How do you identify if a project is corrupted?

Cubase
1

I am baffled…once again. I have a project that had become kind of farty, for lack of a better word. So, I froze all the channels with plugins (even though i’m not done tweaking them!). Seemed fine. But since the 6.0.5 update it’s been downhill. Last week i started getting white outs on of the main display. I would, after an indeterminate amount of time working, drag the cursor over the main display, say, to adjust an automation point…an then white. The song still plays but i can’t see the events! So I close and reopen. But then today…now, it’s just crashing. After a couple of minutes. Or, just now, crashed while starting, which is terrrifying and infuriating and that infers that there’s a problem beyond the project. Arrrggghh! What is the question that I should be asking?

Can you take the audio files and make a whole new project? This is months and months of work that is rapping up and I cant even work on it. Any help greatly appreciated

2

I’d say that’s a pretty good diagnosis of corruption but what in it’s harder to say. I suspect Windows itself.
Without much more detail it would be hard to tell from this forum.
My advice would be to uninstall Cubase from your system and go to your nearest computer engineer and let him sort out your problems.
And if you’re using Win7 on a newish machine to not tweak it so much if at all.

If you can’t explain a problem to a forum then you need hands on help.

3

Do you have access to another installation for you to try the project on? If it works, it’s your system.
Does it happen an all projects (including new ones) on your system? If no, it’s your project.

I’ve had a couple of corrupt projects and it’s always been possible to rebuild. A pita but possible.

Have you updated your graphics drivers lately?

4

i worked on another project late last night for a couple of hours with no problem (except a couple of performance overload/farts/skip/stutters…annoying/distracting).

i am unaware of any graphics updates? could you please direct. is this a windows thing. i am on a macbook pro

could you also please direct me to where i can learn a few things about rebuilding a project?

thanks

5

Some things that have worked for me in similar situations…

Load the arrangement into a fully 64-bit environment (operating system AND Cubase instance) - I had started getting similar symptoms to you, when approachying the 32-bit ~3Gb RAM limit (also in fact when approaching the limit, when I only had 1Gb and 2Gb physical memory)

Load a small dummy arrangment first, then load the offending arrangement, but don’t activate it when prompted…any issues cropping up with VST instruments and mixer-related VST effects don’t seem to take effect - giving you time to make changes and/or save with a new arrangment file…

…and exporting a track archive, whilst in this situation, can allow you to effectively re-import the audio files into a new arranment, without much of the baggage that was contained in the troublseome arrangement.

Disable or move some/all of your plug-ins, then load the arrangement. If the problem goes away, then start re-enabling plug ins one at a time to eliminate the offending one(s).

JBridge…I can;t tell you how many times a plug in has gone bad on me whilst using the Steinberg ‘default’ VST bridge, and then with JBridge it’s all just worked again OK.

Find somebody with a faster PC with more/faster RAM…simple as it seems, some intermittent relaibility problems seem to be far worse with the CPU stressed, and unable to cope. Sometimes even increasing latency can prevent ASIO and CPU spikes and make a trashed arrangment viable again.

If you are using an on-board audio interface, try using ASIO4ALL…

Freezing virtual instruments and/or bouncing tracks can help too…

Sorry if none of this works for you, but these things have dug me out of a hole many times.

6

On Windows you need drivers to run your hardware so they need updating. Not sure if this is the case on Mac, though. Anyway, conflicts between os/app and driver are not unknown following updates and can account for odd behaviour.

However, the previous post mentioned low memory and this rang a bell straight away, especially the mention of the the colour white.

Rebuilding is laborious and the fewer shortcuts you use, the better. Having said that, Track Archives must be worth a go. You can also transfer mixer setting by channel from the mixer and copy/paste your edits over manually.

This is assuming you can open the offending project, of course…

7

thanks a bunch guys,
paulb,

  • would love to try jbridge, but it’s windows only.
  • increasing latency could relieve cpu load? that’s a very interesting idea. definitely having cpu spikes.
  • so, everything was recorded 24 bit, 44khz. nothing virtual or midi. are you saying that i should create a new file as 64 bit and…well, actually i have no idea what you’re suggesting. :unamused: :confused:
    crotchety,
    i hope that i dont’ have to. i’ll look into more memory i guess. it’s a bizarro thing though. i have other projects with many more plugins and fewer to no spikes and problems.
8

You sound like you don’t know what you’ve got into (from the reference to bit-rates). Cubase is a very powerful piece of kit and requires heavy duty hardware and knowledge to go with it.
The learning curve is quite steep, even for the cut-down versions. I hope you’re prepared for it. It’s not just the program in itself, it’s the ways you can use it. the hard thing is you need to know it pretty much inside out before you can decide which way you want to use it and what to use for your needs. Songwriters use different features to film-makers or sound-mixers, dance, trance etc.
I don’t know if you’d ever get your present problems (I think you may have more than I see here) fixed via a forum. You may get a few fixes but I suspect you’d be better off with a local Cubase college course or, if you know the right people, just some friendly hands-on helper who knows Cubase well.

