URGENT: Session Corruption Problem

[Dave Labrecque]

I've been working on a podcast session for an hour or so. You know how when you re-do back to the most recent session version it takes a little longer than all the other undo/redos? Well, this time it hung even longer, then SAW crashed.

It crashed trying to reopen the session. I tried opening various undo versions. They call crashed upon opening. I did the drill of disabling VST's one-by-one (by adding ".off" to the INI file names), but it still crashes. I even renamed the VST_Plugins and Native_Plugins folders. Still SAW crashes when opening the EDL or it's undo predecessors (even as it re-creates those folders on launch). The odd thing is that the template I used for this session, with all the same plugins, opens fine with and without available plugins. I think this points to a plugin not being the culprit. But, then, what could it possibly be? What could possibly be happening?

All ideas welcome. This was for a deliverable that was due twenty minutes ago, now.

[mr_es335]

Dave,

On my way out to a service call...

May I suggest install SAW into a different folder, say "SAW_Test", then copying the session files to that new installation folder and see what happens?

I will check-in when I return. I do hope that you get a resolve soon?

[Dave Labrecque]

Dave,

On my way out to a service call...

May I suggest install SAW into a different folder, say "SAW_Test", then copying the session files to that new installation folder and see what happens?

I will check-in when I return. I do hope that you get a resolve soon?

Thanks for the idea, Dell. I'm not sure what you mean by "session files," but I did a new install into a new folder and copied my VST INI files over. Crashes on the problem EDL and any of its undo files. I started from scratch on the session and then got to a point where it crashed again. Same thing. I re-installed to a new folder again, this time not copying over any of my VST INI's, and it still crashes. It's really weird. A new SAW EXE and it crashes. No pesky VST's and it crashes. Even undo files before the problem appeared crash. Not sure what to think.

I even spun off a copy ("save copy as") before I got into any of the FX tweaking, and I can't open that one.

I guess it has to be some plugin that screwing things up, but even when it's not there? And "retroactively" (on pre-crash EDL spin-offs and undos)? I'm stumped.

Maybe Bob can shed some light.

[SoundSuite]

Dave,
This is an outside the program thought to try...
Do a chkdsk and make sure your drive isn't developing bad sectors.

If you do not prefer to use the command line, you can open "This PC" or "My Computer", rt.click on the drive and select Properties.
Then select the Tools tab and hit "Check" button on the Error Checking panel.

It may take a while for it to scan and fix any errors found, but well worth the test to make sure it's not the drive itself.

[Dave Labrecque]

Dave,
This is an outside the program thought to try...
Do a chkdsk and make sure your drive isn't developing bad sectors.

If you do not prefer to use the command line, you can open "This PC" or "My Computer", rt.click on the drive and select Properties.
Then select the Tools tab and hit "Check" button on the Error Checking panel.

It may take a while for it to scan and fix any errors found, but well worth the test to make sure it's not the drive itself.

Thanks for the idea. It happened again when starting over with a fresh EDL, so it seems unlikely to be a "disk" problem (SSD, here). Am also able to open similar (though not identical) sessions without issue. Maybe I'll give it a try tonight, though.

[SoundSuite]

I'm assuming you did the executable gig in the new test directory... Rt.Click, Properties, run as admin, etc.
...following to see how it pans out, best wishes!

[UpTilDawn]

2 things that come to mind for me, after reading through the posts, are:

1- corrupted original track file(s)
2- some file or files that are associated with an external drive (or partition) that is not currently engaged.

That's all I got at the moment.

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm assuming you did the executable gig in the new test directory... Rt.Click, Properties, run as admin, etc.
...following to see how it pans out, best wishes!

Thanks. You know, I didn't even think to make all those compatibility settings for the new SS EXE installs. But I've been running NOT as admin for a week or so without issues (I'm told this simply allows you to force real-time priority class, which I haven't been doing). And the new EXE's appear to have defaulted to Windows 8 compatibility mode, which is what I've been doing for weeks, now. So, Windows must've made a note of that and done it automatically with these installs.

Regardless, the newer EXE's seem to run fine except in the case of today's problem EDLs.

[Dave Labrecque]

2 things that come to mind for me, after reading through the posts, are:

1- corrupted original track file(s)
2- some file or files that are associated with an external drive (or partition) that is not currently engaged.

That's all I got at the moment.

I'd started to think that your first guess is the answer, UTD. It occurred to me that those original files are the only commonality between all the crashing EDLs I've created. And, come to think of it, they are two hour-long files that should be in sync for their duration and have the same length (both tracked simultaneously in Chrome during a multiple-remote Internet connection), but one of them is shorter and loses about a second of sync toward the end. I bet that file is corrupt.

I've rendered copies of the originals in Sound Forge and moved forward cautiously with these as the foundation of the session. Instead of doing all the processing of each track on the fly, I'm rendering the processes to new track layers one at a time, then deleting the plug-ins when I don't need them to move forward. So far so good. Of course, it's not going to help me nail down the exact issue this way, but I bet it's that one sound file!

Good thinking.

[jmh]

Try looking at the file properties in the audio of that edl and the edl - compare to working files. I had an issue a couple of years ago with something like that. It might have been in the advanced permissions (don't quote me on that detail).