PT 7.0 M-Powered on the PC

[Bob L]

OK... help!

I am trying to open some PT 6.9 sessions in PT 7.0 M-Powered on a PC.

The drive I have been handed is a FAT32 formatted drive, but it contains some weird files I have never seen before.

Each session has its own folder... in the folder are files called...
._.DS_STORE and .DS_STORE

Then there is a session folder under that with two more of those files and...
._Session.pts and Session.pts files.

Under that are two more folders called Audio Files and Fade Files... these are wav files and do read and play correctly in SAWStudio.

When I try to open the Session.pts file, the system goes to mars... hangs indefinitely and it takes a reboot of the machine to clear the program and the soundcard hardware from a lockup.

Is this disk some kind of mis-copied Mac disk with resource files that were not properly copied?

Any ideas how I can get these open to convert for SAWStudio. Anybody?

The program will open the demo .ptf session ok and playback... but none of these other .pts sessions... and there are about a dozen ... they all do the same thing.

Bob L

[Tree Leopard]

Bob,

DS_STORE is just a bunch of instructions for OSX on how to display the contents of the folder / window position etc. Each time anything is saved from Mac these files will be written. Likewise, if you open a zip made on a MAC you'll see the same.

The PT experts will chime in soon (we hope) but here's a couple bookmarks from DigiWeld Inc which might help ...

http://www.digidesign.com/compato/ [ compatibility ]
http://www.digidesign.com/support/docs/ [ general tech specs ]

Andre

PS: Ah-ha ... just spotted something about .ptf / .pts formats -
http://www.digidesign.com/compato/sessions/

[johndale]

Bob, I'm not laughing at you, just with you. My drummer has that setup, but he is not awake yet, if this not resolved by then I'll go do what I been doing to open those projects in SAW. But sounds like to me you do have Mac files. And with that I'm clueless. Good luck Bob.
John

[Bob L]

This gets messier the more you dive in... thanks for the links... all I can say is I am soooooooo grateful for SAWStudio after experiencing this. :)

Bob L

[Mark Stebbeds]

Bob,

As Andre said, the DS files are written by the Mac. Just leave them alone.

I don't have an explanation for why you can't open the session. I just recently installed 7.0 HD on a Mac, but haven't had any problems at all opening 6.9 sessions. I don't have any experience with PT on a PC.

If you're still having problems, I suggest you go to the DUC. Not as lightning fast response from tech support as you provide, but plenty of knowledgable users that may be able to help.

FWIW, it sounds like you are doing everything right, so you may have a corrupted file, and yeah, maybe it's a Mac to FAT 32 thing.

If you want to send me something, I'll see if I can open it.

Good luck.

Mark

[Bob L]

I can open the ptf demo session ok... so I am guessing the software install is good. I can then consolidate tracks and resave ok... I have also even saved the session as a PT5 pts session and opened that in EDL Convert and converted to a SS session ok.

But for some reason... these pts session files just hang the system with the hourglass cursor forever and then lock up the audio hardware and force me to reboot the sytem.... every time so far.

I am trying some other stuff today.

Bob L

[Mark Stebbeds]

Then there is a session folder under that with two more of those files and...
._Session.pts and Session.pts files.



After reading you post a second time....

This "._" at the front of the filename leads me to believe something is wacky or corrupt. I seem to recall seeing this before on a session that would not open, but I can't confirm it. There should only be one session file and one set of audio and fades.

Mark

[Mark Stebbeds]

Any ideas how I can get these open to convert for SAWStudio. Anybody?



A reply that I received from a user on the DUC follows...Not sure if he means the orignal session save. This is starting to ring a bell....I remember having trouble simpyl copying the files from the PC to Mac, or vice versa. It may need to be copied/saved to a new folder from within the session when going accross formats.



"You might want to try doing a File->Save Copy In...
making sure the audio files are copied too . and in .WAV
format .. and make sure session portability is also
enabled.

I open 6.9 sessions from the Mac all the time .. so it's
nothing intrinsic to PT7.

Jeff"

[TotalSonic]

I'm really taking a shot in the dark here - but if the corruption is indeed occuring because you are missing the Mac resource fork for these PT session files then you might be able to correctly open them if you have MacDrive installed on your DAW -

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Bob L]

I did install an update to PT 7.1... no difference.

I also installed MacDrive, but the drive came up as a PC drive... although it seems that the files may have simply been copied from a MAC... these resource forks (I'm assumming are the weird filenames) may not have been properly combined back into the main file as it may need for the PC.

I never did understand Resource Forks on a MAC... what are they for... and when transferring to the PC do these forks get assimilated into the PC header file or something.

Is there some command function on MacDrive I can use to select these paired files and somehow combine them to a PC single file?

