Very long wait whilst loading heavy VI session

[Jonik]

Hi,

 

I do a lot of work with Virtual Instruments, mostly inside Kontakt 5. I do use external midi quite a bit though.

 

When Loading some of the larger sessions though there's a rather long wait. After search/locating any audio that's not where it used to be/different computer last opened the session, I get asked if I want to ignore or reassign the GM device that is no longer connected. However, there's a beach-ball at this stage. When it finally allows me to click a button it then continues to be really slow, with a long wait with no Logic screens visible, until at least a minute later it pops up. At most of these points it looks like it has crashed and right clicking the Logic icon says it is not responding.

 

 

I realise having 70 odd VIs with loads of plugins will take longer than usual, but even on a new 12 core mac pro its taking a rather long time. What's Logic doing around the time of the GM device window?

 

Thanks,

 

Jonik

[David Nahmani]

During the session load, your Mac has to transfer a lot of files from HD to RAM: samples, apple loops, any flexed/follow-tempo audio files, etc... Your Mac's CPU speed or number of core cannot help that operation, what can help that operation be faster is a fast hard drive (such as an SSD). The more samples you use in a session, and the larger those samples, the longer it's going to take to open that session. I know some film composers here in Los Angeles that have templates filled with sampler instruments for every instrument of the orchestra, and they are counting on their assistant/tech to show up to the studio an hour earlier just to open the template, which can take a looong time.

[deckard1]

During the session load, your Mac has to transfer a lot of files from HD to RAM: samples, apple loops, any flexed/follow-tempo audio files, etc... Your Mac's CPU speed or number of core cannot help that operation, what can help that operation be faster is a fast hard drive (such as an SSD). The more samples you use in a session, and the larger those samples, the longer it's going to take to open that session. I know some film composers here in Los Angeles that have templates filled with sampler instruments for every instrument of the orchestra, and they are counting on their assistant/tech to show up to the studio an hour earlier just to open the template, which can take a looong time.

 

In no way do I mean to hijack this thread, but, are you saying that the 'spinning beach ball' is directly related to the type of hard drive you have your samples on and not your CPU speed or the number of cores you have?

 

Thanks.

[David Nahmani]

No. A spinning beach ball is just an indicator that your Mac (or an app, or a window...) is busy doing something and is unavailable to the user. Here I am addressing a specific issue which is the time you open a Logic project file.

[deckard1]

No. A spinning beach ball is just an indicator that your Mac (or an app, or a window...) is busy doing something and is unavailable to the user. Here I am addressing a specific issue which is the time you open a Logic project file.

 

Okay. Thanks!

[Jonik]

Right, so the pause/wait part of loading a session in this instance is the transferring of samples into the RAM? So in my particular case the new Mac Pro's SSD (PCIe) and RAM is faster than my Macbook Pro's SSD (SATAIII) and RAM, with thespeed of the external SSDs that hold the samples added into the mix (RAIDed SSDs over thunderbolt vs SATAIII SSDs on internal/USB3)? Nothing to do with anything else?

 

Once I open Logic, open this session and wait til it's open, then close the session and open it again, it does still take a while to open. Should it not be quicker now as it has previously been held in RAM, or does the computer have to go through this process with every new logic file?

 

Thanks for the info, it's nice to know exactly what I'm waiting for! As it was pausing around the GM MIDI window I was wondering if that had something to do with it.

[David Nahmani]

Right, so the pause/wait part of loading a session in this instance is the transferring of samples into the RAM? So in my particular case the new Mac Pro's SSD (PCIe) and RAM is faster than my Macbook Pro's SSD (SATAIII) and RAM, with thespeed of the external SSDs that hold the samples added into the mix (RAIDed SSDs over thunderbolt vs SATAIII SSDs on internal/USB3)? Nothing to do with anything else?

Correct, it's just the time it takes to load the project file and all RAM-based media from the HD to the RAM.

 

Once I open Logic, open this session and wait til it's open, then close the session and open it again, it does still take a while to open. Should it not be quicker now as it has previously been held in RAM, or does the computer have to go through this process with every new logic file?

Every time you open a project you have to transfer its data from HD to RAM.

 

That's basically how computers work in general: take a computer that's turned off, and turn it on: you're loading the OS from HD to RAM so you can use it. Open an app: you're loading the app's code from HD to RAM so you can use that app. Open a file in that app: you're loading the file's code from HD to RAM so you can work on that file.

