Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > REAPER Q&A, Tips, Tricks and Howto

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 07-12-2019, 04:03 AM   #1
brassden
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Oct 2017
Posts: 8
Default PLEASE HELP! Large Reaper Project Has Started Bugging Out

Hello all. Forgive me if this is in the wrong forum, mods please feel free to move if so.

I’m having some really worrying problems in Reaper that I’d love some help getting to the bottom of. I am recording an audiobook, which has hit the 17 hour mark on Reaper’s timeline (it’s NOT 17 hours worth of audio, there are just fairly big gaps between chapters to keep the project tidy).

So the project has begun doing some or all of the following:

- Recording started to NOT show a wave form. The items show up blank (quitting and re-opening or even just leaving Reaper and looking at another app then returning fixed this).

- Recording stopped working. Playback worked, other functions worked, but not recording.

- Reaper on the whole stops responding as it should, won’t save and won’t quit - menu items start appearing oddly. Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zfpfr5q8k6...nubug.png?dl=0

- Add-on scripts do not run. I get a ‘too many scripts running’ error message.

- SOMETIMES I get the error message ‘can't write to recording files does the directory exist’. I have not run out of space, and nothing has changed regarding the directory.

When any of the above happens, the loop I’m now stuck in is that I will close (generally force quit/crash) Reaper, re-open the project and it will be working absolutely fine UNTIL I record some audio. I can get away, it seems, with recording a single audio item. After that, the problems start back up.

I have tried cleaning the project up using Reaper’s clean project function, which deleted all audio no longer in use inside the project. This has not helped. I've also checked if Reaper is set to stop recording after a certain time point, and it is not.

I’m going to make a new project so that I can continue recording, but this is extremely frustrating and I’d like to know if there’s a way to figure it out and fix it…!

Any help much much appreciated. Thank you.

Stats for your info: Running Reaper64 on MacOSX, 3.46 hgz 6-core intel, 32GB RAM, 1333 MHz DDR3, and I save my projects directly in Dropbox folders for auto-backup purposes.

UPDATE: I have been experimenting more, and the project now has problems doing various things such as glueing items together. The function simply doesn't perform, and once this happens the entire app starts behaving as I mentioned before, where it won't save, make a new project, open projects, quit, etc. But it will still play!

Last edited by brassden; 07-12-2019 at 04:19 AM.
brassden is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-12-2019, 01:04 PM   #2
1111Eugene
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Mar 2019
Posts: 139
Default

try changing your default recoding paths to other drive

also maybe you've reached your hard drive speed limit, try glueing items, if possible, but, it should lead to the same error you have (if your recoding and glueing paths are the same). then, it's time to check if you have any free space left on the hard drive

Last edited by 1111Eugene; 07-12-2019 at 01:10 PM.
1111Eugene is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-12-2019, 02:09 PM   #3
vdubreeze
Human being with feelings
 
vdubreeze's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Brooklyn
Posts: 2,613
Default

When you say you're saving projects directly in Dropbox, are you saying the project resides in your db synced folder on your drive? Only because you're having this issue I'd suggest, if that's the case, move it out and drag a copy of the project in progress there instead. I've not had problems working on files directly in my db folder in other apps, but a few times, in more complicated situations and once working in a folder that had files collaborated on (not Reaper or audio), a permissions problem reared its head and things I should have been able to accomplish I wasn't, until I took them out of db, quit db and (IIRC) unsynced and re-synced it. So taking the synced folder out of db would be my first thought (even though theoretically it shouldn't hurt). Any chance both the project AND the Reaper settings folder are in your synced dropbox folder? Sometimes when people are starting out the projects keep recording to the Reaper Media folder within that, so if it's all in a synced db folder it could be screwing it up.

Also, how much space is available? Even though you're not full you need to maintain a decent amount of free space headroom, depending on the kind of drive between 10-15% of its capacity should be left free if this is the OS drive. (A storage drive without the system on it or caches being assigned to it it doesn't need this.) If you're saving to the internal and have 4 gigs remaining that can causes issues (though not generally the kind you're mentioning).

