Save file is doubling in size, and soon I will not be able to open!

[JMarz]

Hello,

A major issue I have been expeiencing as of late is some of my project files are ballooning in size. It seems on every major save they will double in size until they are nearly a Gb in size, without any major changes or additions within the project itself.

I saw somewhere that this might be a corrupt plugin, and I can certainly open these large files when I disable all 3rd party plugins.
My question is, how do I identifty the guilty plugin? I thought I had, but then I have some new projects that are going the same way, and the plugin that I thought was the problem is not in these projects!

Any pointers to how to solve this problem would be majorly appreciated.

Im running Cubase 12 (latest) on Windows 10

cheers

J

[Martin.Jirsak]

Hi,

Most often, a plug-in does this. Or an ARA component.

The only way is to remove the plug-ins one by one.

NI Kontakt did this lately. Also Artutira did this in the past, same as IK plug-ins, but also the Spectra Layers component.

[JMarz]

Dang - I use both Kontakt and Arturia stuff quite heavily

Also Ara components, but I have none Im using in this particular session

[Armand]

Hi @JMarz

You are reporting this issue right on time. I suggest you have a look at the following announcement:

A critical announcement for projects larger than 2GB getting corrupted

Dear Cubase and Nuendo users, We have spotted a special border case within the latest releases of Cubase / Nuendo where projects became corrupted without the user knowing. This border case arises when the project file size exceeds the 2GB threshold. This is because the original specifications of the project file format were not conceived for project files larger than 2GB. This seems to happen more often with projects relying on VST plugins saving raw WAV data or large XML data within the projec…

We are also aware of these projects eventually doubling size every time one saves and we are investigating.

Cheers,
Armand

[Fabio_B]

@JMarz

I use both Kontakt and Arturia stuff quite heavily

Arturia changed this a few years back, unless you have old versions, you don’t have to worry.
If this can help narrowing it down: I’ve never been able to reproduce the issue with NI libraries, nor has any colleague that I’m aware of. So perhaps start looking into 3rd-party Kontakt libraries. Hope it helps a little.

[Carvin_Man]

@Armand

We are also aware of these projects eventually doubling size every time one saves and we are investigating.

This is only an issue with Cubase 13… and not C12?

[JMarz]

Thanks Armand,

As a cubase 12 user, will 12 be patched too? My files have yet to reach the 2Gb threshold - once they hit 1Gb they basically hang when trying to load. And this issues seems only to have started fairly recently - within the last 6 months, before I had not encountered this issue. And now I have a bunch of projects that I have to bug hunt its a massive creative blocker

Happy to send over any plugin lists or crash logs to your team to help get patches out

[Armand]

This should be regardless of the version in this case.

[Armand]

For now I do not hold any information about Cubase 12.

[MrSoundman]

I ran into this problem already in Cubase 12 – just follow the advice in the knowledgebase article, particularly the bit about creating “a complete back-up of your project first (File > Back up Project…)”, which should be mandatory advice for everyone, regardless.

[JMarz]

I’m sure your comment is meaning well, but it (and this situation) does anger me somewhat.

Backing up, creating new unique saves is something I have always done, it is ingrained in my workflow - it does not mean that I have not been caught out at least 5 times in the last 2 months with this bug. Creating new saves and backups have JUST BARELY saved my skin (I never noticed my backups were also engorged!). The other alternative is finding the offending plugin.

I predominantly use Cubase with VSTs in my productions - not so much recording. This issue is essentially a ticking time bomb, that needs to be observed at all times, as one will never know when it might hit, and to defuse can potentially take hours of painstaking going through a project to find the offending plugin. Essentially this means we cannot currently trust cubase with our creations - this is quite a creativity blocker!

The statement from Steinberg, while good, is interestingly missing the key point of my post - that the save file is essentially doubling on each subsequent save (thus hitting the 2Gb limit). The statement also means Steinberg now owns the problem.

So the key question - why are some plugins not saving information correctly in the first place (hence the doubling)?

Letting users know the 2Gb limit is being hit is good, but even better would be a notification of which Vst is causing the issue. Then users can render it/bounce it or remove it.

Key question - is this predominantly VST instruments, or do effects cause the issue too? (This would help massively in tracking down offending plugging - (I have way more effects than instruments in a project!)

