Plugins, Routing and I/O Shifted like crazy Very Odd

[alexrkopp]

Hey everyone,

 

Was working on a demo for a Film project today. Nearly done, when i went to Export audio to movie.. Accidentally hit, Import audio from movie.. SHould be no issue, just hit undo and remove that audio track that it added.. Simple..

but something weird happened..

 

Logic shifted all of my plugins and Ins/Outs to randomness.. At first i thought that some how the plugins all maybe like moved down a channel or something but there was no order to it..

 

For Example: I have everything broken into Summing folders / buses . Drums, Keys, Bass, Strings, ETC. which are Bus 1, 2, 3, 4 ETC.

 

Some how this process like changed everything around. every track in Say the Drums Sub, was now going to random number different busses as the outputs, as well as those audio and midi tracks had the plugins and inserts from say a strings track...

 

In the edit window it looked correct but there was no method to the order of which it moved things.. When you played back Midi that was a strings part was playing a kick drum and going out the vocal buss..

 

Whats extra odd is it like turned buses to Faux instrument tracks.. A bus in the mix window no longer had a fader. One some how had an instrument on its input even though it was an audio bus...

 

One of the strangest things ive ever had happen and Undo ETC. was not reverting it.. Luckily the session was a smaller one so just by trial and error i was able to realign things.. i think..

 

Has anyone ever had something similar happen? If so what caused it, and how did you fix it / prevent it next time?

 

 

Thanks in advance for any input

[David Nahmani]

I've never seen this and I have no idea what could have caused it. Unless you had multiple projects open at the same time? That is known to mess up plug-ins in the Mixer. Other than that, I don't know.

 

To prevent anything like that messing up your project just make sure you save at regular intervals and always have backups that you can easily revert to. My apologies if I'm stating the obvious but having been bitten more than once I always religiously secure multiple versions of backups of the current project at various stages of the production process, should I ever need to revert to them for whatever reason.

[David Nahmani]

Apparently it turns out that this issue is tied with importing audio from movie.

[question]

Hi Alex,

David has sent me over to your topic, which seems related to my issue.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=153815&p=806045#p806045

I have also had the same chaos happen twice in the past few weeks.

I imported the audio from a 90 minute film into an existing Logic project, which has many existing audio, software instruments, midi objects and busses etc..

I did not make the connection to the film audio import causing the problem, probably because I think I did an audio bounce on the arrange window shortly thereafter.

Normally I import the film and its audio into the project before I start creating tracks and instruments to start writing, but this time I recieved a new cut from the film, which then required me to import it into an existing project.

Since I don't work this way very often, I don't know if this problem existed before my current Logic version (10.5)

 

I will do a test when I have some time to see if we can determine if this is the cause so that we can avoid it with a work-around.

This is really dangerous because, as we both noted, the undo function is of no help.

I make backups constantly, but that is not much help if the undo funtion does not capture the chaos so to speak.

 

If I can repeat the issue, I will write again on your thread.

 

If anone else has any insights, please share your wisdom!

Edited December 6, 2020 by question

[David Nahmani]

If one of you can find a way to make this issue reproducible then that will go a long way toward helping out the programmers figure out how to fix it.

[question]

Today I tested importing a film and its audio into an existing project, and it worked fine.

This means one of two things; either it is an intermittent bug or something else is causing the chaos.

Alex seemed sure that his film audio import caused the issue, I can not say definitively that that is what caused it for me.

In addition to importing a film and its audio, I did a few other edits before I noticed that something went wrong.

 

Does anyone else have this issue or is willing to see if you can reproduce this on your system?

 

Just open a film and import its audio into a project that has multiple audio, MIDI and software instruments and see if the track assignments become jumbled.

 

Thanks!

[Barefoot]

I also have this bug. But for me it has nothing to do with importing audio/movie etc. The thing that stands out for me in these bugged projects is that I’ve used channel strip settings that I’ve gotten from a friend of mine. I really wanna use these channel strip settings so it’s annoying.

[question]

Barefoot, I also have a few imported channel strip settings in this project.

I don't know if that is relevant, but it might be worth investigating as a possible factor.

