Pro Tools 7 & Application Switching, PT7 won't play after switching apps Options

[aleman]

I'm running Pro Tools 7.0 on Tiger (10.4.3) on a mirror-drive G4 with dual 1.25 Gig processors and 512 MB of RAM. For the most part PT7 runs beautifully.

The problem I have occurs when I'm running PT7 and then switch to another application (like my internet browser, or iTunes for example). When I switch *back* to Pro Tools after using the other application, I can't play my file anymore. Any attempt to hit the "play" button (either using the spacebar or my mouse) fails.

The "play" button gets highlighted for a split second, and then the "stop" button gets highlighted immediate afterwards and PT won't play. I don't get any error messages.

It's worth noting that this does NOT happen when I switch back and forth between Reason Adapted and ProTools. It's only with my other apps.

Anyone else experience this, or have an idea what's causing it?

Thanks in advance.

[abcdaniel]

In the digidesign support site it says:

"Pro Tools HD/LE/M-powered 7.0 is officially supported on Mac OS X 10.4.2 (Tiger)"

So maybe there are some bugs with PT in 10.4.3? Might be the answer to your problem.

[aleman]

UPDATE:

So I just experienced this problem while I was still in ProTools... suddenly it wouldn't let me play back the tracks anymore. The only fix is to close the open session in ProTools, close the session in Reason, and then open it up again. Sometimes that doesn't even work and I need to quit ProTools altogether.

This leads me to believe that it's a problem with not enough CPU processing power, or some other error where ProTools doesn't have the resources it needs to play back the tracks.

It's worth mentioning that the session I was running only had three instrument tracks (all with sampling software plugins in them - 2 Sampletank, and 1 Reason instrument) and a master track. And I was only running iTunes and my internet browser (Camino) in the background.

Strange....

[abcdaniel]

I'm just kickin some random ideas here, I haven't got PT7 yet, but it sounds like the same problem that you got in PT 6.X.X, when the computer woke up from sleep. PT then didn't want to play the tracks: Yeah, it was exactly what you described, at least on my computer. The problem was that the computer lost contact with the digidesign hardware (I guess, because the led's weren't lit up as they should).

Do you use your digidesign hardware to play iTunes? In that case maybe PT loses contact with the hardware, when itunes claims it. Just a guess, try to use your internal soundcard in that case, yo!

[scrambles]

I used to have this problem as well. I was never able to pinpoint what caused it. Usually it would occur if I left a session open for a few hours at a time, especially if it was inactive. But i had it happen occasionally while working in a session... one minute its playing fine, the next I get exactly what you described. i always closed PT and Reason and may have even restarted the CPU a few times to fix it.

This was probably in 6.4 or 6.7 in Panther 10.3.9 (sorry can't remember with all the frequent upgrades). Currently I'm running 6.9 in Tiger 10.4.2 with no problems.

All I can add is that I don't think it is a processing power limitation b/c I didn't necessarily have many tracks or soft synths running. It would happen in very basic sessions. Also I am using a Dual G5 2.0Ghz.

For what its worth...

[vank]

10.4.3 Has got a couple of bugs, file handling, mounting NTFS or FAT32 drives and stuff like that, I'm sure that if you stick with 10.4.2 you'll be fine...