The bit rate for latency is not the same as the bit-rate for recording (the 44/24bit one), though it maybe should have been called the sample-rate (maybe it was). You adjust the sample rate to alter the latency. If yours is at 32(bit) samples to get to sonething like 1.5 millisexonds latency it may be too low for your system so if you take it to 64 or even 128 you may find more stability. Usually it is adjusted via your soundcard’s “Control Panel” although it may be called something different but similar.

If I were you at the moment I’d use this forum for just Cubase and, say, Sound on Sound forum for Computer related problems as they know both well and cross reference them both.

9

Yeah, I was just thinking “tell him not to rebuild yet because it sounds more like resources”. Sorry, should have mentioned that before but got carried away…

To get back to the original question, when Cubase has had a problem with a project of mine that turned out to be corrupted, it said so: Error loading, or some such, or it just started repeatedly falling over. I think it’s always been a particular plugin to blame.

You talk about spikes and numbers of plugins. These won’t tally too well as different plugins impose different loads. Also, some plugins just don’t seem to work as well - sometimes. Increasing buffer sizes will certainly bring it down but if your hitting the limits of your h/w then perhaps you need to bounce some stuff down (like Instrument tracks) and see if that helps.

10

Just realised you never posted your system spec. It might shed some light. OS and Cubase versions (including whether 32 or 64-bit for both), RAM, graphics adaptor and how much memory that’s got, processor.

11

Are you sure you don’t have auto save enabled in which case you may have a backup in the project folder taken pre the corruption??

Or if things have been going downhill specifically since 6.05 why not roll back & see how you get on with your previous install.

One thing to take from this is that if you work on a project for months you should not be overwriting the same project file all the time.
Save as a new file with that days date in the name & you can always revert to a working version if the project gets corrupted. If the project folder gets too crowded you can always delete some older versions.

To concur with Crochety…the corrupted projects I have had usually boil down to a rogue plugin…sometimes just removing it & adding it back restores stability.

But as to the fact you are getting cpu spikes…it sounds like you may not be setup too well…I don’t see any audio interface mentions so are you working on the internal soundcard…& what buffer size are you running at??

12

where is the auto save option enabled/disabled?

interface: mr816, buffer size: 1024 (maybe i should try smaller to increase latency, decrease cpu like paulb suggested)

os x 10.6.8
2.66 ghz intel core i7
memory: 4gb

i hope it’s not the devil-loc.

13

where is the auto save option enabled/disabled?

In preferences…if its the same as on PC then you would be able to see the bak files in the project folder.

You’ll need to make the buffer larger not smaller to gain some extra cpu headroom.

14

This isn’t exactly over-endowed… You never said whether you were running 32 or 64-bit OS and Cubase. 32-bit apps can’t access much RAM, even on a 64-bit OS.

Are you running VariAudio? That’s a real hog. Or any other time-stretching/warping?

Right, I’m off to bed…

15

Yeah, I need/want to learn more. And Cubase may not have been the best choice for my needs. I don’t have any interest or need for midi, virtual this, or replace that, stretch this and detect that. I need to record tracks, mult takes, and and have all the other “power” directed towards plugin processing and summing (the latter of which i may end up doing otb).

I’ve had it for a little over a year. And most of my projects are totally where I want them. Every song/project on the current record in began with a foundation involving recording 8 tracks live itb through a mr816. Never a glitch.
Since then, I’ve added tracks and groups and folders and plugins. Point being, I know enough to be doing what I want to be doing for MOST of my projects. They run fine. And I’m pretty sure that I’m doing the same thing for and with every one them. So, without ego (really, I know my limitations here), I don’t think user error is a fair or accurate assessment. Well, I mean, there is a solution out there and I don’t know it…so… :stuck_out_tongue:

Regarding this forum and it’s function, there is no such thing as Cubase, alone. It requires a computer. And while there are more efficient ways to learn, I don’t see my thread as useless or out of line.

16

Yeah, i should upgrade to the max. of 8gb (macbook pro)
32 bit. from a few things that i’ve read, 64 bit (kernel, on mac) is not yet recommended or seen as advantageous. ?plus, i use some 3rd party plugins that are still only 32 bit.

17

Can’t hurt, can it. And I suppose even a 32-bit system can make use of that much RAM. Well good luck and I hope you sort it out before you crash the machine and really corrupt your files!

18

dont know if this will help, you may do this already .i used to have problems when using a laptop and cubase , it was caused by being connected to the internet and power priority , i cant explain fully cause i cant remember,anyway all im saying is try disconneting from the internet turn off your ethernet connection this worked for me .

19

Regarding this forum and it’s function, there is no such thing as Cubase, alone. It requires a computer. And while there are more efficient ways to learn, I don’t see my thread as useless or out of line.

I don’t see it as useless or out of line either. All I I’m saying is you need more than this. In fact most posters do.

20

agreed. getting there.

i don’t know why, but there may be something to this. along with turning off ‘auto save’, trashing all (old) preferences, updating quicktime, and asking soundtoys to please make the devil-loc and decapitator more compatible. still not in the clear. but getting there