winkpain

I've installed CWBB onto a new machine.  How do I move all my preferences in order to essentially clone my CW setup onto the new machine? I have moved everything from the Core folder, but, for example, I don't see my Workspaces in the new install.

Where does anyone go with specific questions about ARA integration issues?

I have reached out to Support here with Cakewalk, who recommended talking to Steinberg (for SpectraLayers) and when I reach out to them, they suggest reaching out to Cakewalk.

Who knows how ARA works??

Specifically:

I am having some issues using Steinberg's SpectraLayers Pro 9 within Cakewalk in its Region FX/ARA integration capacity.
I have written in before seeking how to get the SpectraLayers keyboard shortcuts to work when editing within CW, but have had no success.

However, my main and current issue (and far more functionally important) is how to get layers from within SL to populate within the CW track structure. An example of how this supposed to work can be seen in the Steinberg tutorial video here (at the 4:18 mark)
 

It shows the user dragging and dropping layers that have been established within SpectraLayers ARA editor to separate track lanes in the DAW. When attempting to do this in Cakewalk, nothing happens. No layer is imported (as can be seen in this video  - https://imgur.com/a/ZUfhOSh  ) In the case of the YouTube video, the DAW is Steinberg's Cubase, I know, but ARA integration is supposed to work the same or similarly in whatever DAW has ARA capabilities, so I understand. Is this not so?

I have contacted Steinberg already and they said to contact Cakewalk Support, which I have done before with no luck, nevertheless I have sent in another ticket there, but I'm asking here as well.
How can I get this "import layers" functionality in CW??

6 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Or perhaps Melodyne itself creates the folder even though it doesnt need it.

This would seem to be the case. I just did a test project adding Melodyne as a Region/ARA effect (which is all I ever do with it, i.e. not in the FX bin) and making some edits in it while watching both folders.  the empty \Melodyne\Transfers folder within the CW project folder was created when opening the project next time. I closed the project, deleted the \Melodyne folder structure there, re-opened the project, and the folder \Melodyne\Transfers was created, empty, again.  Doing this same process with adding Melodyne in the FX bin (just to test) and then "reading" the clip with Melodyne's "Transfer" button (which is necessary for the effect) created the \Melodyne\Transfers folder within CW's project folder structure, but with a transfers file for the clip in the folder. Deleting this file and re-opening the project required reading the clip with the Transfer button again within Melodyne in the FX bin for the effect to come into play.

And, as far as the \Celemony\Separations folder (in \My Documents or wherever) goes, the following is indeed true

6 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

You can prove it for yourself by moving a project to a different machine or by temporarily renaming the seperations folder and opening an existing project. I bet the separations will be regenerarated from the existing project data.

This is exactly what happens.

I have no issues with any of this; just adding information for general interest.

For what it's worth, information-wise, I use Melodyne quite a bit, stand-alone and ARA in CW.

Every project that I've used with Melodyne/ARA in CW has this \Melodyne\Transfers folder in the CW project folder file, and every one of them is empty.  The \Separations folder located in \My Documents\Celemony (or wherever determined from within Melodyne Preferences) is the folder with all the pertinent data in it, it would appear. And this folder can grow quite large.

38 minutes ago, jesse said:

You have to go back into Cakewalk track view- and IF YOU'RE LUCKY and haven't done anything else with the edit history then in the edit menu select "redo add region".  It will then recreate the region as before and Melodyne will recreate whatever edits you've made.

Perhaps with Melodyne - I don't have an issue with Melodyne. For me CTRL-Z works there. However, with SpectraLayers no edits are recreated with a Redo after an Undo. It's a total loss. David's suggestion of a Clear Undo history before editing in SL is a fair safeguard. AND in addition, I've found that re-assigning the Undo and Redo shortcuts within SpectraLayers (for example, to SHIFT-Z and SHIFT-Y) is a fair workaround. In this case, the re-assigned shortcuts do get priority from within the ARA plugin.

19 hours ago, jackson white said:

it's the same for Melodyne, sounds like an ARA issue, haven't tried it in another DAW yet

I don't have this problem with Melodyne in ARA. For example, CTRL-Z operates as an Undo in the Melodyne window and NOT the as Cakewalk Undo (i.e. NOT undoing the insertion of Melodyne as a Region Effect, as it does with SpectraLayers).

