Project Unresponsive After Trying to Play or Bounce

Hey guys,

 

I'm in a real bind here, and I can't figure out what's going on. I entered a film scoring competition, for which the scores were due at midnight. (They give some leeway for issues with uploads, but I'll probably be pushing it at this point, particularly since it's a problem on my end and not theirs.) Working on my Mac Pro, my project got up to about 100 tracks, though I only used about 66, and even then the content on the tracks is pretty sparse. To shake the cobwebs a couple times, I rebooted the computer, and the file would load with no issues. Toward the end of my work I started to encounter system overloads, but I was still able to work through them. When it came time to export the score to the video file, Logic hung on the bouncing progress window—no spinning whatever-we-call-it-now, and some of the UI in the background was accessible, but the bounce just stopped. I had to force quit to try again. I've since restarted several times and had to force quit Logic several times. I tried freezing tracks. It would hang. I tried changing the buffer size just to bounce the project. It would hang. I finally got it to change the buffer size to 1024, and it still hung. I've tried changing it back, and Logic continues to freeze. It's ultimately gotten to the point where it won't even start to play. Space bar and the play button on the screen both do nothing. Transport control seems to work at least until I first press play, then I get this problem. I can drag the playhead around, but the movie doesn't follow along. Incredibly, once I hit play, I can't even get it to close the project. I presume it's trying to prepare playback, but Activity Monitor and iStat show small amounts of CPU and RAM usage. Console reports that a message from LPX: "Audio engine overloaded, resetting" but doesn't seem to actually do anything.

 

I don't know if one of those force quits may have been too hasty and corrupted something in the project, or broke something the software itself, but obviously this is unacceptable. I opened the project file for last year's competition entry (54 tracks, also mostly sparsely used), and it cooperated just fine, which leads me to believe the problem is with this project. But I need to figure out how to get the damn thing to export to a movie (or at least bounce so I can do it manually), it's approaching six hours late, and I have a rehearsal in about three and a half hours that I won't get any sleep for at this rate, so any insight you all may have will be greatly appreciated.

 

ADDENDUM: Apparently I forgot to submit this post. But in the time I've been working on it still, I tried using the built-in audio instead of my FW Apogee Duet (that I know is EoL now) and it actually is cooperating now, though I'm still getting a hell of a lot of system overloads. I just don't get why when I was working on the track before and, though sluggish when selecting different tracks, I encountered no system overloads. Any ideas anyone? Thanks in advance.

How many undo steps does that project have in Logic's preferences?

30.

Just as an update, I can get it to play again (at least for now) albeit with a varying amount of overloads, but it doesn't appear to be doing anything when I try to bounce the project. The progress window comes up, but nothing on the screen is moving, and the computer sounds pretty quiet/idle. Activity Monitor reports that Logic is only using about 25% CPU, so I'm inclined to think it isn't actually working on bouncing anything but thinks it is.

Curiouser still: I tried to bounce an .aiff instead of exporting to movie. Logic does create the file, but it's just silence that lasts the duration of the project. It may just be my ignorance of the process Logic takes bouncing a project, but it's clearly doing something before it hangs.

 

Another thing I'm noticing: when Logic hangs, multiple tracks show a signal on their meters where there's no region to be played. That may also be something that happens a lot with overloads that I've never noticed before, but I figured it's worth mentioning. I'm only using Play and EXS 24 instruments and one instance of AAS GS-2, though some of those unused tracks still have the E-Piano queued up.

I have this exact problem, it only started today. Everything will play through fine, 150 channels of orchestral samples running through the PLAY engine but I can no longer bounce in place or do an offline bounce, the bounce loading bar comes up and nothing happens. It can now bounce in realtime but will no longer export to movie. I was assuming it was a hard-drive problem but am no longer sure.

 

I'm running a Mid 2010 Mac Pro; 2x 2.66ghz 6 core, 24gb ram with 250SSD boot drive.

 

If anyone has any possible solutions I'm willing to give anything a try at this point.

 

Cheers, Dan.

It's apparently an issue with the Play engine:

 

I cannot export my songs with Eastwest Hollywood Orchestra...

I'm glad you caught that post, Eric. Took me a while before I began to consider Play could be at fault. At least I won't waste time worrying about reinstalls or possible project file corruption. Thanks.

You're welcome Andrew.