[Jonik]

Sure. I had thought that if you open your template and let that all load into RAM, any future sessions based on that template will take less time as it's moved into Inactive, rather than Free. As a result you can spend an hour loading the template in the morning, but writing multiple cues won't result in the same hour long loading time.

 

Probably wrong though!

 

Another question if that's ok? -

 

With large sessions on machines that can't quite run them, filling the RAM to the brim and then filling another 20gb of virtual memory, the machine will get heavily sluggish and crash, beachball etc, resulting in needing to force shutdown the computer. Is there a way to limit what gets loaded into RAM so that the computer will still run, but the session might not play? Sometimes the sessions have lots of empty tracks which could be deleted to help run on lesser machines, but it crashes before you can even do anything..!

Is it the lesser amount of RAM on the machine that is causing the crashes, less CPU, less...?

 

Thanks very much

[David Nahmani]

Sure. I had thought that if you open your template and let that all load into RAM, any future sessions based on that template will take less time as it's moved into Inactive, rather than Free.

I'm not following you? Wether you load a new project based on the same template or not is not related to wether the project is moved to inactive or free RAM. And anyway I'm not sure why you'd think that transferring data from HD to inactive RAM is faster than from HD to free RAM?

 

As a result you can spend an hour loading the template in the morning, but writing multiple cues won't result in the same hour long loading time.

 

Probably wrong though!

Yes, that's wrong. Logic doesn't have the capability to keep in RAM data that is common amongst different project files (unfortunately). That's why a lot of film composers use a slave computer with VEP to host large sample libraries: to keep a common template of sample libraries open on the slave machine, that is continuously available to any Logic project files on the master machine.

 

With large sessions on machines that can't quite run them, filling the RAM to the brim and then filling another 20gb of virtual memory, the machine will get heavily sluggish and crash, beachball etc, resulting in needing to force shutdown the computer. Is there a way to limit what gets loaded into RAM so that the computer will still run, but the session might not play? Sometimes the sessions have lots of empty tracks which could be deleted to help run on lesser machines, but it crashes before you can even do anything..!

Is it the lesser amount of RAM on the machine that is causing the crashes, less CPU, less...?

You could disable the Core Audio driver in Logic's audio preferences, then load the desired project file, remove whatever instruments you don't need, then enable the Core Audio driver.

[Jonik]

Sure. I had thought that if you open your template and let that all load into RAM, any future sessions based on that template will take less time as it's moved into Inactive, rather than Free.

I'm not following you? Wether you load a new project based on the same template or not is not related to wether the project is moved to inactive or free RAM. And anyway I'm not sure why you'd think that transferring data from HD to inactive RAM is faster than from HD to free RAM?

 

As a result you can spend an hour loading the template in the morning, but writing multiple cues won't result in the same hour long loading time.

 

Probably wrong though!

Yes, that's wrong. Logic doesn't have the capability to keep in RAM data that is common amongst different project files (unfortunately). That's why a lot of film composers use a slave computer with VEP to host large sample libraries: to keep a common template of sample libraries open on the slave machine, that is continuously available to any Logic project files on the master machine.

 

Ah ok, my understanding was wrong then.

 

With large sessions on machines that can't quite run them, filling the RAM to the brim and then filling another 20gb of virtual memory, the machine will get heavily sluggish and crash, beachball etc, resulting in needing to force shutdown the computer. Is there a way to limit what gets loaded into RAM so that the computer will still run, but the session might not play? Sometimes the sessions have lots of empty tracks which could be deleted to help run on lesser machines, but it crashes before you can even do anything..!

Is it the lesser amount of RAM on the machine that is causing the crashes, less CPU, less...?

You could disable the Core Audio driver in Logic's audio preferences, then load the desired project file, remove whatever instruments you don't need, then enable the Core Audio driver.

 

Cool, yeah I do that when needed at the moment. Do you know if there's a way of increasing the amount that can go into virtual memory (if that even would help) to try and get the session actually running? Ideally I'd like it to run on the laptop!

 

I expect that its a RAM issue and any machine (no matter how new or powerful) with 16gb RAM just won't play it? I wouldn't want to buy a new top of the line 15" MBP and still have the same issues..!

 

Thanks again,

 

Jonik