Invalid Project Files

Cubase
21

I’ve experienced massive issues with 11. 11.0, 11.0.1, 11.0.2, most of the issues in all three.
There is one new botch I know of (I’m talked out on those) at each “Maintenance” update, but the performance is not different.

It is not going to be my system, because I do other resource-intensive work on it that performs with no stability or performance issues WHATSOEVER. FCPX, Resolve, perform literally unbelievably well here. Cubase 10 and 10.5 performed as well as Cubase can on OSX as far as I can even imagine it. There is shite coding here. I’m not a coder, I’m just a simple musician, but I’ve been at this for 18 yrs.

This has been shoddy work, features breaking other features, weird bugs (that not everybody, or even many people care about but they are real), there is constant corruption (and I’m not even running that hot) and the highest maintenance of anything I’ve ever experienced. This is not me or my failure to understand things.

I happen to think this is the place for this rant. I don’t expect any help for it, I’m not going to hang out but stuff needs saying.

3 Likes
22

I appreciate that, you gave me an insight into Cubase 11…I will hold back into buying any updates for the time being…

1 Like
23

There’s more people not having problems, than there is having problems. You seem to be one of very few people on the forums that keeps saying the same thing but has very little self-insight into your system. I will reformat my entire computer to figure out a problem, whether it’s improper shutdowns, or software crashing, etc, etc.

Yes there are bugs but you seem to imply you are dealing with all out catastrophe and the software is unusable. If that’s the case, you need to be looking more at your side of things, because the software is beta tested by both PC and Mac users.

24

Hi there, I tried this method and it didn’t work, thanks so much for the suggestion though, but the problem seems to be massive in terms of loss of data which seems unrecoverable.

I honestly cannot understand how this is not solvable…very disappointed with Steinberg…

25

Could you share one of these corrupt files please?

26

Hi there, thanks so much for asking, but the file has work which is for a film score to a movie by a company that I have a contract with, and can’t share this material…so sorry.

I do appreciate the offer to help though…

27

Sorry that didn’t help. You should try one other thing to eliminate hardware issues and that is to run memtest to check your memory. If that passes you can say it’s most likely the software or at least you will have proven that it’s not either of the two most likely hardware issues.

Press Windows Key + R, type “mdsched.exe” into the Run dialog that appears, and press Enter. You’ll need to reboot your computer to perform the test.

image

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Windows Memcheck won’t always find memory problems even if there are.

give MemTest86 a run, basic version is free. You have to boot it from USB via BIOS though

1 Like
29

Good suggestion. I’ve used memtest86 for my memory checks, but was going for easy. Didn’t realize the MS version wasn’t as effective. Still, it wouldn’t be bad for a first pass test given how easy it is to run, and it might/should find the problem.

1 Like
30

Have You tried running Cubase as Admin ? Just to exclude some permission problems.
Have You tried opening a corrupt .cpr file in a txt editor and see if the RIFF header looks correct, you could open a known good .cpr to compare.
Any older version of Cubase installed, that you could try opening the project in ?
Any luck starting a new project and importing tracks from the corrupt project ?
Have you updated any plugins as of late, or installed new ones. ?

1 Like
31

Thank you so much for all your help, I will try.

1 Like
32

I appreciate that, I will give it a go.

33

Thanks so much for all your suggestions!! Very much appreciated.

Some actions I didn’t take, i.e Cubase as Admin, Open as txt editor, thank so much for the suggestions. I will give them a go…

I did try though to open with Cubase 8 and no luck, I tried to import tracks from from the corrupt files but nothing happened, I clicked on ‘Import tracks from project’ and there was no action from the program.

I must admit, PSP Vintage Warmer is giving me a real headache as of late. I have installed fine and its license is on my iLoc key, but lately wants to re-validate its licence.

But to be honest, I always had a few niggles here and there, but I never had so many files being invalidated in the past…and I have been doing this for over 10 years, so strange…

34

Oh, one more. Having the projects in a cloud folder can corrupt them. Dropbox, OneDrive… etc.
When they sync. the files are often not accessible by Cubase, that can lead to all kind of problems.