It seems we all have one common action; creating or deleting tracks. ie. Importing movie track, bouncing and creating a track automatically, busses, metronome disappearing etc.

I am not a programmer, so I don't know if this helps get to a solution.

[David Nahmani]

Barefoot, I also have a few imported channel strip settings in this project.

How were the CSS imported into the project?

[Barefoot]

Okay good to know! Could it maybe be that those saved channel strips have their instrument numbers etc saved in the environment, and then it’s trying to force occupy its last instrument number and therefor moving stuff around?

[question]

Hi David,

I believe in the browser I imported a few CSS with their associated midi objects.

It could be possible that I also loaded a CSS in the mixer from ones that I had saved in another project.

I am working on a film so I am constantly switching between several projects, which have different scenes.

The various content; midi, audio and channel strips, are imported as I need them. Could this be a cause?

I have always worked this way without these issues.

[David Nahmani]

I am working on a film so I am constantly switching between several projects, which have different scenes.

The various content; midi, audio and channel strips, are imported as I need them. Could this be a cause?

Do you sometimes keep one project open while you open another one?

[Barefoot]

I am working on a film so I am constantly switching between several projects, which have different scenes.

The various content; midi, audio and channel strips, are imported as I need them. Could this be a cause?

Do you sometimes keep one project open while you open another one?

 

No never.

[David Nahmani]

Ok, I just had to ask ... because up until recently, when users reported these types of issues, they were consistently traced back to having multiple projects open simultaneously (which IMO should be made impossible in Logic to avoid the issue altogether). Sorry to hear it's not that simple in your case.

[question]

Barefoot,

I don't know, but in any case it seems to have something to do with track management that has been changed in a recent update. I have been working this way for many years and have never once had a track, bus or routing lose its instrument-track assignment.

As someone pointed out, there is a new option to automatically create a new track when glueing audio together on the arrange window, maybe this is related as that is what caused the issue for me. (I think!)

[question]

David,

no, I do not have multiple projects open at the same time.

[Barefoot]

Ok, I just had to ask ... because up until recently, when users reported these types of issues, they were consistently traced back to having multiple projects open simultaneously (which IMO should be made impossible in Logic to avoid the issue altogether). Sorry to hear it's not that simple in your case.

 

Yes I’ve heard! Is it possible to do a diagnostic test or anything similar on a project like this to maybe see if there is a certain error? I have one project from yesterday. A very small project with a few instrumentals and a few vocal stacks. I used one of the channel strip settings on the vocals, that’s why I think it may has something to do with it

[David Nahmani]

As someone pointed out, there is a new option to automatically create a new track when glueing audio together on the arrange window, maybe this is related as that is what caused the issue for me. (I think!)

Where can this option be found? I'm could run some tests.

[Barefoot]

Barefoot,

I don't know, but in any case it seems to have something to do with track management that has been changed in a recent update. I have been working this way for many years and have never once had a track, bus or routing lose its instrument-track assignment.

As someone pointed out, there is a new option to automatically create a new track when glueing audio together on the arrange window, maybe this is related as that is what caused the issue for me. (I think!)

 

Yes that could be the case, but I’ve had this bug since late 2018/early 2019

[question]

Where can this option be found? I'm could run some tests.

 

David,

I could not find a preference to disable it, I just noticed that the behavior that I am familiar with when glueing audio objects together has changed.

It used to be that the glued objects would stay on the track on which you glued them.

In my case, perhaps I had another track selected, the audio pieces stayed unglued on the original track while creating a new track with the merged object.

[David Nahmani]

In my case, perhaps I had another track selected, the audio pieces stayed unglued on the original track while creating a new track with the merged object.

That's definitely odd and unexpected behavior. I cannot reproduce that behavior here:

 

[question]

David,

yes, I had never seen it happen before and I believe after this merge is when the chaos started.

I looked for a preference to turn it off and could not find it.

It is 9 hours ahead here, so I haven't yet started working. I will see if I can reproduce it later.

[David Nahmani]

David,

yes, I had never seen it happen before and I believe after this merge is when the chaos started.

