So this behaviour has been present in Cubase for as long as I remember - for as long as I’ve been using it (about 19 years). It’s more a mild annoyance than anything, but I’m again forced to make comparison with behaviour from other DAWs I use.
When Cubase crashes (unfortunately far more than I’d like), the project you’ve been working on in that session since Cubase was opened will not show in Recent projects. It will revert to showing the only projects you had open BEFORE that session and when Cubase was last successfully closed down. It will also default to the project folder location when opening a project in the same manner. It basically will forget what you were doing completely in that time you had Cubase open for if it crashed.
So if you’re working on Project A and then close Cubase. Fire up Cubase again, work on Project B for a few hours, it crashes at some point. Fire up Cubase again, and Project A is the last project it considers being worked on in the recent list.
This is just a feature of Cubase and at this point it seems incredibly archaic. Lets face it, most crashes tend to be due to a plugin, more so than an engine failure. When we have DAWs like Bitwig moving to a sandboxed plugin architecture than doesn’t bring down the whole program down when one plugin crashes, or Ableton at least with immediate recovery options, this aspect of Cubase is actually really frustrating in practice.
I’d really like to see Steinberg make some changes in this regard.
Hi,
Attach the *.ips/dmp files, so we can investigate, why is your Cubase crashing.
- Mac: macOS Console utility > Crash Reports (or ~user/Library/Logs/Diagnostic Reports).
- Win: %userprofile%/Documents/Steinberg/Crash Dumps
Cubase stores all settings while quit. Therefore if it doesn’t quit properly, it cannot store the data (including the recent projects).
Actually right now, it’s more me force quitting Cubase because when I freeze a track it hangs Cubase (progress bar hits 100% and soft locks me out). I just updated from 14 to 15 and every time I freeze a track it hangs at 100% (this is also happening with Render In Place).
Cubase 15.0.20 64bit 2026.4.16 15.53.38.247-freezedump.dmp (2.7 MB)
But more generally I think Cubase could really benefit from improvements in session recovery options.
The crash is in the videoengine
From the stack trace it seems it is waiting for something, but it is not clear what event that might be.
Are there any videos in your project?
This is actually a real big deal for me too! I work with new versions on every safe but after a crash I have to be sure to open a project via editor otherwise I might end up opening an old version. Due to this behavior recent projects can not be used at all as you might actually continue working on an old project. I have written a Flowlauncher plugin to scan my cubase projects just to overcome this. This should definately be fixed in Cubase!
Yes, am working to picture usually. Prior to today was working on the same cue and session on Cubase 14 and wasn’t having this issue. This happens when I try and freeze a track. the progress bar goes to 100% but just stays there. I cant click on abort and cant click on anything else in Cubase so have to open up the Task manager and force quit.
Hi,
If you have a Video track involved, try to Mute it before you Freeze the track, please.
Maybe Cubase could store the recent track as soon as it is loaded instead.
Considering how many people I’ve seen on this forum mentioning crashes, this could be a minor but helpful change. For me included.
To @Atardecer please mention your setup too.
I’m a 20+y user and for the past year have been experiencing frequent crashes, Cubase freeze, even an entire Win 10 OS meltdown forcing me a complete Windows reinstall.
I’ve been trying a huge list of highly geeky tweaks and I do think there are some issues with Cubase handling some graphics stuff on NVIDIA cards.
And I think Cubase does not always shut down properly for some reason.
Good luck anyway !
Related: especially with NVIDIA, install their Studio drivers. By default, you usually end up with gaming drivers which are more aggressively tuned for FPS. Studio drivers are more stable for musicians (in general) and have lower chance of causing DPC latency.
Pete
Microsoft
Hi Martin, thanks. I should say that I do this by default. I generally don’t install any of that other junk on this system. Its just an NVidia Quadro P400.
Having said all that simply muting the video track works. I have a concurrent Cubase 14 install and don’t have this issue though. But at least its a solution for now - thank you!
