Solved Corrupted REAPER project?

[Serendipity Records]

Hey’all!

I’ve been working on a project in REAPER that now crashes the DAW when loading. As my fellow REAPER users will know, the “startup logo” shows the startup sequence in small script as it unfolds. It appears that REAPER crashes each time one of the VIs used (PolyMAX by UAD) is being loaded. However, when loading a different project featuring the same VI, I do not have any issue.

I have updated REAPER to the latest version, as well as uninstalled and reinstalled the VI in question (to the latest version) -- not to mention a bunch of SSL plugins which I initially thought were the issue.

[EDIT: I have attempted to open backups of the project. No luck there.]

This is on a Mac M1 MAX (if that is relevant?). Apart from browser and a messaging app, nothing else is running.

Thanks guys!

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Do you have a .rrp.bck file of the project? If that will load, it will put you only one revision behind the latest version, and you can work from there

If not, .rpp files are mostly just text files, and you could try opening it up to see if you can find what's broken to excise it

 

[Serendipity Records]

Do you have a .rrp.bck file of the project? If that will load, it will put you only one revision behind the latest version, and you can work from there

Just to clarify -- .rpp-bak? I tried those and they still crashed.

If not, .rpp files are mostly just text files, and you could try opening it up to see if you can find what's broken to excise it

Hmm! Will try that. I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to code though...

 

[Serendipity Records]

Aha!

So. It was not the UAD instrument, but rather the Rhodes V8 plugin. Realized this when I could not load a Sibelius project that used it.

So, opened the .rpp file in TextEdit, and deleted the block of code for that plugin. Everything (minus the Rhodes) is exactly as I left it.

Thanks for the tip @VomitHatSteve!

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Ah! I'm glad you found it. (And sorry that I forgot to check back in, lol)

 

[Papanate]

Aha!
So, opened the .rpp file in TextEdit, and deleted the block of code for that plugin. Everything (minus the Rhodes) is exactly as I left it.

What does this mean? What is a .rpp file - and why can you edit them?

 

[Serendipity Records]

What does this mean? What is a .rpp file - and why can you edit them?

.rpp is the proprietary file format for REAPER projects. They are basically a big text file, most of which is unintelligible (code) and meant to be read by the REAPER application.

Moving virtual faders, pan pots, changing plugin parameters, all this is actually editing the code in the .rpp file but REAPER makes it more accessible to the human mind through their fancy user interface. So when a file crashes REAPER and you cannot “fix” the code through a user-friendly interface, you can open the .rpp file (aka a REAPER project) in text mode and try to fix the code manually. NOT easy! lol. In my case it was a question of locating where the code that says “Rhodes on channel 2, compressor parameter set to...” etc., and simply deleting everything there.

 

[Papanate]

.rpp is the proprietary file format for REAPER projects. They are basically a big text file, most of which is unintelligible (code) and meant to be read by the REAPER application.

Moving virtual faders, pan pots, changing plugin parameters, all this is actually editing the code in the .rpp file but REAPER makes it more accessible to the human mind through their fancy user interface. So when a file crashes REAPER and you cannot “fix” the code through a user-friendly interface, you can open the .rpp file (aka a REAPER project) in text mode and try to fix the code manually. NOT easy! lol. In my case it was a question of locating where the code that says “Rhodes on channel 2, compressor parameter set to...” etc., and simply deleting everything there.

Wow!