6.5 - Why is saving still so slow?

Hello,

Still wondering when Nuendo is really able to autosave in the background so it doesn’t interfere with the workflow. With just few VSL and Play instrument + some effects and audio tracks, I need to wait for several seconds for the rainbow ball to get of my screen, working on SSD drive. Ok, few seconds is not the end of the world, but the shift of focus when creating something is highly disturbing and makes me want to disable auto-save, but too afraid to do that.

Software like Final Cut Pro X doesn’t even have save feature anymore, it’s constantly saving whatever you do, totally transparently. So it can be done, when will we have this feature in Nuendo?

This has been a problem for quite a few users over a number of versions.
Here, we have hardly ever seen this sluggish autosafe behaviour.
It runs smoothly in the background and only with larger project, incl. VSTi, it is noticeable, at all.
The only difference in setup to our e.g. office machines is: more power, no internet (only for updates
and authorisation procedures), no progs that aren’t “studio” or audio, except word, searchtool “Everything”
and some Piriform gadgets. Antivirus software has had no effects, but is not installed, a.t.m.
Mind you, some older plugins have caused severe problems earlier on. The shift to 64 bit brought some probs,
but this has all been sorted out, quite a while ago.

It is about time that the cause for this lame autosafe was discovered.
I can imagine that it is quite irritating…

Servus, Big K

I have 10 minute interval Autosave running here. I never notice anything happening in the background. The only time I know there is Autosave is when I need it, which I never do since I never crash. I just asked a client I’ve been working with consistently since May if they remember any crash in the long days we have worked. They don’t, so it’s not just my imagination. I can’t remember the last time I opened a .bak file.

But there is always a list of .bak files so I know it works. So transparent, I forget it’s on. I’m on Win 7 x64 on a new, fast PC. Overclocked i7 4770K with 16GB ram. Don’t know if that’s it or not., since I don’t know what system you are on. But I haven’t noticed Autosave at all since I built this machine.

You posted this while I was typing my post above.

So, we are both on newer i7 with Win 7 x64 with 16GB ram and neither of us noticing Autosave at work. Like you, my DAWs are not online, no Antivirus and no apps that are not directly needed for a DAW. Also, all plugins are professional grade and well tested.

So it appears that the things we have in common prevent Autosave from being an issue. I’m not saying SB should not improve this, but not everyone has this problem, which is helpful info.

I have to ask, if I may, what is your frequency of crashes? I have had zero crashes while working in 2014. Zero. Tons of VSTi and audio with fairly large track counts, but I work on 5 minute songs, not feature length films. I do think project length makes a difference. Working with RME MADI, usually at 64 or 128 buffers.

I’m running OSX Mavericks on 2.5Ghz i7 late '11 MBP with 16GB of memory, projects reside on system drive, but it is Crucial m500 512GB with another similar in the place of optical drive for samples. And before you ask, I have already tried moving projects to another drive, it doesn’t make any difference.

Oh yes, I have emails and Safari and other stuff on this machine, being my only one, but they’re not in use when I’m working. I used to have Boot camp and Windows7 64bit running Nuendo, but saving lag was a problem there too.

The project I’m working on now has some 20 audio tracks, sound effects with some processing (VSL Suite for EQ and limiting, Waves Metaflanger, Voxengo Elephant, some Nuendo plugs like distortion) and small VSL orchestra with few strings, woodwinds and horns through VSL MIR Teldex room + East West Play with two Ghostwriter patches. It’s a trailer job, so there’s a Prores Proxy 1080p quicktime running along. The whole thing is less than two minutes with minimal automation so far. This is not a big project at all and right from the start it saved for around 5 seconds every autosave. I tried to move back to 6.07 but it didn’t help.