This is actually, still, quite a major issue. As mentioned in my examples above

Quote

Examples:

using Ctrl-Z to UNDO my last edit in Spectral Layers will actually undo the adding of the Region FX (i.e., my last action in the Cakewalk environment), thereby removing Spectral Layers and all my edits therein however many I have done at that point! (this one is a major bummer after many edits!)

highlighting a data entry point in the Spectral Layers window in order to type in a numerical value for the setting will not enter my typed value but rather successively choose the CW Screensets associated with the typed numerals

Wow!  Try having completed, say, 30 or so painstaking, detailed edits in SpectraLayers via ARA, and then mess one up and instinctively hit CTRL-Z by decades long established habit (no matter HOW much I've tried to train myself against using it with this issue), and BAM! the SpectraLayers Region Effect and therefore all my edits within it are instantly gone with no way to retrieve them! Doing a Redo simply adds SL as region effect again, but with an initial blank slate state.   This happens to me, unfortunately, all too often.

Is there any hope of upticking this in the ARA development arena, perhaps?

1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Regarding process explorer, I think you misunderstood. In your screenshot you are setting the Process priority not the driver thread priority. That won't change anything with the driver because we don't create the driver thread. Also you shouldn't set the entire process to realtime since that's not a good idea

I did, indeed, misunderstand. Thanks for clarifying!

1 hour ago, Noel Borthwick said:

To clarify, I only suggested to look at the ASIO driver thread priority in process explorer not change it...

So, how/where are we looking in Process Explorer to see this thread priority reading?

AND more pertinently for us Focusrite folks, this MMCSS issue (the inability to take advantage of the setting) is a Cakewalk dead-end for now until Focusrite makes the necessary changes. Do I understand that right?

On 11/11/2022 at 11:11 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

Focusrite doesn't appear to be setting up MMCSS as I would expect it. I see the same on my system with the latest driver on a 6i6. The driver does not run at realtime priority (24 and above) and the driver doesn't allow us to change its priority either (the attempt fails) so there is nothing you can do to increase it. I'll get in touch with them and report it in case they are unaware of this.
BTW the labels Time Critical and Realtime are just labels I put there to help with diagnosis. Time critical is the priority that our threads run at WITHOUT MMCSS enabled, which is lower than what they can go to. MMCSS priorities allow the audio engine and driver to run at much higher priorities thereby minimizing other system interference leading to audio glitches.
To actually check MMCSS priorities accurately you need to use a specialized tool like Process Explorer. We can't check it easily in the application.

So, does this mean that for those of us with Focusrite interfaces/drivers there is no benefit, for now,  in enabling this new MMCSS setting in CW?

AND as to your comment on using Process Explorer, is this to suggest that setting the priority for Cakewalk there should have an effect within CW? When I do so (for example I choose realtime: 24 within Process Explorer - as shown in attached screenshot), and with MMCSS enabled or not in Settings in CW, the label shown when hovering over the Performance Module does not change/still shows Time Critical (15).

Also,  so much thanks for the continued improvements!

You guys seem to be having your own discussion not necessarily related to the OP's issue. That being me, I will re-iterate that the issue as shown in the original video only occurred once in a single session and has not reoccurred so perhaps is not entirely relevant, for what that's worth. This remaining issue that this post is about is better shown in this, however crappy, video taken with phone. (When trying to capture with ScreenToGIF the resulting video does not show the extraneous lines for some reason.

seen here - https://imgur.com/kgFcWFF

This discussion as it has developed, while perhaps providing fodder for some of your own personal issues and opinions, does not however provide me with any convincing proof that what you discuss necessarily has anything to do with my problem as presented here. It's nice to know that folks are out there, tho! 😁

34 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

@winkpain - any recent graphics driver updates?

You could also try running Cakewalk using the internal Intel graphics card to see if its any different.

FWIW,  I've got Cakewalk running on an 3rd gen i7 and 3rd gen i5, both running at 3.4GHz, and both using the onboard graphics,  and have no issues with either, hence my suggestion.

I started having the issue, then updated my NVIDIA card but continue to have the issue. I believe the NVIDIA card is my onboard graphics card... It is a laptop, built by PCAudioLabs, and the NVIDIA card is the only adapter mentioned in the system. I am aware of no other, unless it is perhaps made available thru the BIOS...

