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Garageband export failures with AUs in iOS 11.4 beta

Hey all,

Is anyone else on the iOS 11.4 public beta? I'm experiencing Garageband export woes, where any tracks with AUs on them experience a failure message where the AU quits halfway through export and the song then doesn't export properly.

I don't know if this also happens in 11.3 or if anyone else has experienced this? And if so, is there a workaround?

Comments

  • It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

  • @richardyot said:
    It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

    Yeah, there's a Noise AU track in there! So you're basically saying to record the MIDI from the Noise AU track into an Audio track?

  • @Michael_R_Grant said:

    @richardyot said:
    It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

    Yeah, there's a Noise AU track in there! So you're basically saying to record the MIDI from the Noise AU track into an Audio track?

    Kinda - you long press on the AU Noise track, and then long press on the empty audio track and it will create a copy of your project with the original (untouched) MIDI and then create an audio track from the two selected tracks.

  • @richardyot said:

    @Michael_R_Grant said:

    @richardyot said:
    It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

    Yeah, there's a Noise AU track in there! So you're basically saying to record the MIDI from the Noise AU track into an Audio track?

    Kinda - you long press on the AU Noise track, and then long press on the empty audio track and it will create a copy of your project with the original (untouched) MIDI and then create an audio track from the two selected tracks.

    Sounds kinda like Freeze in Cubasis. Cool beans. B)

  • @richardyot said:

    @Michael_R_Grant said:

    @richardyot said:
    It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

    Yeah, there's a Noise AU track in there! So you're basically saying to record the MIDI from the Noise AU track into an Audio track?

    Kinda - you long press on the AU Noise track, and then long press on the empty audio track and it will create a copy of your project with the original (untouched) MIDI and then create an audio track from the two selected tracks.

    This workaround sounds very useful! But I'm still now sure I understand. Could you post a picture? Are you starting off with multiple tracks and then converting them to audio? I'm not sure I understand. :neutral:

  • @Audiojunkie said:

    @richardyot said:

    @Michael_R_Grant said:

    @richardyot said:
    It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

    Yeah, there's a Noise AU track in there! So you're basically saying to record the MIDI from the Noise AU track into an Audio track?

    Kinda - you long press on the AU Noise track, and then long press on the empty audio track and it will create a copy of your project with the original (untouched) MIDI and then create an audio track from the two selected tracks.

    This workaround sounds very useful! But I'm still now sure I understand. Could you post a picture? Are you starting off with multiple tracks and then converting them to audio? I'm not sure I understand. :neutral:

    Ok so say you have an AU that won't render when you export your track. This happens to me every time I use Roli Noise or BeatHawk for example. What I do in those situations is the following, and so far it has worked every time:

    1) Create a new track in the GB project, set it to Audio Recorder and then leave it empty.

    2) Long press on the offending AU track, and select Merge from the menu.

    3) Select both the AU track and the empty Audio Recorder track to be merged.

    4) GB should render a new audio track and delete the two original tracks. The new audio track should have the rendered audio form the AU.

  • @richardyot said:

    @Audiojunkie said:

    @richardyot said:

    @Michael_R_Grant said:

    @richardyot said:
    It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

    Yeah, there's a Noise AU track in there! So you're basically saying to record the MIDI from the Noise AU track into an Audio track?

    Kinda - you long press on the AU Noise track, and then long press on the empty audio track and it will create a copy of your project with the original (untouched) MIDI and then create an audio track from the two selected tracks.

    This workaround sounds very useful! But I'm still now sure I understand. Could you post a picture? Are you starting off with multiple tracks and then converting them to audio? I'm not sure I understand. :neutral:

    Ok so say you have an AU that won't render when you export your track. This happens to me every time I use Roli Noise or BeatHawk for example. What I do in those situations is the following, and so far it has worked every time:

    1) Create a new track in the GB project, set it to Audio Recorder and then leave it empty.

    2) Long press on the offending AU track, and select Merge from the menu.

    3) Select both the AU track and the empty Audio Recorder track to be merged.

    4) GB should render a new audio track and delete the two original tracks. The new audio track should have the rendered audio form the AU.

    Ah, thank you for this! So, it may be a good idea to make a copy of your midi track before merging, in case you want to go back and make changes later. Great tip! Thank you!

  • @Audiojunkie said:

    @richardyot said:

    @Audiojunkie said:

    @richardyot said:

    @Michael_R_Grant said:

    @richardyot said:
    It's been happening throughout the iOS 11 cycle AFAIK, certainly happens on 11.3 and 11.2

    The only way I've managed to export the AU tracks is to create an empty audio recorder track and then merge that with the offending AU prior to doing any exporting. So far this has worked OK for me. Roli Noise and BeatHawk AUs always run into export problems for me.