On the plus side, my Nuendo is stable (also 6.5 seems stable), otherwise responsive and I haven’t had much crashes with it during recent years, so I’m guessing my plugins are good choice. I have no complaints about new features either like new Mixer which seems to annoy so many here. So far I also like new features 6.5 has to offer, especially when it comes to visibility options. But this saving lag bothers me much! Other thing is Elastique pitch shift which still crackles and pops during live preview (just like in 6.07). The latter I can live with, but saving works transparently in so many other demanding programs without any problems that I have hard time believing my setup is too antique to handle Nuendo’s autosave.

Are you having the problem with all of your files?

I had a similar issue with a project started in 6.0, but the rest of my projects are autosaving fine. Have not yet identified any cause.

I’m a recent Mavericks conversion…

Chewy

Hi Getalife

During the last … say … 6 months I had just one crash when I accidently got into a real mess
with sampling rates/frame rates and the insensitive (stupid ) try to change/fix that.
Before that, crashes happened only when sorting out old plugs and bit bridges when going 64bit,
but hardly ever in production. It is a rock solid system with an enourmes i7 computing power.

Over a long time Nuendo has proven its stability and capability with us in longish movie and music productions.
If SB irons out the more stupid things they did to N6 work surface it might truly be, even for me…,
the best post pro DAW in existence.

Servus, Big K

Well, I have crashes all the time, for example when changing the time stretch algo inside the sample editor for using time warp. Well, I do not care that much because if I know it I save before.

BUT:

Since this version it’s back: Slow saving time… I have set autosave to 10 min intervals and in the current project it drives me mad… it needs about 40 sek… it interrupts everything…

It was away for some time - bigger projects saved in a few seconds… now it is back. Ok it is a big project… 70 min, 350 tracks… but when opening in 6.0 or 5.5 save is about 5 sek… not 40.

Project is on SSD, state of the art i7 system, 32gb ram etc…

PLEASE FIX THAT!!

I’ve noticed auto save a little longer in 6.5. I wish it could work in the background because it is a creativity killer. I find that it is directly proportional to the size of the project and has behaved this way from the beginning. Pro tools doesn’t pause for auto save at all, so I can only assume that it is possible for Nuendo to behave the same way.

Dean

Update for reference to those having issues:

Been working with 6.5 Trial for a few days now. I see no increase in save times. 100+ tracks and 10+ VSTi on 5 minute songs.

Essentially, saving is invisible on this system. I think nothing of doing a “Save As” incremental save while in record mode. Again, N6.5, Win 7 x64, 16GB, 4770K. System OS is a hard drive. Streaming drives are Samsung SSD.

Most common aspect is see for slow saving seems to be Mavericks.

Naw, it’s not just a Mavericks issue. It’s been happening on Macs since Lion and N4, and PCs at least as long; there have been multiple threads in regards to this problem.

I don’t know why I had one especially troublesome import from previous versions; let’s just call it a corrupt file. But… outside of that, the behavior in my case (and I work on both Macs and PCs, despite my sig), is pretty predictable, and occurs when:

  1. The project is long-- has a lot of files.

  2. There are lots and lots of edits in said files.

It’s not unusual for one of my projects to run 20 or 30 hours, and the editing’s pretty intense. A lot of offline processes, etc.

My workaround is to bounce the edited files and “Remove Unused Media” from the pool. I tend to trash the originals-- not good workflow for everyone, but it works for me :sunglasses: but just removing them from the pool works as well, and if you save your project backups so that Autosave doesn’t zotz them over time you can have a comprehensive backup history.

Once the multitudinous edits and offline bounces are out of the pool, project saves and autosaves snappily again.

Would be great to get this (finally) fixed!

Chewy

I am on Win7 64bit.

Indeed: Slow Autosave was and is related to what Chewy said.

  • log project (lots of files)
  • more important if not ONLY important: The amount of edits/offline.

Esp using Variaudio and time warp in the sample editor (when having truckloads of vox) slows it down.

A 5 min song with moderat track count (lets say 50-100 incl bussing/fx) might safe quite fast… the project I am working on currently saves about 40 sec - of cours autosafe jumps in when hitting STOP.