The screenshot gives the impression Reaper is getting thrown a curveball. Is it possible the settings folder was moved or its path is set oddly? Recording not working to the drive its going to might be a permissions problem, such as the drive thinking it's read only. But for Reaper to lose its menu info makes this seem like something more than just that.
__________________
The reason rain dances work is because they don't stop dancing until it rains.
vdubreeze is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-15-2019, 04:42 AM   #4
brassden
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Oct 2017
Posts: 8
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by 1111Eugene
try changing your default recoding paths to other drive
I will try this...

Quote:
Originally Posted by 1111Eugene
also maybe you've reached your hard drive speed limit, try glueing items, if possible, but, it should lead to the same error you have (if your recoding and glueing paths are the same). then, it's time to check if you have any free space left on the hard drive
As you say, trying to glue items leads to the same issue.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vdubreeze
When you say you're saving projects directly in Dropbox, are you saying the project resides in your db synced folder on your drive? Only because you're having this issue I'd suggest, if that's the case, move it out and drag a copy of the project in progress there instead. I've not had problems working on files directly in my db folder in other apps, but a few times, in more complicated situations and once working in a folder that had files collaborated on (not Reaper or audio), a permissions problem reared its head and things I should have been able to accomplish I wasn't, until I took them out of db, quit db and (IIRC) unsynced and re-synced it. So taking the synced folder out of db would be my first thought (even though theoretically it shouldn't hurt).
Yes, my projects reside in my Mac's Dropbox synched folder. I use Dropbox for all my projects, of which there are many, and I've never had this problem. Even if it were a synchronisation problem, the files exist on the Mac so I'm pretty confident it's nothing to do with DB.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vdubreeze
Any chance both the project AND the Reaper settings folder are in your synced dropbox folder? Sometimes when people are starting out the projects keep recording to the Reaper Media folder within that, so if it's all in a synced db folder it could be screwing it up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vdubreeze
Also, how much space is available?
Loads. Over a TB.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vdubreeze
The screenshot gives the impression Reaper is getting thrown a curveball. Is it possible the settings folder was moved or its path is set oddly? Recording not working to the drive its going to might be a permissions problem, such as the drive thinking it's read only. But for Reaper to lose its menu info makes this seem like something more than just that.
Yep, a hell of a curveball. Nope, I'm very sure no folders were moved or the path changed by mistake.

Small update: an interesting part of this is that if I delete the audio items I recorded just before this happened (I got about a third of the way through a chapter), Reaper behaves normally again. So it DOES suggest that the problem is disk size related, or at last Reaper thinks it is (as I said above, I have huge amount of disk space left).
brassden is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-17-2019, 02:02 AM   #5
brassden
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Oct 2017
Posts: 8
Default

Update for anyone who is interested or has experienced a similar problem:

At the moment, the simplest solution/diagnosis to this problem is the amount of ITEMS I have in the project. There are a heck of a lot, because I wasn't glueing chapters together after completing them, in anticipation of having to go back through chapters and make corrections.

Basically, if I remove a bunch of items, the project works again. When the project has reached this critical stage, I have about a minute to quickly remove some items before Reaper starts misbehaving and I have to force quit. What I managed to do, which so far is working, is render a few chapters before Reaper started glitching out, then deleted those items and saved the project. The project now seems to be behaving.

Not the nicest solution, but, it's working...

Last edited by brassden; 07-17-2019 at 02:12 AM.
brassden is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-17-2019, 06:26 AM   #6
DarkStar
Human being with feelings
 
DarkStar's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Surrey, UK
Posts: 19,677
Default

Can you split it up into sub-projects? User Guide 12.21
__________________
DarkStar ... interesting, if true. . . . Inspired by ...
DarkStar is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 10:07 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.