    Yeah, there's a Noise AU track in there! So you're basically saying to record the MIDI from the Noise AU track into an Audio track?

    Kinda - you long press on the AU Noise track, and then long press on the empty audio track and it will create a copy of your project with the original (untouched) MIDI and then create an audio track from the two selected tracks.

    This workaround sounds very useful! But I'm still now sure I understand. Could you post a picture? Are you starting off with multiple tracks and then converting them to audio? I'm not sure I understand. :neutral:

    Ok so say you have an AU that won't render when you export your track. This happens to me every time I use Roli Noise or BeatHawk for example. What I do in those situations is the following, and so far it has worked every time:

    1) Create a new track in the GB project, set it to Audio Recorder and then leave it empty.

    2) Long press on the offending AU track, and select Merge from the menu.

    3) Select both the AU track and the empty Audio Recorder track to be merged.

    4) GB should render a new audio track and delete the two original tracks. The new audio track should have the rendered audio form the AU.

    Ah, thank you for this! So, it may be a good idea to make a copy of your midi track before merging, in case you want to go back and make changes later. Great tip! Thank you!

    No need to make a copy - GB will automatically save a separate copy of the project every time you merge tracks.

  • Cool! Where does it store the copy? Does it have some kind of time stamp or notation signifying that it is a backup and not the current working copy?

    Also, why must one merge an empty audio track? What is the purpose of the empty audio track?

    Thanks so much!! This is so helpful!!!

  • Also, would rendering everything to stems instead of merging work as well?

  • @Audiojunkie said:
    Cool! Where does it store the copy? Does it have some kind of time stamp or notation signifying that it is a backup and not the current working copy?

    It saves the copy where all the projects are. It's a 'full' copy so messing around with GarageBand can quickly eat up storage (I had ~4GB of GB Projects that I just cleaned up and ended up with a few hundred megs with no lost projects).

  • In theory you can just merge one track, but with those problematic AUs that just results in silence in my experience, but for some reason merging two tracks seems to work. Go figure.

    As for stems, GB can't render out to stems, you have to do it manually by soloing tracks and exporting the song. And of course if you do that with those problem AUs you just get silence unless you have performed the merge trick first.

  • @Samu said:

    @Audiojunkie said:
    Cool! Where does it store the copy? Does it have some kind of time stamp or notation signifying that it is a backup and not the current working copy?

    It saves the copy where all the projects are. It's a 'full' copy so messing around with GarageBand can quickly eat up storage (I had ~4GB of GB Projects that I just cleaned up and ended up with a few hundred megs with no lost projects).

    If you have enough storage in iCloud you can keep all your GB projects there instead of locally on the iPad, that's what I do now since 200GB of iCloud storage is cheap. So it saves the projects to the cloud and doesn't use up your actual iPad storage.

  • @richardyot said:

    If you have enough storage in iCloud you can keep all your GB projects there instead of locally on the iPad, that's what I do now since 200GB of iCloud storage is cheap. So it saves the projects to the cloud and doesn't use up your actual iPad storage.

    True, but still it's close to insanity to duplicate the entire project just to freeze one track especially if it's a larger project.

    Even though one saves the sessions in the cloud iOS keeps a local copies for speed and recordings don't go straight to the cloud. There's still plenty of 'off line files' when network connection is less than optimal...

  • Thanks for your answers everyone! :)

  • GarageBand could be so much better with proper AU rendering, same issues with fx. When I really need a DAW, as on iPhone there is no so much choice, the best way to do things IMO with GB is to record everything audio, via AUM host as a GB input for all AU instruments and all AU fx treatment. Using midi link sync is pretty efficient, you can record clean loops/parts, or sequence AU via Gadget/Xequence or anything else, same thing for syncing bpm based AU fxs like delay or even chorus. This is pretty similar approch as creating audio material in Blocs Wave, except you will have a timeline for arrangement.
    I hope GB will be someday fixed, but it seems to never arrived it has issues with AU for more than one year now.

  • Here’s another question: Could I just load GarageBand into AUM and record my track from there? Staying within the digital realm would mean no signal loss, right?

  • @Audiojunkie said:
    Here’s another question: Could I just load GarageBand into AUM and record my track from there? Staying within the digital realm would mean no signal loss, right?

    Ah, I just checked... There is no way to do it. This workaround is the only way to do it... Bummer...

  • Was this issue ever resolved ?

    I still get audio unit unexpectedly quit error

  • edited July 2019

    My very amateur and sloppy suggestion is to solo the (AU) and do a screen recording video, then convert it to audio (I have a Shortcut that does it) and import back in the project.

    Leaving mobile, using IDAM and recording into a Mac. Also annoying. But if you really need access, there are tedious ways.

    I use the merge and that has yet to fail me. The only time the (AU) has problems is when I’m low on memory. I use the free app Battery Saver to clear up ram and its usually ok.

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