The last sound design project I worked on for a movie Sonar was hanging every 5 minutes,

 
So you're doing sound for film..., now we have more setup problems that can cause crashs if you're loading a movie in your project and tweaking audio and midi. Are you using V-Link? Do you have it enabled in the drivers section? Are you using the proper bit rate for film? Please outline what you have setup for film audio production and editing.

Hi Crg.....

This is going to open up more cans of worms and move me away from the SONAR.exe process problem but what the heck :)

Firstly I have never used V-Link (I dont think I need to...)

Loading a movie into Sonar isnt *that* bad....after the initial pain that is. Loading the movie is all about getting the editor to provide the final locked picture (yeah right!) in the right format and resolution for Sonar to handle (and your PC in terms of codecs). I found a scaled down from HD version in QT format worked fine to drop into Sonars Timeline on 25fps (Last picture was scaled from 1920x1080 down to 920x576 or thereabouts)...

Then I use one of my monitors for the picture and the other monitor for Sonars timeline, all this is with no frame drop, no problem. Bit rate for audio is standard 48k, theres no need to go higher...truely.

The problems start with importing OMF's. This isnt Sonars fault, OMFS are by nature ghastly things. Getting Avid or Premiere to export from its suite to a DAW like Sonar is a myriad of hell. It can be done but its tough. (Re-Exporting back to a final mix studio in OMF format from Sonar is equally tricky)

Sonars real problems arise with working on a film project come with the amount of audio tracks you have to deal with, which is hundreds.... Some of this can be avoided by working the Movie in ten minute chunks at a time and then glueing them together at the end and bouncing down the FX then exporting as OMF's with the correct handles....Each to their own on this one. Final mix studios prefer the OMFS with 20 second handles to be able to mix with and re-edit where deemed important... Exporting OMF's with these handles causes Sonar to crash unfortunately and not before its taken many hours to get to the crash......

Using multiple FX across 100's of tracks is a battle against utilisation depending on the power of your machine, also as you start introducing pan, volume controls and other forms of automation on various key frames Sonar begins to grind heavily....(I take this opportunity to add that editing automation tracks is a clumsy to say the least in X1 but i believe X2 is addressing this)

This is the basic technical process I use Sonar for Film but Sonar will crash ALOT and often at critical stages so I always backup a fresh copy every day on to a NAS box so i can return if needed but back to the SONAR.EXE process kill problem, when that process dies lets say 20-25 times a day for various reasons it can KILL your creative process and its especially hard when you have an angry Director wanting to hear a key scene or whatever...... If Sonar would just fire up straight away after a crash it would add years of daylight to my life... 

btw Crg, I am not really using too much MIDI in this other than a controller keyboard... 

I'm no film expert but I'd have to suspect from what little I know that your film "rate" and your audio "rate" are mismatched. When you do audio for film, you have to match the rate of the film. It is not 48. Look into this. SMPTE and film rates, and the proper rate for syncing audio to film. Mismatched bit rates when doing audio to film will cause a multitude of crashs.

"Also please nobody tell me to go back to XP 32 bit Sonar 8.5 please (cue jokes)" I went back to 32 bit Sonar running on 64 bit Windows 7. Stopped all of this crap. I also have two M-Audio keyboards, but they work fine now.

As a general technique for killing processes, one option would be to use TASKKILL from an elevated command prompt. Type cmd into the start menu search box to bring up the CMD.exe program icon. Right click the CMD.exe icon and select "run as administrator" to get to an elevated command prompt.

taskkill /? will provide rudimentary instructions

To kill a process by name the syntax is:
taskkill /f /IM SONARPDR.exe

that should kill all instances of the sonar producer that are running. 


taskkill /f /fi "status eq not responding" 

(The quotes " at either end of the filter string are required.)

uses the /f (force) switch to force closing any process that reports its status as not responding by using the /fi (filter) switch to specify closing only non-responding processes. This may work when you are unable to close a process by name because it is locked by another non-responding process. Of course if your process is hung but not reporting not responding because it is waiting for input etc. this is not going to work. It is worth a try to run that filter first to clean up other stuck processes before trying to kill your process by name.

The complementary command line program TASKLIST will give you access to process ids etc. Typing tasklist /? at a command prompt gives you the options.

