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Request for an improved Safe Mode


Daryl L. Samuel

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"Safe Mode" in Cakewalk allows you to select which plugins are loaded when you're having issues opening a project and this is great. However, I would like to offer a suggestion...

Currently, you would have to go through each plugin one by one via a 'yes' or 'no' pop-up dialog... instead, what if there's a full list of the plugins used in the project so you can quickly scroll through and select specific plugins to not load?!

Hope the devs sees this and considers making some improvements.

Edited by Daryl L. Samuel
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On 11/6/2022 at 5:36 AM, Max Arwood said:

Yes, I do large projects. Sometimes 100+ tracks and 100+ plugins. If one is bad, it takes forever to unselect each one from loading.

Just encountered this on an older project and it took forever to fix. Confusingly, the project opened fine in Sonar Platinum that I still have installed. I tried a Save As from there, but it still wouldn't open in CbB. However, that at least gave me a good idea on what plugin was potentially causing the crash (I just looked for plugins I don't frequent) 

Would love to see something more sophisticated here, if possible. It's genuinely the only real issue I run into with Cakewalk at this point. 

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58 minutes ago, Max Arwood said:

I was just texting Noel. I requested a "Sandbox" type app to load a project to look for potential plugin problems. Or, something you could turn on that would show plugin errors. It does not sound like an easy task!

Just a screen where I could tick or untick which plugins in the project to load would be a huge benefit over having to laboriously say yes or no one by one

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20 minutes ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

Just a screen where I could tick or untick which plugins in the project to load would be a huge benefit over having to laboriously say yes or no one by one

And wouldn't it be nice it that program had a red dot by the problem plugins!

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Just to be devil's advocate...

The assumption here is that the plugin you skip is actually the problem plugin.  It could actually be a previous plugin that causes the issue (e.g. it could corrupt memory), and  then CbB crashes on loading the next one.

By forcing you to accept them one by one, it allows you to narrow things down to the point at which the crash occurs.

In saying that, I generally agree that a nicer interface would be better and in most cases being able to ignore all plugins of a certain type would certainly speed things up.

There are only so many hours in the day though....

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7 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Just to be devil's advocate...

The assumption here is that the plugin you skip is actually the problem plugin.  It could actually be a previous plugin that causes the issue (e.g. it could corrupt memory), and  then CbB crashes on loading the next one.

By forcing you to accept them one by one, it allows you to narrow things down to the point at which the crash occurs.

In saying that, I generally agree that a nicer interface would be better and in most cases being able to ignore all plugins of a certain type would certainly speed things up.

There are only so many hours in the day though....

Or maybe you can make it automatic. I mean Cakewalk can load plugins with a technique like sandboxing in Bitwig and at project loading when a plugin crash, Cakewalk won't crash and it reports the crashed plugin.

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10 hours ago, msmcleod said:

Just to be devil's advocate...

The assumption here is that the plugin you skip is actually the problem plugin.  It could actually be a previous plugin that causes the issue (e.g. it could corrupt memory), and  then CbB crashes on loading the next one.

By forcing you to accept them one by one, it allows you to narrow things down to the point at which the crash occurs.
 

I think it's as much for visual feedback as it for speed. Even if it stayed one by one, it would be easier to keep track of what you've already checked if you had a global overview of what plugins are in the project. Something like a .txt file that lists all used plugins would be very helpful. Numerous times I have clicked past the plugins I am trying to omit, or accepted plugins I have already checked, and I've had to start again.

Normally I duplicate the project file when trying to fix these kinds of things, as I'm worried I'll end up totally messing up the project file. 

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16 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

I was just texting Noel. I requested a "Sandbox" type app to load a project to look for potential plugin problems. Or, something you could turn on that would show plugin errors. It does not sound like an easy task!

I just saw your comment. I'm talking about the same thing. There is already a sandboxing feature in the Cakewalk for searching VST's called "Scan in Sandbox"

Since such a feature exists in the software, it can be an easy task than thought by using this feature on the project files which cause crashes.

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22 hours ago, msmcleod said:

By forcing you to accept them one by one, it allows you to narrow things down to the point at which the crash occurs.

Yeah but it's madness on a typical project with 50 - 100 plugins on. I don't think that's an excessive amount.

When you don't know what's causing it you have to open the project multiple times, wade through the the yes/no stuff per plugin and hope to disable the one that's causing the issue. If you guess wrong you have to go through this painful process again. And again. And again.

I've had to do it 40-50 times in the past just to find out the bad plugin,  It's insanity it really is.  

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How about 

1) regular open  - open song

2) safe open - with check boxes (shift open)

3) Sandbox mode - cake figures out the problem, so you don't have to (alt open) I don't care if it's slow and checks the plugins one at a time. I just don't want to keep opening it over and over again to figure out what it is that is causing the crash. It doesn't even have to play the song. It could just be a diagnostic tool.

There are always going to be bad plugins or combinations that cause problems. There are many occasions that crash because of a combination of plugins - they just don't like each other lol!

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At first I thought a Safe Mode with Sandboxing separate from the regular behaviour. But on the second thought I realized that we won't need Safe Mode. Because with the Sandbox Technology the DAW will be safe as heaven. It will be like all those naughty crabby plugins are buried in the sand in a box and problem no more, while we enjoy making music on a beach on a glamorous day. 😇

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