1 Like
35

Great to know about saving on the Cloud, I only use external hard drives though.

36

Sorry you’re still having problems, Somecomposer.

Do you have any automatic cross-drive syncing or backup going on real-time from the directory where you are writing your files? I’ve had corruptions from that in the past.

Could you try using another disk as your master drive for saving your files for a while? That would rule out disk problems, though not memory problems.

It could of course be Cubase, or plugins, or some weird interaction between the two. Have you started using any new plugins or plugin versions recently?

37

BlockquoteIt could of course be Cubase, or plugins, or some weird interaction between the two. Have you started using any new plugins or plugin versions recently?

Hi there, thank you , I appreciate your post and all your help. No automatic Cross Drive Synking is taking place in real-time.

The drive I work on primarily is fine, I did some thorough checks…

I haven’t used anything new, but PSP Vintage Warmer is giving me a headache as of late, asking to be validated when its license sits in the iLok key… I managed to come to a solution, but it didn’t involve opening the files I needed,

This is extremely baffling…about a dozen Cubase files, all became invalid projects and also their back-ups became invalid projects too…it’s certainly worrying, especially when nobody knows why this is really happening, or how to fix it…

38

Have You tried running Cubase as Admin ? Just to exclude some permission problems.
Have You tried opening a corrupt .cpr file in a txt editor and see if the RIFF header looks correct, you could open a known good .cpr to compare.

Hi there, Cubase as Admin didn’t work, and I couldn’t open as txt, thanks so much for the advise though!!

39

Sorry you’re experiencing these issues and I totally understand your frustration. I’ve been using Cubase professionally for 22yrs and the only time I’ve experienced the “invalid project file” problem was because of a bad stick of RAM. The session files were intermittently becoming corrupted during the save process and I would get that error message the next time I tried to open it. I lost a few great songs and was raging pissed. As soon as I figured out which RAM stick was bad and replaced it, the problem stopped and I haven’t had it since. And yes, I was only experiencing the problem in Cubase. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

As already recommended, I would run a decent length MemTest86 scan and see what happens. If it’s not the RAM, then I would definitely look at another piece of hardware before I blamed the software. I use Cubase almost daily and haven’t had the problem since 2004, which was many versions of Cubase ago.

Good luck.

3 Likes
40

Alright, so, I managed to open my older project files that were the original compositions, setting me back for days as I have to now reorganize and re-export everything for the mastering construct…

My workflow includes Cubase files saved as ‘Bounced’ so that I can then export for mastering etc.

A good 12 files and their backups became Invalid Projects overnight…the main Cubase files (Original compositions) were fine but one file, which thankfully it was a very simple composition and production and I managed to replicate.

This is a hybrid score, meaning that the sounds used were painstakingly found and created, meaning, there was NO WAY, I could replicate the score, to which I have been paid for and also being under contract.

Thankfully I found a way around it but it has set me back for days on end, painstakingly, reorganizing and re-exporting something that I have already worked really hard for!

I made all of the checks as suggested here, the disc is fine, RAM is fine, this came out of the blue…

Reading the replies here made me realize a couple of things,

Firstly, how incredibly helpful this community is, and heartfelt thanks for all your help, very much appreciated.

And secondly, how many people came up with suggested issues as to why a Cubase file, let’s get this to sink in for a sec. A CUBASE file gets invalidated… i.e Files in Cloud Folder, DropBox, One drive can invalidate a Cubase project due to some data flow I take it? Also, cross-drive syncing or backup going on real-time from the directory where a file is written etc. can have the same result.

OK guys, this has to somehow end. I respect Steinberg, I love Cubase, but this needs sorting out, find out why this happens and fix it. When I save a file, it has to be saved…PERIOD.

If nothing else, please find a way to re-open these files.

I am extremely cautious about saving, I also triple-save my data and I didn’t deserve this issue, this could have been catastrophic to me if it wasn’t for archiving the very original compositions, which ended up being a very arduous undertaking, taking into account that I already went through it once!!

Steinberg, with all due recpect, sort this out.