As a general tool for sorting out stuck processes the free download program Process Explorer is very useful. If you are lucky, it may be possible to kill a process with this program that is resistent to closing via Task Manager. If not it may well show you the dependency that is keeping your process open.

http://technet.microsoft....nternals/bb896653.aspx

slartabartfast (interesting name!), I have a shortcut on my desktop which I think runs the above process. So if I get a hang, I just run it and it fixes everything magically, supposedly. I haven't had a crash like this for a few months now since I installed this little shortcut thing so I don't know if it works! But if it works as intended, I simply double click it, wait a few seconds, then SONAR should magically start. I can't test it out though as I'm not getting this type of crash now... :|

Whew, you guys really see hangs for that long? That's just crazy! The only time I get a Sonar hang is when I use Sonar 64. The teleport server will not close unless I bring up task manager and close it myself. Other than that, with what I do, I have no need or reason for Sonar 64...so I stick with Sonar 32 on Win 64 and barely ever get a crash unless I do something I'm not supposed to.

As a matter of fact (God please don't let me jinx myself) Sonar has not crashed on me due to an actual fault of Sonar since the last patch was released. I kid you not. The only time Sonar crashes on me religiously is when I try to change samples with Steven Slate Drums 4.0 while audio is playing. That crashes Sonar every 3-5 times. As long as I stop playback and THEN change samples, it won't crash. Other than that, Sonar never crashes on me. Even after the Slate drums make it crash, I can just start Sonar right back up. If you are using 64 bit Sonar, try 32 bit just for the heck of it to see if what you're seeing now stops.

-Danny

Danny Danzi


Whew, you guys really see hangs for that long? That's just crazy! The only time I get a Sonar hang is when I use Sonar 64. The teleport server will not close unless I bring up task manager and close it myself. Other than that, with what I do, I have no need or reason for Sonar 64...so I stick with Sonar 32 on Win 64 and barely ever get a crash unless I do something I'm not supposed to.

As a matter of fact (God please don't let me jinx myself) Sonar has not crashed on me due to an actual fault of Sonar since the last patch was released. I kid you not. The only time Sonar crashes on me religiously is when I try to change samples with Steven Slate Drums 4.0 while audio is playing. That crashes Sonar every 3-5 times. As long as I stop playback and THEN change samples, it won't crash. Other than that, Sonar never crashes on me. Even after the Slate drums make it crash, I can just start Sonar right back up. If you are using 64 bit Sonar, try 32 bit just for the heck of it to see if what you're seeing now stops.

-Danny

If you need 64bit (like I do) 32bit is not an option.

that is incorrect.

The film hasn't got any audio when I get it! Also I dont need to use SMPTE. 

Your points, with all due respect are entirely irrelevant to my crashes.

Crg


I'm no film expert but I'd have to suspect from what little I know that your film "rate" and your audio "rate" are mismatched. When you do audio for film, you have to match the rate of the film. It is not 48. Look into this. SMPTE and film rates, and the proper rate for syncing audio to film. Mismatched bit rates when doing audio to film will cause a multitude of crashs.

Hi Slarta!

Thanks for your comments but this doesnt work, running a cmd prompt and killing tasks makes no difference. I even wrote a batch script to do this to try and make life easier... (I'm actually MS qualified having worked in IT a few years back)

Even if this did work it is still a workaround and doesnt address the issue of why SONAR.EXE just sits there when any other bit of software I have ever used doesnt behave like this.

slartabartfast


As a general technique for killing processes, one option would be to use TASKKILL from an elevated command prompt. Type cmd into the start menu search box to bring up the CMD.exe program icon. Right click the CMD.exe icon and select "run as administrator" to get to an elevated command prompt.

taskkill /? will provide rudimentary instructions

To kill a process by name the syntax is:
taskkill /f /IM SONARPDR.exe

that should kill all instances of the sonar producer that are running. 


taskkill /f /fi "status eq not responding" 

(The quotes " at either end of the filter string are required.)

uses the /f (force) switch to force closing any process that reports its status as not responding by using the /fi (filter) switch to specify closing only non-responding processes. This may work when you are unable to close a process by name because it is locked by another non-responding process. Of course if your process is hung but not reporting not responding because it is waiting for input etc. this is not going to work. It is worth a try to run that filter first to clean up other stuck processes before trying to kill your process by name.

The complementary command line program TASKLIST will give you access to process ids etc. Typing tasklist /? at a command prompt gives you the options.

As a general tool for sorting out stuck processes the free download program Process Explorer is very useful. If you are lucky, it may be possible to kill a process with this program that is resistent to closing via Task Manager. If not it may well show you the dependency that is keeping your process open.

http://technet.microsoft....nternals/bb896653.aspx