automation timing destroyed by bouncing

[polanoid]

9 minutes ago, RobertAnthony said:

Annoyingly recreated all the automation like OP in this thread is trying to avoid doing, understandably so.

So there (theoretically) would be no difference at all between the two project versions, correct?

[RobertAnthony]

I mean I’m not a robot so the automation points, curves, etc might be slightly different since I redid them by hand lol, and I’ve been known to add extraneous automation points when automation is being weird (usually when it’s not playing back real-time or not being included in a bounced file, basically trying to force Logic to not miss the automation changes by going down to -inf, before automating up to the desired dB level for example).

So if there’s any difference between the two projects at that point, it would have been the automation on the Track Stack and contained tracks. Just deleting it all and redoing it is what I credit for fixing the issue.

 

Edited September 26, 2022 by RobertAnthony

[polanoid]

In the thread you are referencing, you write "stepped away from the computer to get a bite to eat and came back to the automation (volume and various plugin parameters) playing about 1/8th note too soon on a Track Stack folder" which would mean that this happened without you changing anything? Did you try to save the song and restart Logic when that happened?

[RobertAnthony]

Saved the project before stepping away. After I got back and heard the playback sounding off, I closed and opened Logic, rebooted several times. I probably left that out as I wasn’t in a “troubleshooting” mindset yet, only after I realized “Yeah, something’s screwed up…”.
 

I would suggest OP to try the steps I listed, but most of them were dependent on me having a previous, different file to use for importing from, etc., which it doesn’t sound like OP has?

[yks]

17 hours ago, polanoid said:

So. Now we're getting somewhere. We now have a version of the project in which the issue happens, and one in which it doesn't. First thing would be to list all the things you removed from the session. Audio Files? Plug-ins? Whole channel strips?

I believe I already said, this is the entire session with only audio files removed. Everything else is in place.

 

[yks]

3 hours ago, polanoid said:

Exactly, as I already wrote, *drifting* would be absolutely impossible.

Let us call it "shifting" then. But it's happening -- sometimes -- and it seems to me it's when Logic does long duration bounces, and it seems to increase over time so I actually think "drifting" is also an appropriate word. I already described to you how everything else remains locked in place but the automation moves.

I am not sure of the precise circumstances that need to exist but my experience suggests that the more complex a project, and the longer and more complex the bounce region, the more likely I am to have this happen.

Personally I managed to finish my current large project by addressing each of the scenes of the radio play individually as track stacks and exporting each scene separately. I assembled a master track crossfading these scenes.

As I say I have worked on many large projects and I have favoured Logic to do this. The fact that Logic is behaving badly now is dismaying to me because I have relied upon it and enjoyed using it. I may continue to use Logic for the next episode of this radio drama, but I will assume that I have to follow this workflow that slows me down, which also has to include checking every track manually to make sure it is correctly bus-assigned when dropped into a track stack - I have found I cannot depend on that either. As the host of this forum says, that is a second issue which I don't want to derail discussion of the other problem.

cheers, MR

 

[yks]

4 hours ago, RobertAnthony said:

Annoyingly recreated all the automation like OP in this thread is trying to avoid doing, understandably so.

Thanks RobertAnthony for offering your experience which sounds very much the same as mine.

It did also occur to me to try erasing and re-doing all the automation for the areas where there were audible problems, and to see if Logic then picked it up correctly. I haven't done that, since it's painstaking work and I don't have time but your experience suggests the key to the problem might be found here.

It is interesting to know that you found a re-do of the automation fixed the problem in your case!

cheers, MR

[David Nahmani]

20 hours ago, yks said:

I am supplying a link here to a WeTransfer of the session

I downloaded your file and bounced the project, am listening to the bounce now, and it sounds the same as the project, the automation is in the right place, no shifting. I can't reproduce your issue. 

I'm using Logic Pro 10.7.4 on a M1 Mac mini with macOS Monterey 12.3.1. 

[yks]

6 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

I downloaded your file and bounced the project, am listening to the bounce now, and it sounds the same as the project, the automation is in the right place, no shifting. I can't reproduce your issue. 

I'm using Logic Pro 10.7.4 on a M1 Mac mini with macOS Monterey 12.3.1. 