I looked for a preference to turn it off and could not find it.

It is 9 hours ahead here, so I haven't yet started working. I will see if I can reproduce it later.

Sounds good. If this is, as I suspect, a bug (I can't think of a reason for the merged file to land on a track other than where the regions originally are) then perhaps that bug is tied to the one we're discussing here, and could help us figure out what is going on.

[question]

David, I have been unable to reproduce the behavior.

If I recall correctly, I had an audio object, which was cut into pieces, to be glued together, with some of those pieces muted.

It seem that it used to be when you would try to glue an audio file together with muted sections, a window would pop up asking if you wanted to include the muted sections.

I did not get this warning, and In this case it copied the file to another track, which I then "undid".

As you well know, the behavior that I am decribing is exactly what happens when you use "Bounce in place"; you select a different track do bounce in place and the audio appears on the selected track.

In any case, I am not exactly sure that this bounce caused the whole problem.

It is just shortly thereafter that I noticed that the tracks etc. were shuffled.

Sorry that my test was unable to confirm or get us any closer to a solution.

Thanks for your effort to try and solve this issue.

Any other users having trouble with tracks, instruments etc. being automatically re-ordered?

[question]

Shortly after writing the last post, the problem happened again.

I was unable to reproduce it again in my "test" project, but in the "real" project here is what happened:

I have an audio file cut into pieces, of which some are muted, and all are SMPTE locked.

I then glue the pieces together, which creates another track; upon deleting the new (created) track, the track order and instrument assignments in the project get shuffled.

In the "real" project I have a 90 Minute film and its audio running.

I don't know if this is a factor or not; I say that because some other users having this problem were also working with film.

 

I managed to quit Logic immediately so that any auto-save would not save the corrupted project.

Upon re-opening the project I am back to the point to where I was before the glue process.

[David Nahmani]

Shortly after writing the last post, the problem happened again.

I was unable to reproduce it again in my "test" project, but in the "real" project here is what happened:

I have an audio file cut into pieces, of which some are muted, and all are SMPTE locked.

I then glue the pieces together, which creates another track; upon deleting the new (created) track, the track order and instrument assignments in the project get shuffled.

In the "real" project I have a 90 Minute film and its audio running.

I don't know if this is a factor or not; I say that because some other users having this problem were also working with film.

 

I managed to quit Logic immediately so that any auto-save would not save the corrupted project.

Upon re-opening the project I am back to the point to where I was before the glue process.

Ok I can't seem to reproduce this bug here. If you find a way to reproduce it consistently then definitely let me know how and I'll try to reproduce it.

[question]

The problem happened again today. I can not seem to find any common action that causes this track chaos issue.

I armed an audio track, pressed record, then noticed that three audio tracks were engaged and recording.

I stopped the recording and pressed undo; that is when the tracks became shuffled.

 

I am under a bit of time pressure at the moment, so I can't dedicate too much time to experimenting.

Does anone have any ideas as to what the cause could be?

Does anyone see any clue in my decriptions that might trigger such a problem?

The only thing that seems to be common in each of my cases is that I was either creating, erasing, bouncing or importing tracks before the issue occured.

Somthing with track management is messed up.

 

Thanks!

Edited December 19, 2020 by question

[question]

Also, as is being dicussed in another thread; the metronome is also ceasing to work periodically.

I don't know if these issues could be related in any way, just another possible clue.

[David Nahmani]

Also, as is being dicussed in another thread; the metronome is also ceasing to work periodically.

I don't know if these issues could be related in any way, just another possible clue.

The issues could be related. Are you using a template that was made in a prior version of Logic?

[question]

Hi David,

Yes, I am using a template from an earlier version, but my template is very basic with just routing for 3 external hardware reverbs and a simple object in the environment that I built to have the mod wheel control the tempo variation when needed.

The rest is just a handful of audio and software instument channels with no instruments loaded.

I could easily redo my template, except I am in the middle of a film and can't easily just re-load all of my pallat of sounds etc. into a new template without risk of messing something up!

 

If you think that the old template could be an issue, I will give it a try when I am finished.

Thanks!