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ProTools Troubleshooting Techniques
Digidesign
ProTools hardware/software workstations are very capable and stable
platforms, but like all complex systems problems do occur from time
to time - typically at the worst possible times! When you have a technical
problem in the middle of a session, or as a support tech when your phone
rings and your engineer says "my system keeps crashing and I've
restarted 3 times" you need to quickly get to the root of where
a problem is occurring.
There's likely to be a long wait for phone tech support, and you may
need to pay for that service. Having a bit of knowledge in hand can
go a long way towards quickly troubleshooting technical problems.This
document is designed to help you with that process.
Know
the Major Components of your System
Isolate the Problem; Questions to
Ask
Common Problems and Solutions
When All Else Fails...
Written By:
Adam Rosen
Last update: 28 September 2007
If
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offers professional tech support and consulting
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Know the Major Components of your System
Learning
to think about your workstation as a collection of components can go
a long way towards quickly troubleshooting technical problems. I find
it helpful to think about a DAW as a combination of the following functional
blocks:
DSP Processors - the internal CPU and any added DSP cards (ProTools
HD, Accel, MIX, etc.)
Disk Storage - there may be more than one disk and/or type
of disk involved
Data Buses - PCI (all variants), IDE, SCSI, FireWire, USB2,
SATA - includes computer and expansion chassis
I/O & Networking - Ethernet, USB (or PS2/ADB) keyboard/mouse,
VGA/DVI output - Human User Interfaces
Audio & Video Interfaces - 888, 192, mBox, 002, AV Option,
Mojo, etc; any type of A-to-D or D-to-A converter
Software Issues - the Operating System and all Applications
Most
problems tend to fall into one of these functional areas, and you can
often quickly isolate the problem by asking a few targeted questions.
Some physical components (RAM, motherboard) exist across these boundaries,
but the thought process still holds. Be aware that you may have more
than one problem at a time.
Isolate
the Problem; Questions to Ask
The
following specific questions can lead you quickly down the right avenue.
These suggestions are not exhaustive, but encompass many common situations:
-
if
it's crashing, when does it crash?
During startup
or after booting but before launching ProTools
When the computer can't boot cleanly to the desktop this often indicates
an Operating System problem or an intermittent device or cable.
Remove devices and reseat cables to isolate the culprit; try booting
from another disk or a CD to test for OS problems.
When launching or quitting ProTools
The application probably can't set a value or talk to some hardware
device upon initialization or shutdown. Could be a corrupt preference
file (a very common problem), missing or bad Digi hardware, or a
loose cable.
When playing back a session in ProTools
Crashes here could indicate a bad/corrupt disk or file, data bus
errors, or bad RAM (this is somewhat rare). Usually it's a disk
or file issue, especially for full or fragmented disks.
When recording a track in ProTools
This is almost always a disk related problem; sometimes the clock
sync could be problematic, or you have various data bus errors.
When mixing or adjusting plugins
This is usually a Software Issue, you may need an update. Check
for compatibility with your hardware and version of ProTools, along
with OS compatibility. Mac users should note that plugins need to
be updated to run correctly on Apple's new Intel based hardware.
Just by asking this one question you can narrow the most likely
areas where the problem is occurring in a matter of moments and
avoid lots of fruitless labor.
-
do
you get any error messages?
In recent years modern Operating Systems (Mac OS X/WinXP) and ProTools
have gotten good at reporting problems before they crash catastrophically
- be thankful young'uns, this wasn't always the case! However it's
important to write down any error codes or messages you get, especially
if the error is a repeating one. Many people don't do this step
and then need to recreate the problem again before continuing troubleshooting.
ProTools errors are usually DAE errors and typically have error
codes. In this case you can enter the code number online in the
Digi Answerbase (available in the Support
section of digidesign.com).
If your internet connection is down, there should be a local copy
of the Answerbase inside your Digidesign folder on the hard drive.
You may find more than one entry for a given DAE
code; read them all to see if any match your problem or
if there's a common thread which sounds applicable to your rig.
Operating System errors don't always have numeric codes, but they
do have specific text you can search on for information. Google
is your friend (at least in this case), as are the Apple and Microsoft
websites. Note that Operating System errors, especially low memory
warnings, typically only avoid catastrophe the first one or two
times they appear; don't tempt fate and try to keep working. Quit
cleanly and log out or restart before making things worse.
-
does
it seems to be running fine, except you:
Can't move the mouse or type on the keyboard?
Check for loose USB cables and power cycle all USB hubs - the "Usually
Sometimes Bus" is typically good for a few intermittent problems
throughout the month. PS2 and ADB are (were) more reliable, but
you may still have a loose cable.
Can't access any network drives?
Check your ethernet cable and card, make sure cable is plugged in
and LEDs are flashing on the ethernet card. Long delays at startup
can often indicate network access problems if a previously shared
drive can't be found.
See only the desktop background, or garbage on screen?
I'd suspect a video card or cable issue, especially common after
a crash on a system with multiple monitors. Reset PRAM (aka
NVRAM) on your computer. If applicable try rebooting with your expansion
chassis off, then reboot a second time with the chassis back on.
