m hurting for 8.0.3.

It seems as though my advice from my first post is that anybody using video and Pro Tools should stay on 8.0.1 until this has been fixed.

ProTools 8.0.3 and Canopus crash problem

Published on January 31, 2010 in bug and problem. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

This is a scary bug that somehow has slipped through the beta testing process. If you want to read all the posts then click here, but here is a synopsis of the issues and suggested work rounds…

nhaudio outlined the basic problem…

Just updated ProTools to 8.0.3 on two systems and have found a major problem:
If I save and close a session that has a video file in it (.dv which is going out firewire to a Canopus ADVC110), when we try to reopen the session, ProTools ‘Unexpectedly Quits’ when trying to rebuild windows (the last few status updates you get when a session is opening).
Sessions with no video file open fine, no problem whatsoever.
We can’t work like this! We open various tv commercial sessions all day, and rebooting each time is brutal!!!

Digidesign pitched in very quickly and asked for crash log file details…

In Pro Tools 8.0.3, we added better and more robust logging to help track down problems like the one you are seeing. When Pro Tools crashes, some information about the crash is written out to a log file. The log files are kept in the “LogFiles” folder that is next to the Pro Tools application.

Here’s what you need to do…

1) Reproduce the crash you are seeing.
2) Look in the LogFiles folder and find the latest log file. The file name ends with .dlog
3) Email this “dlog” file

There is no need to do it now as the list of posts confirming the problem grew very quickly and Digidesign quickly confirmed they could reproduce the problem…

We can now reproduce this bug in our test lab. We’re still investigating what is going with this bug and are trying to narrow down the root cause of the issue.
It looks like there is some combination of changes that were made in Pro Tools 8.0.3 and updates to the Apple QuickTime software that introduced this issue.
I’m glad to see there are several workarounds for this problem, albeit not particularly nice ones.
Bob Brown
Principal Software Engineer

Also two workarounds came through from users. The first came from nhaudio…

I’ve found a workaround for now. It seems if the Canopus is powered off when I launch a session, it opens fine. Then I can turn the Canopus back on and work as normal. So for now, I plan to turn it off before opening any session to keep workflow… well… flowing.

And the second from stustan…

I also have the exact problem but I have a different work around that is 100% effective. Instead of bothering with the Canopus Box which is out of easy reach, I rename the pix folder by adding an X to its name. PT 8.0.3 LE then opens perfectly with the relink window informing me it cannot find pix. I then relink to the renamed folder and all is well. The next time I need to boot the session I rename the folder again, usually back to the original name and go through the above steps. My pix folder’s name then flip flops between Pix Folder and XPix Folder

Then diamondscwin chipped in to say…

at the moment it seems to me that Quicktime playback and 8.0.3 is broken… people in this thread are reporting issues with Blackmagic cards, AVID Mojos, Canopus boxes and just desktop playback… only cure regardless of OS is rolling back to 8.0.1 so I dont think its apples fault.

Then uno1234 was one of several that suggested…

We are reverting all our 4 systems back to 8.01. As nasty as that 8.01 bug list is, we just can’t deal with firewire out crashing anymore. How exactly does an official software release get so bungled up like this? Was there no beta testing in a simple post production workflow? Is there ANY accountability at Digidesign anymore?

Also to note that the 8.0.3cas1 update hasn’t fixed this problem so it would seem that for video post facilities using video peripherals should say on Pro Tools v8.0.1 for now.

Digidesign announce Pro Tools 8.0.3cs1 Updates

Published on January 19, 2010 in announcement, bug and update. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Here is what Digidesign have announced. It looks as though they have resolved the Eleven update this time, lets see.

Pro Tools 8.0.3cs1 updates for Pro Tools 8.0.3 HD, LE, and M-Powered are available for download from the Pro Tools CS Updates page in the Support section:
www.digidesign.com/support/csupdates

Pro Tools 8.0.3 CS Updates
The following are the current CS Updates for Pro Tools 8.0.3. Previous installation of Pro Tools 8.0.3 for Mac OS X or Windows is required.

Released January 18, 2010:

Quote:

Who Should Use Pro Tools HD 8.0.3cs1?

Even if you do not use an Eleven Rack, this update is recommended for all Pro Tools HD, LE, and M-Powered version 8.0.3 users to provide session compatibility with other users that may have an Eleven Rack.

What’s Included in Pro Tools 8.0.3cs1?

Fixed: Some Eleven Rack features, HyperControl with M-Audio keyboards, and MIDI Sysex dumps not functioning properly in Pro Tools 8.0.3 (Items #120240 and MISCCOMP-61)

  • Pro Tools 8.0.3cs1 resolves an issue with MIDI Sysex in which some functions of Eleven|Rack, HyperControl with M-Audio keyboards, and MIDI Sysex dumps would not function properly.
  • This release replaces the 8.0.3 Eleven Rack Update. All users who previously downloaded the 8.0.3 Eleven Rack Update should update to 8.0.3cs1.

    • Fade window bug update

    Published on January 4, 2010 in bug and tips. 0 Comments Tags: .

    Following on from my post on the Fade window bug, the other person who posted on the DUC post “mrsticks” – Mark Bensi emailed me over the Christmas break.

    I’m a music editor for film, TV and music libraries. I discovered the fades dialog box bug after upgrading to PT 8 on my PPC G5. As I wrote in the DUC, I use the fades box for every fade I create because of the precision that it gives me. I realize that a lot of editors do not use this feature very often. That’s evidenced by the fact that virtually nobody else-to my knowledge- has brought this bug to Digi’s attention. 


    Now I just discovered that my PT8 version 8.0.1 will be the last and final version for my PPC Mac. It seems that the flaw will not be addressed for my particular computer. (And who knows when they will even get around to fixing this bug anyway) My only solution now is to buy a new Intel based Mac. I’m very frustrated at the idea of having to do that.

    Mark, thanks for the comments. I feel your pain. When Pro Tools 8 came out I was still running a G4 Dual 1.42Ghz machine that I had bought second hand when the G5 Power Macs changed their slots and Digi went over to pci-e cards. My solution was to buy the fastest G4 I could find which I bought second hand on Ebay and run it for as long as possible. You can read more about this in my Sound on Sound article here. I knew its days were numbered when I reviewed PT 8 for Sound on Sound as it went very very slowly but I had got a couple of very good years out of my second hand G4. So I bite the bullet and got a very good deal on an 8 core Mac Pro for around £1600 new and crossgraded my pci-x cards to pci-e cards too. However as I earn my living from this I budget for these kind of eventualities as this isn’t the first time this sort of trap has been laid. We had the same problem when PPC Macs came in.

    I would suggest you might want to look around on Ebay for a second hand Mac Pro, even a Quad core machine will be fine, and will future proof you for a good while. After all Apple are dropping PPC support from Snow Leopard as well.

    You are right, very few people use the Fade dialog box now. With the Smart tool I have the default fade shapes set the way I like them and I find I can deal with most issues with that, effectively auditioning the fade on the track. Very occasionally I will go into the Fade dialog box, usually if I want the start and finish of the fades to be in different places, but it is extremely rare. But even then I don’t tend to use the audition in the Fade window as in the early days in PT 4 it was very shaky as it used the Mac audio path to route the auditioned audio and tended to fall over so I tended to avoid it by setting the fade shapes, hitting OK and auditioning it on the track and that workflow has stuck!

    Thanks again Mark for your comments.

    6EYQXA3FCD8M

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