View Issue Details

IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0009135ardourbugspublic2022-12-04 14:13
ReporterLogin4Jay Assigned To 
PriorityurgentSeveritycrashReproducibilityhave not tried
Status newResolutionopen 
PlatformDebian GNUOSLinuxOS Version(any)
Product Version7.1 
Summary0009135: Ardour Session contains 140 MB of automation data and crashes
Descriptioni There,

I used fader automation and the whole session is not working anymore, because it got really slow and crashes all the time. I first thought it is the same bug as @tired_eyes reported here https://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=9117 ("Automation: combining two [midi] regions create an excessive amount of automation points"). But i have the problem with audio regions and they are not combined. Just huge amount of automation data.

When i load the Session, it takes about one minute which is very long in comparison to other projects i worked on. While loading i see all my 8 GB RAM filling up and also the Swap going up and my system is showing me the note, that ardour is not responding. Once i see the editor view, the session is behaving very slow and playback starts with a delay of about 5 seconds. Sometimes i got notified that my storage (SSD) isn’t quick enough for playing back simple Audio tracks (about 10 Tracks with Flac files).

I realized, that the .ardour file is about 140MB huge. Once i deleted the Track with the Fader-Automation, the session is only 1MB. That means, there was is a ton of automation data in there. That surprises me, because the fader automation (that i recorded) is only for a region of about one minute.
What i find strange, that in the session folder, there is no .history file, but a .history.bak file of 400MB (which you can see in the screenshot). That .history.bak file is from the point of the screenshot on only automation data. I never deleted my .history file (or can it go away with a new snapshot?) and i wonder where it’s gone.
I can’t even show my fader automation data, because ardour is struggling to zoom in.

Besides ot that: Thank you guys for the wonderful DAW that Ardour is. I’m using it for years now and never wanna change!
Additional InformationUbuntu 22.04.01 LTS
Lenovo ThinkPad T450s
Intel® Core™ i7-5600U CPU @ 2.60GHz × 4
8GB RAM
Tags7.1, fader automation, track freeze

Activities

Login4Jay

2022-12-02 13:37

reporter  

inside_the_history.bak-file.png (247,172 bytes)   
inside_the_history.bak-file.png (247,172 bytes)   

x42

2022-12-04 10:39

administrator   ~0026975

How did you create that automation-data? have you recorded this fader automation with a control surface?
There was a bug in Ardour7: automation thinning did not work correctly. Usually Ardour removes dense automation points at the end of each write pass. Fixed now in 7.1-207.

If that session is important to you, there are a few ways to recover it:

Either just delete the Automation in the .ardour session file using a text editor.

If it is fader automation, you can use a Lua script that comes with Ardour to remove dense events: Open Window > Scripting . Load script "Snippets > Thin Fader Automation", select the track(s) that have fader automation, press "Run" (in versions prior to 7.1-207. change line 30 from al:thin (50) to al:thin(128000).

You can also safely remove the .history file (that is undo/redo data).

Login4Jay

2022-12-04 14:13

reporter   ~0026978

Thanks for the response!
I have recorded the fader automation just with ardour by hand with the write mode. Control surface? I didn’t use any extra software or hardware (fader) to do this. So nothing special.

Thanks for the recovery tipps. Luckily i could restore from backup but good to know for the (hopefully not) next time. I’ll try to open my "corrupted" session with Ardour 7.2 when it’s out. In the moment i unfortunately don’t have time to learn how to use lua scripts or to install nightly builds of ardour.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2022-12-02 13:37 Login4Jay New Issue
2022-12-02 13:37 Login4Jay Tag Attached: 7.1
2022-12-02 13:37 Login4Jay Tag Attached: fader automation
2022-12-02 13:37 Login4Jay Tag Attached: track freeze
2022-12-02 13:37 Login4Jay File Added: inside_the_history.bak-file.png
2022-12-04 10:39 x42 Note Added: 0026975
2022-12-04 14:13 Login4Jay Note Added: 0026978