Bob L

[Kris]

I have had this problem when copying from mac DVD's to PC. It is usually the case that their is illegal file name charachters. Try to copy just the session file over to a new folder that you create using the origninal name of the song, then create 2 new folders inside the session folder, 1 called Audio Files and 1 called Fade Files. Make sure the punctuation is exactly the same as the folders from your fat 32 drive. Then open up the original audio files folder and select the audio files, copy them, and then paste them into the newly created audio files folder on your new drive (inside the new session folder) Do the same for the fade files. (You do not need the fade files, PT can recreate them once the session is open.)
Then try to open your session, PT will prompt you by saying that your disk allocation has changed. (Just click ok or see the new allocation)
DO NOT COPY THE PLUG IN SETTINGS FOLDER. That is usually the culprate in this situation, but it still requires this workaround.
If its the same problem I have experienced, I hope this helps, if not, then I just wrote a really long run on sentence:D

Dam this cross platform stuff:mad:

Heres to SAW
Kris

[DBenkert]

Bob, do you know if when the PT session was saved it had the "Ensure Mac/PC Compatibility" checked? I think this is what the response to Mark S on the DUC was about.

Just a shot in the dark.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Pro Tools 6.x session files have the .PTS extension and need to be saved explicitly for Mac/PC compatibility. Pro Tools 7.x session files have the extension .PTF and are always Mac/PC compatible.

On a Mac files can be split into 2 sections, a data fork and a resource fork -- on NTFS this is called streams. If you copy a file on a Mac to a FAT32 drive which has forks, the resource fork is lost. It's recommended to use HFS+ formatted drives and MacDrive from www.mediafour.com for sharing files between Mac users and XP users. I highly recommend against using FAT32 formatted drives. OS X, while it supports split files, they recommend they no longer be used -- older file formats like sd2 require the resource forks for saving their header info.

With Pro Tool 6.7 (and later) if you have a session saved without being explicily saved as Mac/PC compatible - you can mount the drive with MacDrive and Pro Tools will open the .PTS file and copy/convert the session to Mac/PC compatible.

On the Mac, the session can be saved as Mac/PC compatible using the File menu option Save Session Copy In...

If the files have been copied to a FAT32 formatted drive -- odds are they can't be recombined.

You can try emailing me one of the .PTS files and let me see if I can open it here.

Oh yes -- files with resource forks also can't be transferred over a network, they should first be BinHexed or "Stuffed" (with Stuffit).

Hope this helps.

Rail

[Bob L]

Thanks for the info... I am thinking it is something like the Mac/PC compatible thing... I may try installing MacDrive again to see about the mounting concept...

I'll see what happens.

Bob L

[studio-c]

After reading you post a second time....

This "._" at the front of the filename leads me to believe something is wacky or corrupt. I seem to recall seeing this before on a session that would not open, but I can't confirm it. There should only be one session file and one set of audio and fades.

Mark

Whenever I am given soundfiles from a Final Cut Pro editor, the folder always contains two sets of files, one starting with ._ and the other normal:
guitar.aif
._guitar.aif

I just ignore the ._ and convert the others into wavs in SoundForge, then make regions for them in SS. But I'm not trying to re-create their session, merely reconstructing it on the SS timeline.

I always wondered what those were, but learned to ignore them. I figured they were Mac's way of dictating a filetype or what app it should be opened with, since the Mac'ers I know don't always like to bother with the .xxx filetype stuff. I'll lurk and learn with you :-)

Scott

[Mark Stebbeds]

Whenever I am given soundfiles from a Final Cut Pro editor, the folder always contains two sets of files, one starting with ._ and the other normal:
guitar.aif
._guitar.aif

I just ignore the ._ and convert the others into wavs in SoundForge, then make regions for them in SS. But I'm not trying to re-create their session, merely reconstructing it on the SS timeline.

I always wondered what those were, but learned to ignore them. I figured they were Mac's way of dictating a filetype or what app it should be opened with, since the Mac'ers I know don't always like to bother with the .xxx filetype stuff. I'll lurk and learn with you :-)

Scott

I believe in Bob's case, he can access the files just fine as you did, but he needs to open the PT session.

In a normal PT session, there is only one set of files, leading me to believe it is a Mac/PC file compatiblity thing. A few months back I was archiving a project which had files from Mac PT 6.9 as well as native PC apps. I tried to take a shortcut and copy a PT session from either a DVD or across the network onto the PC, and burn a new archive DVD from the PC. When I put that DVD into the Mac, I could not open the session.

If I find some time later today, I will try to recreate how to screw it up, and share it with you. Only now I have PT 7.1, which is always PC compatable, it may not work. (or it may not NOT work:))

Mark

[Bob L]

I am going to try to contact some Digi support... let's see what happens.