This is often a monitor configuration issue.
Can't hear or see any session audio or video?
Probably an AV Interface problem. Power cycle all your audio and
video peripherals, or reboot the whole system (including all peripherals).
You may need to delete preference files and reconfigure.
-
isolate
by subtraction
If the problem area is not obvious or could be several things, isolate
by subtraction. Do you have both audio and video tracks in your
session? If so remove the video track from the session; if the problem
goes away then the problem is in the video clip or hardware, if
not it's in the audio chain. Disable individual tracks to find an
offending clip; move data to a different drive to isolate disk problems,
etc.
Network drives can cause all sorts of problems. I recommend only
keeping network drives mounted when needed and removing them at
the start of troubleshooting. Don't try to read or write data to/from
a networked drive while running a session unless the network is
designed for this purpose (e.g., a fibre channel SAN). Ethernet
mounted servers often work just well enough that it's hard
to know when you've hit their limits, especially with other users
concurrently accessing the network.
Common Problems and Solutions
Far
and away the biggest sources of problems I've seen are disk related.
After a drive has been in use for a while fragmentation becomes a factor.
Reformatting drives before a session is a good idea when possible; if
not, rotate sessions among different drives so you can keep defragged
disks available. Avoid letting your disks get too full, that too can
cause performance issues.
PCI Bus Too Busy (DAE Error -6042) and Disk Too Slow (DAE
Error -9073) are common and related errors that come up for many different
reasons when data can't get delivered to the DSP processors fast enough.
AV Option sessions are more susceptible to these errors as the data
throughput of these systems is higher than with audio only jobs. Restarting
often clears bottlenecks. If not, lowering the video compression rate
can help, as can splitting tracks among two or more drives per Digi's
track guidelines.
SCSI drives seem to be particularly problematic as the hardware ages,
a situation not made any easier on Macs with Apple's OSX anti-SCSI strategy.
If your computer hangs at startup or hard crashes when reading/writing
to a disk and you have a SCSI card installed, 99% chance you've found
your culprit. SCSI used to be king, but today IDE, SATA, USB2 and FireWire
are much stabler and cheaper formats.
Loose cables are often a culprit of intermittent problems. Loose PCI
cards aren't as common, but oxidation or temperature fluctuations can
cause issues. Usually removing and reseating PCI cards is enough to
cure this problem; clean the contacts with alcohol or a contact cleaner
if necessary. If you have an expansion chassis remember that this is
electrically part of your computer when attached, with a rather fragile
cable between the two units.
Searching the Digi Answerbase and Apple/Microsoft Support pages
Finding
answers to problems online can be a bit of an art. Even with today's
extensive, detailed support websites finding the tidbit of information
you need can be challenging. It helps to take a fuzzy logic approach
and cast your net wide; you may not find the exact answer to your problem,
but you can often home in on the solution with some sleuthing.
Digidesign
Tech Support • Apple
Online Support • Microsoft
Online Support
If you have a DAE
error code number, enter that into the search database. Read
all the responses, even for other versions or platforms than your own.
If your error message doesn't have a code number, enter some or all
of the message text (particularly the more technical stuff) to find
a match.
I like to use short two or three word phrases to narrow things down:
this returns more responses that involve your area of difficulty. Reading
through these can generate ideas about what to try - perhaps many of
the issues involve USB devices, or MIDI, or SCSI. Try the Digidesign
User Conference (DUC) and Tech Support articles as well as
the Digi Answerbase for info. If still no success, bow to Google
and see what you can find.
When All Else Fails...
So
you've ruled out lots of things, searched online and isolated by subtraction
but your session still crashes or stops playing. Try swapping out a
whole data bus. If you're using FireWire drives, try SATA. If SCSI,
try IDE. Different transfer rates, buffering schemes and interrupt priorities
inside your computer for the various storage schemes can change their
effectiveness depending on session/system configuration.
One key to happiness in any computing environment is having a backup.
OK - maybe not happiness, but sanity and better productivity! By keeping
a backup of your system you can recover quickly from most software related
problems or boot disk failures. Even better is when your backup is bootable
- just reboot off the backup drive and keep working. On the Mac I like
Carbon Copy Cloner
to make bootable clones (for more information see Maintaining Your
Macintosh - Backup Strategies).
Windows users can use Ghost
to make disk images for restoration.
Oh yeah, always test your bootable backups for actual bootability before
the catastrophe. Consider yourself warned...
An Achilles Heal of most software is corrupt preference files. Prefs
are typically simple text files, and a single character error can wreak
all sorts of havoc. Many applications leave their prefs document open
while running so that changes can be written real time. Unfortunately
this leaves this file easily subject to corruption if the app crashes
and the file isn't closed cleanly.
With software related problems, one of the first things to try is quit
the application and delete its preferences file. If that solves your
problem, remember to redo your system configuration as many settings
have just reverted back to factory defaults. Keep a copy of a good preferences
document around for future troubleshooting; this lets you quickly replace
damaged prefs without having to reset all your options from scratch.
Happy Troubleshooting and Good Luck!
Adam Rosen
Oakbog
offers professional tech support and consulting
services for Macintosh & ProTools users
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