Severe obesity case

[TubaSolo]

I started using Logic a couple months ago, and lately I was starting to feel a bit more confortable with it, not a dream daw situation, far form it, but workable at last.

When suddenly... :Uh oh:

I'm working on a file with let's say, 24 stereo tracks + half a dozen auxs for submixes. Mainly Logic plugins. No midi tracks. No software instruments even. Nothing fancy.

The arrangement itself is quite simple too: bits & pieces of the same 20 or so audio files, copied & repeated in various ways.

The original length of most tracks is like 8 to 16 bars at the most, at 120 bpm. Only the vocal track is longer, but not over 3 minutes.

A few days ago Logic (running on a dual 2.5 G5 with 3.5 gig ram) started to refuse to save the file. I tried a "save as", I tried to save to other disks, with and without assets... it just wouldn't save.

The only message I'd get was: "The file *** could not be saved" :Roll eyes: . I had to reboot, start Logic, open the file and do a "save as", and then I could start working on it again. But not for long.

Soon Logic wouldn't even play the damn song anymore, instead displaying messages to the effect of "Out of memory" "No space left on heap" etc...

Ok, a ram problem I thought. Only, I have almost 4 gig, Isn't that enough?

I checked the ram, seems to be all ok.

And I finally figured it out: the song file right now weighs a hefty 750 Meg!!!!

WTF!?

The mac litteraly chokes on it. How is that even possible? It's a very standard sequence, no crazy editing or automation (several tracks' volume is automated with like 3 changes, over the course of a 6 min song)...

So how did it ever get so fucking huge?

I tried a "cleanup project", but the list of unused audio files is very short, there's maybe four of them.

Is this a known issue with Logic, or at least did any of you ever encountered a similar problem?

Feel free to share your wildest theories with me. I'm totally stuck.

[waterboy]

I can only guess that you are going to have go into your Audio Bin and manually remove the Audio that you do not need any longer.

I think this may have something to do with Non-Desttructive editing, and how you can re-call things from the beginning of a session if you need to.

With that said - there will (probably) be copies of all kinds of Audio files that you have tweaked, etc.

Just simply keep the ones that you need.

That is my guess - and it could be (probably is) wrong!

Take care, and good luck.

May the force be with you.

[chckn8r]

I can only guess that you are going to have go into your Audio Bin and manually remove the Audio that you do not need any longer.

Yeah, I was having the same WTF issues with a recent mix of a song I was doing too although, I set my projects to NOT store audio files or samples with the project file.

I was having issues with playback where the system was gacking. I was freaking out because it's a 5-month old Mac Pro! I figured out that it was the "composite" overdub function and what Waterboy said - the non-destructive editing.

When I was doing the different takes, Logic wasn't over-writing the old files, but keeping them, and trying to play them all back in the background - just in case I wanted to audition them I guess. On more than a few tracks I had been experimenting with different things while the record button was on, and Logic was keeping all the previous takes. Although I only had about 8 audio tracks and a few soft-synths, I calculated that Logic was trying to play back something like 70 or 80 tracks at the same time.

So, yeah, short story, find files in your Audio Bin that you're no longer using and get rid of them.

[TubaSolo]

Thanks guys... for pointing me in the right direction.

I "selected unused" in the bin and deleted a whole bunch of files.

Didn't change a thing! File still at 762 MB.

Then I thought about the undo history... and that was it. I deleted it and that motherfucker went down from 800 to 2.2 meg in 5 seconds :Surprised:

Why didn't I think of that earlier? I never had to deal with that in DP... I have projects with undo histories going back six months or more, never added that much fat to the DP file itself!

Anyways. Living and learning. :Roll eyes:

[waterboy]

Good job.

Way to trim the fat.

:)