Bob L

[magicchord]

Isn't there an option in PT where you choose to "enforce mac/pc compatibility"? As it was explained to me, it's all about file naming conventions or avoiding characters that are illegal in the Windows world.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

I am going to try to contact some Digi support... let's see what happens.

While their support is good -- I think they'll be no more help than we have.

The 2 files are the resource fork and the data fork -- this is discussed on the link at:

http://robertmoir.com/blogs/someone_else/archive/2006/02/21/2109.aspx

There apparently is a method to recombine the forks on a Mac -- see the thread at:

http://mobileusersync.com/content/view/15/1/

(You can send me the session files if you need to have someone do this for you)

Rail

[Mark Stebbeds]

(You can send me the files if you need to have someone do this for you)



Maybe you don't even need the audio files to make the .pts file email-able. If you can open the session and repair, PT can "find" the audio later?

Just curious..

Mark

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Right - I was referring to only the .PTS file (and it's associated file) -- the audio files are WAV files I believe (if I recall the first post correctly).

Rail

[Mark Stebbeds]

Right - I was referring to only the .PTS file (and it's associated file) -- the audio files are WAV files I believe (if I recall the first post correctly).

Rail


Hmm...now you got me thinking. Would the fade files directory need to be included for the repair/resave?

Mark

[Rail Jon Rogut]

No, if you delete the fade folder -- the fades will be recreated.

Rail

[Mark Stebbeds]

No, if you delete the fade folder -- the fades will be recreated.

Rail

Good to know. Thanks.

So why is there a fades folder? Hope it's not a dumb question.:-)

Mark

[Rail Jon Rogut]

The fades are created as audio files in the Fades file -- so if you load the session it'll use the prebuilt fade files. If you open the session and the fade files are missing -- Pro Tools will regenerate the fade audio files. This can take a while if there are thousands of fades... so it's faster to use the existing fades. Similarly in Pro Tools 7.x the cache file is kept in the session folder for the file overviews. In previous builds the cache file was deleted when the session was closed.

Rail

[Mark Stebbeds]

The fades are created as audio files in the Fades file -- so if you load the session it'll use the prebuilt fade files. If you open the session and the fade files are missing -- Pro Tools will regenerate the fade audio files. This can take a while if there are thousands of fades... so it's faster to use the existing fades. Similarly in Pro Tools 7.x the cache file is kept in the session folder for the file overviews. In previous builds the cache file was deleted when the session was closed.

Rail

Thanks. More good info.

Mark

[Pedro Itriago]

Man...don't take this the wrong way, but with all this fade stuff, can you spell convoluted?

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Man...don't take this the wrong way, but with all this fade stuff, can you spell convoluted?

Why? It's completely invisible to the user (as is evident by the fact that Mark wasn't aware of how it functioned).

This is no different than the Peak Data Files that SAW creates.

Rail

[Bob L]

Thanks for the info.

The PTS file never even starts to open the session... it goes to the hourglass and that's all she wrote.

It does'nt seem to get to the point of looking for audio files or fade files.

I may take the drive over to a Mac and see if the sessions open there... then if so... perhaps I can save again making sure the Mac/PC compatibility option is set.

Bob L

[Mark Stebbeds]

Why? It's completely invisible to the user (as is evident by the fact that Mark wasn't aware of how it functioned).



I knew that. I was just seeing if you did.:)

Mark

[studio-c]

Sorry if this is too simplistic, but I used to have a program called MacOpener that solved some of the compatibility issues. (www.dataviz.com)
I believe this connects up the app associations with the data files or something. In the old days, Windows was more finicky about Mac files and this helped from time to time. Often I found that the Mac files didn't have the .xxx extensions, and if you knew what it was SUPPOSED to be (because they didn't think they HAD to add it to the filename) you could rename the file with the extension, and get the thing to work. (Reminds me of that option in Windows to "hide file extensions". Why in the world would you want to do that? Are they too scary?) Maybe that's what MacOpener does, analyze the file and determine the correct app. I don't know really.

But translating an actual PT session is a bigger issue entirely so I'll go back to lurking now :)

Scott

[Rail Jon Rogut]

MacDrive is better than MacOpener -- MacOpener doesn't have FireWire support.. while MacDrive does.

They both do the same thing.

Rail

[bit]

I haven't got time to read all the replies in this thread cause my daughter want's my attention, but have you tried to import the tracks into a new session instead of opening the session directly? If you are on a pc I don't think these forks should matter at all. It might also be some weird letters from the mac that's causing you trouble. Try renaming files that look like this =)(&/#%. You might also want to rename the mac file to whatever.pts If none of this work you might have to get the guys who gave you the session to export it again using the save copy in function and make sure it's exported as pc/mac compatible. Then you won't get the filename problems.


good luck.
BIT

[bit]

Or you can use edl-convert. Then you can get straight into saw. :-)
Bjørn

[bit]

Or you can use edl-convert. Then you can get straight into saw. :-)
Bjørn
Sorry, I forgot. Then it would have a PT5 session.

