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Corrupt project

I spent some time using AUM + NS2 to record a series of guitar takes for use inside NS2. I made sure I regularly manually saved the Loopy project inside AUM and I had half a dozen or so different take variations loaded in my project. NS2 was looping in the background while I recorded in Loopy AU+AUM.

When I had a take I was happy with, I loaded Loopy into an NS2 track and copy/pasted from the AUM instance. At some point while I was working in NS2, something must have happened to the AUM Loopy state as the next time I tried to save the project I got an error about being unable to save the project SQL state (or words to that effect).

I restarted AUM and unfortunately I can no longer load the Loopy project that I had saved - I get a “Not a valid project” error.

I had been using Loopy for quite some time to nail the take and the issue seems to coincide with me creating an instance inside NS2. It could be that the AUM state got swapped out at the wrong point in time or something. Is there some background link between Loopy instances which means they might affect each other? I noticed in the past when it crashes in AUM then normally all instances crash at the same time so wondered if they were using some shared state.

I got the take I wanted but I would have liked to have maybe used one of the others elsewhere in the song. I can see the project in the AU project sandbox but there does not seem to be a way of getting it out to send for analysis since it will not load and I can’t see an export option. I’ll try connecting the iPad to the Mac at some point to see if they appear in iMazing.

Comments

  • Can you see the project in the AUM folder in the Files app? You should be able to zip it there and share with Mail or whatever. If you saved it as an AUM Loopy project, using the folder icon in the AUv3 status bar, it will appear in a folder under the Audio Unit Presets folder.

    I suspect that, when you copy/pasted from AUM into NS2, you may have given NS2 Loopy Pro read-only access to the AUM file directly, a confusing situation. It is likely better to save the finished project directly inside Loopy Pro, then you'll be able to load it directly in NS2, no copy/paste magic required.

  • @MisplacedDevelopment : in answer to your question, loopy AU instances don’t have some background link as you put it. What you observed about all instances crashing will happen with any AU if you load enough instances to have a memory fault. All instances of a particular AU have memory allocated from a common pool. So, if you load enough to exceed what the OS will permit, the OS will crash them all.

    Loopy saves the whole state. So, if Jonatan can de-corrupt the AUM project, you should be able to get your data. If you were saving the loopy projects within the AU, you should be able to use the standalone app to retrieve them…and if they won’t open, I am sure Michael would look into salvaging them.

  • @uncledave said:
    Can you see the project in the AUM folder in the Files app? You should be able to zip it there and share with Mail or whatever. If you saved it as an AUM Loopy project, using the folder icon in the AUv3 status bar, it will appear in a folder under the Audio Unit Presets folder.

    I suspect that, when you copy/pasted from AUM into NS2, you may have given NS2 Loopy Pro read-only access to the AUM file directly, a confusing situation. It is likely better to save the finished project directly inside Loopy Pro, then you'll be able to load it directly in NS2, no copy/paste magic required.

    Thanks for the suggestions, @uncledave and @espiegel123. I had not got as far as saving an AUM project as this is all I had been doing in AUM for the last day or so (that’ll learn me!), but I had been saving the Loopy Pro project directly.

    After the database error I restarted AUM and I loaded the last saved AUM state. The Loopy state that AUM loaded was corrupt by that point - there were only a few donuts and all were blank. I did not think at that point to try and recover the state via the AU presets folder, I shall remember to check that in future.

    I did early on in testing this workflow use one project that I saved in AUM and loaded in NS2 but I figured that would increase the chances of something going wrong and so I opted to separate my arranger instances in NS2 from my rehearsal instance in AUM.

    I think I’ll use Loopy in standalone for this going forwards unless there is a specific reason for using AUM as it will be one less moving part.

    @espiegel123 Thanks for the tip on getting the project out with the standalone. I had tried this but had not noticed that it has a separate folder to access the AUv3 files. I moved it out of there into the root folder and can now access it via the filesystem.

    I drop it along to Michael, I don’t want to waste his time getting the audio out but it may be helpful for him to see it to understand what may have happened.

  • @MisplacedDevelopment : when you opened the project in the standalone (you dont have to move it to do so, btw) was your audio there?

  • btw, any loopy pro project saved as a project in the AU can be opened from the AU loaded in other hosts. this makes it relatively easy to record into loopy in aum and reopen the project in NS2.

  • @espiegel123 said:
    @MisplacedDevelopment : when you opened the project in the standalone (you dont have to move it to do so, btw) was your audio there?

    No, in standalone the project also fails to load with the “Not a valid project” error.

  • @MisplacedDevelopment said:

    @espiegel123 said:
    @MisplacedDevelopment : when you opened the project in the standalone (you dont have to move it to do so, btw) was your audio there?

    No, in standalone the project also fails to load with the “Not a valid project” error.

    I think @Michael will want to see it. He might not be super quick in responding right now due to scheduling stuff

  • edited August 2022

    @espiegel123 said:

    @MisplacedDevelopment said:

    @espiegel123 said:
    @MisplacedDevelopment : when you opened the project in the standalone (you dont have to move it to do so, btw) was your audio there?

    No, in standalone the project also fails to load with the “Not a valid project” error.

    I think @Michael will want to see it. He might not be super quick in responding right now due to scheduling stuff

    I have sent it along to him in case it contains anything useful for root cause purposes. I know he is a busy man and I’m not blocked or anything so no rush to do anything from my point of view.

    Oddly, the same thing happened again a little later in NS2 in the separate project that I had created to store my ‘good’ take. Here is the error message in full this time:

    Fortunately this time the project seemed to survive a restart of NS2 and did not get corrupt. I have started exporting the project as well as saving it though, just to be sure!

    Edit: Again, almost certain to be a coincidence but I had accidentally opened Loopy standalone just before I noticed the new error in NS2.

  • Thanks heaps for the report, @MisplacedDevelopment , and apologies for the delay - we've been dealing with the death of my wife's parents and have been a bit out of it.

    I'm pretty sure I've figured out the root cause of this one - fix is en route.

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