And solutions must be rolled out to all versions, not just 13 (and Nuendo equivalent)

As I said, I more than happy to support the Steinberg dev team solve this problem with crash logs, project files, whatever - I’ve invested too much of my life into Cubase to change, and I want what is best for the system and the community around it!

[Armand]

Hi @JMarz

@JMarz

The statement from Steinberg, while good, is interestingly missing the key point of my post - that the save file is essentially doubling on each subsequent save (thus hitting the 2Gb limit)

I have identified your issue and it is already known to us. The problem is likely coming from 3rd-party plugins and we intend to investigate on this issue. At this stage what you would be of precious help would be to progressively delete tracks of your projects and see how it affects the file size until you’re able to spot the culprit. So far the main assumptions is that this is coming from Kontakt instances. Thanks for exchanging your findings with us.

Nonetheless, this issue overlaps with the 2GB problem. Cubase might give you the illusion that your project was safely saved, although it wasn’t. The workarounds provided in the knowledge base article will also help you find out what the culprits are in your project. Additionally the new limit that we hope to achieve with the new format will be beyond the TB range. That’s probably nothing people want to end up with but that still provides a bigger safety net than as of today.

Thank you very much in advance for your help!

Cheers,
Armand

[Carvin_Man]

@JMarz

And solutions must be rolled out to all versions, not just 13 (and Nuendo equivalent)

100%… at least for a couple of versions back.

[JMarz]

Hi @Armand ,

So my initial tests show NI Battery is causing this issue.

However…
Over last summer I rearranged my hard drives for a clean OS installation. This included a reinstallation of all my apps, including audio ones. My projects, audio samples, and instrument libraries are kept on a separate physical disk that I did not touch. However, after the new OS installation this audio projects disk did changed drive letter. In most cases for the audio apps, I just needed to point to the drive where the libraries are and I didnt need to redownload libraries.

So, whenever I was opening a project saved before the reinstallation where Battery had been instanced, it was looking for the samples with the wrong drive, so it would ask me to point to where the samples were. This I would do, but even if I saved, Battery would forget, and ask again when I reloaded. It appears it is these that are incurring a bloated save.

Removing these instances of Battery makes the file size drop down to “normal” sizes (5 - 40 Mb in size, depending on project stage)

Creating a new instance of Battery, then reloading the samples also works (have yet to check if I save the kit under the old instance and try and reload it in the new carries the bug across, I will do so later this weekend).

So far the NI Kontact libraries don’t seem to have caused me any issues. I haven’t really had similar file location problems with them either…

Now looking back, it seems Battery has been causing many problems for me since the reinstallation - debugging some of the crash reports appears to have pointed at Battery having issues… I will look to see how I can remove and reinstall again and see if a clean installation helps at all.

Thank you for your patience and work on Cubase.

J

[Armand]

Thanks that’s invaluable information for us to be able to reproduce it in house.

[Takkyi]

Once again Battery 4 bulging Cubase project files. Every time I save Cubase project It doubles in size or so. What triggers this? I have Battery in many projects that does not puff up.
Cubase 13 and 14

[MrSoundman]

@Takkyi

Every time I save Cubase project It doubles in size or so.

That sounds like a specific problem with such a project.

The good news is, according to the release notes for Cubase 14 …

… but be careful about backwards compatibility.

[Takkyi]

It seems so, a good reminder. Thanks. That update is good.

Problem here is that file size doubles every time project is saved and the backups created by Cubase are also gigantic, so disk fills up quickly.

Fortunately, there is a solution to the problem: Delete all Battery instances from project and load them again and load all sounds again.

[MrSoundman]

@Takkyi

Fortunately, there is a solution to the problem: Delete all Battery instances from project and load them again and load all sounds again.

Have you contacted NI, or perhaps their forum? This sounds like a serious problem with the Battery plugin (rather than with Cubase) and surely some other Battery users must have noticed.

What version of Battery do you use?

[dynamaltee]

Can confirm:

NI Battery (lastest version) causes Cubase Pro 14.0.10 project file size to double each time project is re-opened and then saved. Resulting in *.cpr files from several 100 kB up to GBs…

Render in place and get rid of Battery in the project solved it.