I do, as always, appreciate the feedback here. Thank you. But I feel like all this focusing on space, 'tho a worthy issue of discussion, is perhaps off-topic, as I see no evidence or definitive suggestions that this must be the situation I am suffering. I have followed advice to maintain at least %15 free on my main drive for years now with no adverse effects. Indeed, the drive has been at that capacity for a couple years now and this minor issue (I say minor unless someone can logically show it to be otherwise) began only last week. Only Windows and programs reside on the drive (SSD) in question. All data, projects, TEMP folders, scratch disk locations, and many plugins are on greater capacity auxiliary drives.

Besides CW, I use Ableton, SpectraLayers, Sibelius, SoundForge, Premiere, all with running/following playback cursor lines as well as many other more intensive visual real-time display feedback. There are no issues anywhere with these applications, nor in Windows itself. Indeed, in Cakewalk it is only within the full PRV that this issue appears. The in line PRV, for example, does not exhibit this behavior with the Now Time line, nor is there evidence anywhere else within the CW environment of display or performance issues. I also run Latency Monitor regularly (and have recently) and it continues to show nothing but LOW green meter response. I do not believe there is cause to think that I am at hardware/system/capacity end of life scenario.

I would certainly want more evidence or explanation to determine that hardware or drive capacity issues are likely to blame.

I guess I'd want a second opinion, or some other indicator on the machine, in its performance, or anywhere else. Before a tear-down, hardware reconfigure,total upgrade, that is. But I do appreciate the first guess.

Machine was actually serviced by PCAudio Labs one year ago.

5 minutes ago, Will. said:

Well, normally when someone say more than 15% - they are staggering close to having 15% free space available, they are close to that percentage. I'm just saying.  

FWIW: Windows 10 requires at least 50GB to run somewhat okay'ish and Cakewalk about 20GB. Thats 70GB between the two. So to run smooth you at least need 150GB (250GB recommended) free at a limited capacity. Without seeing any lagging and performance issue. There's users with 240GB SSD that are complaining about performance issues. 

 

Not to belabor the point, Will, but none of the foundational specs have changed on a professional system that has not been suffering performance issues for the years of use in it's current state. This issue started a week ago.

However, it doesn't effect my audio workflow except for a little minor awkward confusion while it is displaying, so I will assume no biggie here unless hearing or experiencing otherwise.

....For what it's worth, the issue exemplified in the video only happened once and has not reappeared. The trailing playback, but randomly spaced, Now Time Cursor lines continue and only happen in the full PRV, whatever the grid resolution - not in the inline PRV for example.

15 minutes ago, Will. said:

And there's your problem.

My problem is having over %15 free? What do you mean? Certainly not that I should have UNDER %15 free for better performance.
 

25 minutes ago, Will. said:

Everytime you add a effect it consumes memory and the more effects you use the larger the project becomes. 

I am well aware of this. It is not my proverbial first rodeo. The project is MIDI only on a single piano plugin with no effects.

I am on a machine custom built and set up by PCAudio Labs that I have been working on professionally and successfully for 4 years - Windows 10 64bit, latest updates, 3.5GHz i5 CPU, 16 gb RAM, NVIDIA GTX 970M video card with latest drivers (2/2022)

Perhaps not the absolute cutting edge latest/greatest hardware specs, but...  nothing has been recently changed in that regard. And I have added nothing in terms of programs or plugins in the last 6 months or so. The free space on the HD has not changed. In fact, I have cleared out stuff and made more room most recently.

This weird cursor trails display thing has only just started in the last week.
 

23 minutes ago, Will. said:

That definitely your PC. Hardrive full or busy acting up. Could be CPU as well. I clean out my system fans every 4 months and replace CPU thermal paste when needed. 

Hmmm. Hard drive has got over %15 free. It's a laptop, so I wouldn't be comfortable opening it up and removing CPU for fresh paste. Best I can do is vacuum it from the vents, but.... really? You think this is definitely what is causing it?  Does it mean something bad is likely about to happen? It just started.

25 minutes ago, David Baay said:

See the Visual Effects tab in Advanced System Settings for Windows and set it to "Adjust for best appearance" if it isn't already. I haven't seen this for a while, but in the past there have been issues with the Now Time Cursor display when some options were disabled.

Yup. It's already set that way. Thanks, tho.

