Let's Talk About Freezing and Its "Duplication Failsafe"

[SS1182]

I think you guys seriously need to rethink your default setup...


"if you make any adjustments (move) while the track is frozen we will create a copy of the MIDI items on those tracks should you later unfreeze them......"

Okay first off, you must understand how critical freezing is to a project, particularly for those who are using your DAW to compose music. This is a different situation when it comes to working/mixing pure audio tracks and FX, vs. needing synths, samplers, guitar amp emulators, and all of their FX, etc.

What I am telling you is that people composing with your DAW absolutely need a freezing feature that they can count on. Otherwise, they are going to have issues with your product and look elsewhere. If it's not about money for you then at the very least if you are really looking to make a solid product within the 2019 alternative market of DAW's then this is an area that you should look to be aces in.


Let's just think about this for one second. First off, why does one ever need to freeze tracks? The answer 99% of the time is "in order to preserve CPU performance", right?

This means that 99% of the time you don't freeze tracks unless they are already in a state where they can be "shelved" for awhile. "Ok, I'm done tweaking this track, so I'm going to freeze it and start on the next track." That is how the process usually works. You work on a track for awhile, and then you are finished with that track for the foreseeable future. HOWEVER, moving the placement of music within a project is a very common procedure that happens many times in the writing process, and very often includes adjusting the placement of those individual tracks which are already "completed, but now they just need to be moved with the rest of the music", etc.



I have several tracks that I had already composed out, already mixed, already had where I wanted them... which, you know, took hours of work. Now, simply because I wanted to move a region that happened to overlap with the tail end of those frozen tracks (not the actual music on those tracks, the "extra" tail that freezing adds, like an extra 10 seconds to the length of the frozen item, etc.)... because that frozen tail end overlapped into a region that I moved several times, when I decided to make an adjustment later on and had to go back and unfreeze those tracks, now suddenly I have literally nine overlapping copies of the MIDI data on those multiple (9x's each track) tracks. Even just a single copy would have been enough of a nightmare, much less multiples of nine. The copies overlap in bizarre places, and when you try to delete the copies you never know which one you are selecting, or if you are possibly selecting and deleting the original you'd like to keep, because they are all transparent and stacked on top of one another. Again, let's just think about this. Why would you EVER want that to happen?



So if you move it... you make a... copy... of the MIDI data...? I'm just trying to understand the logic of the existence of this feature.

It sounds like what is really going on here is that (particularly with MIDI) there is difficulty in maintaining the association between the frozen data and the original data. It sounds like you are saying, "Sure, we can save you CPU by creating an intermediary, "frozen", purely-audio copy of the performance processes... but... sometimes it might get lost if you want the original back... like say if you move frozen items (and you will). It turns out if you move a frozen item the original "location data" gets lost/the original location "association" gets bugged. But don't worry, if that ever happens we'll put in another feature that guarantees you never lose the original... we'll duplicate it....... every... single... time... you move it... you'll get another copy. File definitely never gets lost. Problem solved, right? And, you get a new file sorting dilemma because, safety measures."

Look, it just appears that this is some kind of bandaid failsafe you haven't thought all the way through in terms of how people actually use it. I can understand the existence of the issue as it seems genuinely quite difficult to program freezing into your DAW without complications. So as an alternative failsafe, how about simply making the default behavior be such that you can't move a frozen item until you unfreeze it, not even when moving a region that contains it? Or maybe you don't make a copy every single time you move it? Anything would be an improvement over what you have set up currently.



Other Bugs With Freezing - If you freeze too many tracks at once, occasionally one of them simply won't render the audio during freezing. You have to go back and unfreeze, then refreeze and try it again. In my projects, this often happened to very specific tracks. I ended up being able to freeze everything at once, minus those tracks, and then going back and to freeze them individually afterward. If you freeze them all at once, those same tracks repeatedly end up muted each time.

Additionally, I have had multiple instances where I will open the project one day and suddenly all of the routing has gone missing for a random selection of frozen tracks. The tracks will be completely silent. You can re-route those tracks to the master, any busses... it will not fix the issue. The only fix in that case is to insert a brand new track and attempt to copy everything from the original silent tracks over to the fresh track, and then spend the time to mirror all of your previous routing onto the new tracks. I have had this happen with my entire drum bus. I had to remake and reroute every single track within the drum section of my project because one day I opened the project and they all went silent, no mute buttons pushed or user error, just "ghost routing" internally within the program that happens as a result of freezing tracks.

I am a Reaper user/supporter and want to help you guys stay in the game. Freezing is very much a necessity in making music right now. Focusing your attention toward setting this up in a straightforward and robust way would be a very wise business decision going forward.

[heda]

I agree.
the other day I had an issue when unfreezing, suddenly the MIDI items had many many takes duplicated from the original MIDI. I don't know what caused it.

[dadada]

I've had similar issues and work the same way. This needs to be 100% reliable otherwise this makes Reaper unusable for complex projects. I'd hate having to switch back to Nuendo after falling in love with Reaper on pretty much all other fronts.

[Justin]

Originally Posted by SS1182

"if you make any adjustments (move) while the track is frozen we will create a copy of the MIDI items on those tracks should you later unfreeze them......"

Hmmm I'm not familiar with that message -- can you provide a licecap .gif of how you got there?

[TPB3333]

Originally Posted by SS1182

Other Bugs With Freezing - If you freeze too many tracks at once, occasionally one of them simply won't render the audio during freezing. You have to go back and unfreeze, then refreeze and try it again. In my projects, this often happened to very specific tracks. I ended up being able to freeze everything at once, minus those tracks, and then going back and to freeze them individually afterward. If you freeze them all at once, those same tracks repeatedly end up muted each time.

I have the same problem, has anyone found a fix for this?

Regards,
Toon

[Coachz]

I agree. I freeze everything and if I need to change any part of the arrangement I have to unfreeze everything. It's a pain.

[Miscreant]

Just caught this thread in a Google search and want to chime in. Similar problems are happening to me.

I'm absolutely maxed on a project right now, with RT CPU well over 100% and therefore need to freeze to do literally anything. Unfortunately though not only does freezing take some time, I am finding it's also a bit buggy: sometimes some tracks don't freeze (when I freeze multiple at once); sometimes I find the track sounds different, especially the levels (I'm freezing drum tracks with a lot of sends/receives, a lot of parallel processing, etc.).

It's a bloody pain.

[Coachz]

Last week I froze about 15 tracks at once and the midi bass track got frozen into about 10 segments with lots of silence in between.

The other problem is many time the VSTi unfreezes with the wrong preset. These 2 problems are really problematic. I hope the devs can devote some time to seriously stress testing freezing and unfreezing more to make it all it can be.

[Fergler]

I render the track to a new track and mute the original and offline its effects. Arrangement capabilities preserved, and I can make small edits when needed and just render what I need to the bounced track in sections. I find the idea of freezing and 'hiding' a bunch of information really scary for long term, I'd rather be able to see it.

[Miscreant]

I don’t hide anything in the T/MCP, as the missing outs in the tracks show me that they’ve been frozen. But not having the exact same quality/fidelity after freezing is a complete project killer, as then I simply cannot mix other elements. I’d be working against myself and mixing can be frustrating enough.