That is what I expected, having done the same bounce of the reduced session, and also I heard no issues. Thanks for trying! I would share the whole session but it's not really mine to share (this episode is "airing" as a podcast on Thursday).

[David Nahmani]

2 minutes ago, yks said:

I would share the whole session but it's not really mine to share (this episode is "airing" as a podcast on Thursday).

If you want to share it privately I'm willing to give it a try. But if you'd rather not, I understand. 

[polanoid]

1 hour ago, yks said:

I believe I already said, this is the entire session with only audio files removed. Everything else is in place.

Makes me wonder if just removing the audio files (from the faulty session) and immediately undoing that operation already fixes the issue for you. Can you try that? Also would be interesting to see if the contents of your track automation folder (Cmd-Ctrl-E) reveal anything strange.

Edited September 26, 2022 by polanoid

[yks]

5 minutes ago, polanoid said:

Makes me wonder if just removing the audio files (from the faulty session) and immediately undoing that operation already fixes the issue for you. Can you try that? Also would be interesting to see if the contents of your track automation folder (Cmd-Ctrl-E) reveal anything strange.

Good things to try... do you mean removing the audio files entirely, from the Project Audio altogether, then restoring? I will certainly try the easier approach of deleting audio regions in the arrange window, and then doing an undelete.

Looking at the track automation folder data for the obvious problem areas shows nothing unusual.

 

[polanoid]

4 minutes ago, yks said:

Good things to try... do you mean removing the audio files entirely, from the Project Audio altogether, then restoring?

No I meant whatever you did to make the project work again. You wrote "audio files removed", so, that, probably. If removing the audio regions in the Tracks Area cures the issue as well, you can do that of course.

[yks]

Hi again folks,

I tried the deleting all audio regions (without deleting automation) and restoring. For some reason I didn't think that would help me, and it didn't, but it was worth trying.

I did another bounce of the piece in order to test this, so I excerpted clips from the two parts of the piece I already shared, so you can hear how the character who is not on the phone is being cut off early. The person on the phone is not being cut off, so their automation has not been affected, which is interesting.

The two clips together are about 35MB as a WeTransfer - https://we.tl/t-9NWeMIl4Au

[RobertAnthony]

3 hours ago, yks said:

Hi again folks,

I tried the deleting all audio regions (without deleting automation) and restoring. For some reason I didn't think that would help me, and it didn't, but it was worth trying.

I did another bounce of the piece in order to test this, so I excerpted clips from the two parts of the piece I already shared, so you can hear how the character who is not on the phone is being cut off early. The person on the phone is not being cut off, so their automation has not been affected, which is interesting.

The two clips together are about 35MB as a WeTransfer - https://we.tl/t-9NWeMIl4Au

Taking the renders above and adding them on the stripped down project you provided earlier, you can align the audio, then shift the automation and basically manually recreate the problem.

All the automation is as if it is shifted backwards, just as in my project. It isn't, as far as I can tell, "drifting', as you can line it all up equally across the regions:

The take-away as I understand it: the automation is playing too soon, again just like in my project. So we know the what, now just to figure out the why lol.

Edited September 26, 2022 by RobertAnthony

[polanoid]

On 9/26/2022 at 10:45 PM, RobertAnthony said:

So we know the what, now just to figure out the why lol.

And especially the when...

[zplane]

An alternative to what you are trying to do with volume automation could be to try a noise gate plugin. e.g., Waves C1 gate.  If your dialogue is recorded at a reasonably constant level then a fixed threshold gate could work and you could try various presets like voiceover.

[yks]

Hi folks, this week's update:

I'm working on the next episode and I did spot bounces for each scene. There is one scene in this episode which runs for quite awhile, like 10 minutes.

The automation is out of time by the end of the 10 minutes.

 

[yks]

On 9/27/2022 at 7:35 PM, zplane said:

An alternative to what you are trying to do with volume automation could be to try a noise gate plugin. e.g., Waves C1 gate.  If your dialogue is recorded at a reasonably constant level then a fixed threshold gate could work and you could try various presets like voiceover.

Thanks, for this week's episode I went to this method and it worked just as well as manual automation. I tried out the gate in the 'Neutron' series from Izotope, which worked very well.