Bjørn

[Mark Stebbeds]

Sorry, I forgot. Then it would have a PT5 session.


A newer version of Pro Tools can open 5.0 and save as 5.0, so that's not a problem, although there are differences in stereo tracks and a few other things.

But if the PT session file is corrupted, it can't be opened by anything, which seems to be the problem Bob is having.

Mark

[Bob L]

I tried the import command after creating a new session and the system hangs exactly the same way when I click on the pts session to import... everything locks... the hourglass stays fozen... the titlebar changes to (Not Responding)... I let it sit for about 10 mins... then finally shut it down with the Task Manager... this happens everytime I try to open one of these sessions.

I have not gotten over to a Mac system yet to see if the sessions open on the MAC or if this data is just completely corrupt.

Bob L

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Bob

Email me the .PTS file and the associated file which starts with the period with the same name (no audio) -- I'll try and reassemble them here on my Mac.

railro@earthlink.net


Rail

[Bob L]

Ok... I'll send it now.

Bob L

[Mark Stebbeds]

Email me the .PTS file and the associated file which starts with the period with the same name (no audio) -- I'll try and reassemble them here on my Mac.

Ok... I'll send it now.


Please let us know how this works out. Many of us are lurking to learn about the pitfalls of saving on Mac for PC.

Mark

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Hey Mark

I had no luck -- OS X sees the 2 files and knows they're associated.. but something's missing -- Pro Tools complains that the end of the file(s) are missing (-39 error).

I tried using the Resource Fixer utility and that didn't help either.

I contacted my friend at Digi, whose their top design tech, and they can't fix the files (I'm guessing they probably could, but don't have the time to). This isn't a Pro Tools bug, but a transfer issue on Mac when using FAT32 drives. This is the number one reason why I always recommend folks use HFS+ formatted drives and MacDrive. In a future revision of Pro Tools you'll be able to record and playback HFS+ formatted drives if you have the latest version of MacDrive installed.

At this point Bob's best bet is to try using BWF Helper to get the time stamps of the WAV files (or use SPOT Mode in Pro Tools and create a new session) -- or if they still have the sessions on the Mac somewhere.. save those as Mac/PC compatible and emailing them to Bob.

Rail

[Mark Stebbeds]

Hey Mark

I had no luck -- OS X sees the 2 files and knows they're associated.. but something's missing -- Pro Tools complains that the end of the file(s) are missing (-39 error).
<snip>
This isn't a Pro Tools bug, but a transfer issue on Mac when using FAT32 drives. This is the number one reason why I always recommend folks use HFS+ formatted drives and MacDrive.

Thanks for the update.

IIRC, I created a similarly corrupted file with the same file name wierdness by either copying a session to DVD and then to FAT32, or going across a network, I can't quite remember. Fortunately I was able to fix it because I had the original session on the Mac.

When I first got Mac PT, I started out by carrying a FAT32 firewire drive to use as a "multi-platform" storage device, but have also been advised by many that HFS+ and MacDrive is a better solution to go between platforms.

Mark

[Bob L]

Thanks guys for the help... not sure if there will be a good result here.

I will see if the sessions can be re-saved somehow... but I believe the original sessions were not done in the USA and may not be directly accessable.

Bob L

[bit]

I think it's worth trying to open the session on a different PC-based PT HD/LE setup. Have you tried to import the tracks one by one?

Bj***248;rn

[Rail Jon Rogut]

I tried "Import Session Data" -- the session files are corrupt.

Rail

[Pedro Itriago]

-- the session files are corrupt.

Rail

I'd try and start a hearing to see if we can find who the corrupt files are on that session and make them pay. For a clean parliament, stop session corruption!! Danm lobbyist

Yeah, I know. I'm channeling a clown today. Silly morning, I guess.

[olzzon]

Thanks guys for the help... not sure if there will be a good result here.

I will see if the sessions can be re-saved somehow... but I believe the original sessions were not done in the USA and may not be directly accessable.

Bob L

You could try and contact the developer, that´s what i do when i have a problem in Saw, and then he´ll fix it a couple of hours later.
Not sure Pro tools is handled that way though:D:D

[Mark Stebbeds]

You could try and contact the developer, that´s what i do when i have a problem in Saw, and then he´ll fix it a couple of hours later.
Not sure Pro tools is handled that way though:D:D

The developers would be Apple and Microsoft, since this is not a Pro Tools or SAWStudio problem at all, but simply a Mac to PC compatabilty issue.

Mark