I've been having occasional weird display issues lately. I am on the latest update, but not sure if it's from the update. First this:  [Edit: The issue shown in this video only occurred during one session and has not reoccurred since]

Also, whenever in the main PRV the moving playback cursor leaves trails of randomly placed vertical lines behind it as it goes. These lines disappear if I simply move my mouse or change the screen view briefly, but they continue to generate again if playback is still going.  This one I have tried to do a screen capture while it's happening, but when I view the captured GIF, the superfluous lines do not appear despite having been generated while recording.

Any ideas about this very odd behavior?

3 minutes ago, scook said:

Create a hang dump

Here is how

 

Yes, I tried creating a MiniDump from Task Manager (as Cakewalk has not created any dump files for these hangs) and I get the "Access is denied" message when trying to do that.

I am getting consistent application hangs with no error report message showing up. The only way out is to "close" CW but it remains in memory and even trying to kill the Cakewalk.exe process returns an "Access is denied" message. In order to restart CW, I must either reboot the computer or at least log off of Windows and then log back in again. This has happened on multiple projects opened over the last couple days since installing the update with no reproducible common cause between the occurrences being noticed.

Sorry, I know this is almost nothing to go on.

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

True for every "sure fire" method that's been posted so far, unfortunately: it seems to work for the person who posted it, and any number of others, but there will always be at least one person who can't get it to work at all.

Who knows, it may stop working for me as well. Until someone can tell us for sure how Cakewalk decides what file to either associate or embed, we won't be completely confident.

Maybe we should all start a therapy group to work out all our issues on this - actually get together to bitch and moan about how the other people just don't understand us. Say, once a year? In Tahiti or somewhere?.....

On 11/4/2021 at 7:32 PM, Starship Krupa said:

Okay, new information. After trying all of the suggestions in this thread, I still couldn't get it to work reliably. Believe me, I've tried, multiple times. I'm picky about visuals, as a look at the 6 custom Cakewalk themes I've authored will attest.

Thanks to the video I'll be linking to at the bottom, I found yet another method, and this one seems to work every time, at least so far. Here are the steps:

1. Choose a PNG image you wish to use for your template's icon
2. Rename it <template name>.cwt.png (for instance "Basic Audio.cwt.png")
3. Place a copy of it in the folder where Cakewalk stores your templates.
4. Save your project template (if it already exists, open it and save it again, it seems to be during the saving process that Cakewalk looks around for the image file).

Voila, next time you hit the Start Screen, your icon should show up. I'll use careful language and say that so far, this doesn't seem to require any keywords or typing over existing filenames or any of the old voodoo. This is new voodoo, and it lets you name your templates whatever you wish.

Please try it and let me know what you find. Who would have thought that it would take so long to crack this nut. I'm going to ask Neel (the guy in the video) how on Earth he figured this out. His videos are good in general, too, and feature interesting genres of music not often heard on YouTube tutorial vids.

 

I can't believe I'm looking at this again, but I couldn't resist; it's so WEIRD!

I cannot get this method of saving a PNG file with the <template name>.cwt.png fomat in the templates folder to work at all, saving, re-saving, whatever. None of that works for me it does not connect my image file with the .cwt file. It actually makes no image at all show up for the named template in question. In fact, re-saving a template with the same name does not work at all, even if I've added a new image in the Notes browser. When I do a "Save as" with the same name, nothing happens. I can verify this in Win Explorer where the Modified time/date stamp does not update for the template file.  I must either Save as with a new name, or delete the original file in order to re-use the same name and have the file update. The .cwt.png file, however, still doesn't get attached even doing this.

What continues to work for me is what I have outlined before and above in the thread, so no matter. But whatever is going on behind the scenes with these template images is beyond comprehension on this front end of it! How we can all have different methods that work individually and yet not share in the experience of those methods truly defies computer logic.  There is still something we just aren't quite getting! It must have been coded by the original CW bakers long, long ago and is now buried in the mists of confusion and time, or someone who actually knows and is reading this thread is just rubbing their hands together with a devilish laugh at our woes 😞

On 10/22/2021 at 10:17 AM, treesha said:

Im not a frequent user of audiosnap either, if i need to adjust the timing of some phrase i use melodyne and simply adjust the blobs/ notes to the timing i want. I find this melodyne method easy  so just an alternative suggestion. 

Absolutely. Melodyne is amazing!

I am getting no response on this issue from the Help Desk. It's been 10 days so far.

Has anyone else had this issue with their Support activities being cleared over there??