How Do I Fix One Corrupted Project File?

mark4man

mark4man

MoonMix Studios
What does it mean when a (badly) corrupted SONAR XL Project File can seemingly be repaired by opening up other uncorrupted files first?

I have a Project that started to go bad about two weeks ago (& I posted here in the BBS in hopes of a fix: http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=125332&highlight=mark4man)

The problem originally began when I attempted to open it, which was unusually slow; & the progress bar would stop at a few different points (40%, 63%, etc.)

Once I had it opened (& I'm running 18 to 20 24-Bit, 96 kHz tracks); It would always dropout almost immediately upon hitting Play. I would have to hit the Reset & Play buttons a few times before the tracks would play successfully...

I sort of got it back to normal by increasing my buffer size & mixing latency, but then today, it took a turn for the worse. Playback took longer & longer to kick in; & then stopped altogether. After about 30 seconds, my monitors would let out a nasty buzz, which I could only stop by turning off the AI (Layla 24/96.) Scrolling was dead slow; Saving was dead slow...just about all functionality ground to a halt. It even took forever to close the program; & I noticed it would slow down Windows (XP) until I rebooted.

I performed a clean uninstall & reinstall of both my Echo Audio software & drivers...& SONAR XL.

Then I opened up the Project; & the same thing happened...(only to a slightly lesser degree.) Now...I'm worried (the project represents song 9, of a 9 song CD; & contains dozens & dozens of painstakingly constructed tracks.)

I got it closed; & then opened up three or four other Projects that were OK; played them...they played fine...

...Then I reopened the corrupted Project...& it seems to work OK now!

Just to be sure, I bounced all of my complex multiple comped tracks to stereo stems, to take the load off the CPU (as before, it had seemed that the problem was exacerbated by opening more tracks)...& it seems to be under control.

But why would uninstall/reinstalls not help...& yet, opening uncorrupted files prior to opening the corrupted file would???

Thanks for any help...as I'm not sure at this point the file is going to stay fixed (if it even is at this point)...

mark4man
 
How many clips are in the project - seems like Sonar starts to get slow when you get a lot of edits in track/s.

Did you get the same behaviour opening the track in Safe mode? (Holding down SHIFT?)

Q.
 
How large is your picture cache? Sounds like it *could* be an issue with redrawing waveforms.

Another consideration is one of your plugins might be affecting the project. As qwerty suggested, load it in safe mode and choose "no to all" when prompted to load plugins. See what happens. If you get improvement, load the project again including just one of the plugins. Repeat until you find the one causing the problem.
 
Q & dachay2tnr,

Thanks. Will implement; & get back. I'm also thinking maybe I should just kick my ASIO Buffer Size up to 1024 Samples (which would in turn kick my Mixing Latency up to 10.7 ms...but if it eradicates the condition...it may be a decent compromise.)

Also: dachay...what would redrawing the waveforms have to do with erratic playback (once the Project is opened)?

Thanks again,

mark4man
 
mark4man said:
Q & dachay2tnr,

Also: dachay...what would redrawing the waveforms have to do with erratic playback (once the Project is opened)?


mark4man
Click to expand...

They could quite possibly be drawing processing power from your CPU. The waveforms can take quite awhile to redraw - particularly if there are many clips in the project - and they can still be being recreated even after the project has apprarently been "opened."

However, if the project has been open for 10-15 minutes and you do not see any hard drive activity, and you are still having problems, then I suspect this may not be an issue.

You didn't indicate how large your picture cache was.

BTW, the slowness in opening leads me to believe it is waveform or plugin related.
 
d2tnr,

You didn't indicate how large your picture cache was.
Click to expand...
20 MB (I just reinstalled...& have not yet changed anything in the Initialization File.)

Thanks,

mark4man
 
mark4man said:
d2tnr,


20 MB (I just reinstalled...& have not yet changed anything in the Initialization File.)

Thanks,

mark4man
Click to expand...

That's way too small. Change it to 200 MB and see if the problem goes away. Remember that there won't be any changes the first time you reopen the project as the waves will still need to redraw. However, it should be OK after that.
 
OK...here's what transpired:

Increased the capacity of the Picture Cache to 160 MB.
Increased the ASIO Buffer Size to 1024 Samples (increasing Mixing Latency to 10.7 ms.)

Everything seems to be working A - OK, for now.

Thanks again all,

mark4man
 
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