This is basically a good thing. But usually I hit stop because I want to re-listen something or doing an edit. And then (while wanting to do something) waiting for 40 sec is quite workflowkilling I have to say.

Why it is not possible to:

Reduce autosave again: In N5.5 it was quite fast (it was slow some versions before) - of course needs a bigger project somewhat more time, but that project might have used - lets say - 2-3 sec…

Make autosave work in the background, without freezing everything.

It looks not very professional when the whole application (which is stretched via 4 screens) completely freezes every 10 minutes… I mean: Everything is frozen. Meters, GUI, playback etc… It can be irritating to the artist when you still have to record stuff … (“aaaahhm , well, wait a minute, it is saving… grrrr yea… wait”) as well as it nasty when mixing “can we listen to this part again?”… “aaaaahm, well, not yet, just wait… wait… it is saving again… aaargh… fck fck f*ck”

Basically I have the same system… but 32GB ram. other stuff is the same. Machine performs wonderful regarding about stability and cpu power…

I am getting wait times of more than 30 seconds with auto save too (on big projects). It is a big creativity killer. My experience is just like Brandy’s. Although usually when the project is so big that auto-save is lengthy, the tracking is done and I am just mixing but It does happen.
When I am mixing, my thoughts are always faster than my ability to execute them and it is especially tough to remember my future moves when the whole project pauses and I am annoyed and waiting. This has been an issue with Nuendo from the start although it is worse with 6.5.

Dean

With multicore processors and proper threading, it seems that this would be a correctable issue.

That’s exactly my problem!

In the past there was a version-update with “slow saving times fixed” - and yes - it was ok/fine after that. So please, Steinberg, do it again.

Damn I just lost 25 min of good mixing work due to a Nuendo freeze… I avoided hitting stop because I was mixing a part in cycle mode (so I was not interrupted by autosave) - I was just done with some stuff and then I accidently hit the “group” button on a big folder containing shitloads of tracks/edits - OF COURSE the events are not in sync and grouping could have some errors… but Nuendo freezes completely maybe because of the complexity of that task - while playback ist still running, I still hope that it will un-freeze but it does not seem… Oh damn

Brandy, there are 3 area’s which sometimes can cause troubles on some systems/projects. (not specific to slow save times, it should be transparant, no new bugs here)
Disable following preferences:

-Suspend VSt3 processing when no audio signals …
-Enable automatic hitpoint detection
-ASIO Guard

Might be worth trying.
Fredo

Hey Fredo,

though the crashes I had (and described in other threads) might not have something to do with those settings you mentioned I disabled those prefs today.

  • Auto Hitpoints are disabled since a while (I do not need that, if I need hitpoints I can create them at any time)

  • the suspend VST3 processing is a great feature and turning this off increased the CPU load of that 508 track project from about 55% to 80% - but I still have headroom… if I will need more juice in the final sessions (not all orchestration imported yet) I will re-activate it again because a project like that has a lot of “this track is only used in one part of that album” stuff…

  • Asio Guard: I never was able to understand everything behind it, it seems to decrease my system load a little so I had it activated, now it is disables…

It seems to me that I have a better reacting system now and at least today I had no crashes (was avoiding all those critical actions though).

Those 3 prefs are great features and I do not have the impression that they are causing problems - but as you said - maybe I have less overall issues now when handling that large project.

P.S: Saving Time is still slow :wink:)

I’m also suffering from slow saves since upgrading to N6.5.

It affects all saves, both auto-saves and straight command-S saves. The whole system beach balls for 50 seconds (no joke, i put a stopwatch on it) before working again. This is on a project with just 49 tracks inc groups and fx. The first time auto-save kicked in it looked just like a crash and I nearly did a force-quit.

In all previous versions of Nuendo a command-S save was near-instantaneous for me.

Please fix. Right now I’ve had to turn auto-save off completely which worries me.

Oh, this is N6.5 on a 12-core 2010 Mac Pro running 10.9.4