6 Replies Latest reply: Jun 21, 2011 12:03 PM by Cubed Root Sound RSS

    PowerCore Plug-ins aren't represented in Exports?

    Cubed Root Sound Community Member

      Maaaaaaannnnnnnnn! I was just beginning to forgive Audition CS5 for the feature-botomy it pulled on us. Is anyone else getting this problem? I use TC Electronics PowerCore plug-ins, which, similar to UAD plug-ins, are processed through an additional PCI-e card. I can enable the plug-ins in CS5.5, and even hear them while I am mixing. But when I try to export my mix, they aren't there. It sounds the same as if I had disabled all of my PowerCore plug-ins right before I exported. And it doesn't matter which of them I am using. It doesn't include any of them in the export. I have tried multiple workarounds... mixing down effects busses first, mixing down the master bus, doing an overall session export, pre-rendering tracks, etc. Doesn't work. It's all the same. A beautifully reverbed and compressed mix exports completely dry and punchless. And there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. Can anyone else verify that this is happening, and does it affect other third-party plug-in PCI cards? Any ideas for a fix? 

        • 1. Re: PowerCore Plug-ins aren't represented in Exports?
          Cubed Root Sound Community Member

          I have a little more information now, which may help to fix this issue. I had an inkling this was the case so I checked it out. It is the multi-threaded processing in CS5.5 that is causing the problem. Basically, it works like this: I have a PCI-e card that has 4 DSP processing chips on it. Since Audition CS5.5 allows for multiple processes to run at the same time, I cannot have any more than 2 processing chips occupied in a mix if I want those PowerCore plugins to show up in the export because two chips will be occupied in the mix, and thanks to multi-threaded processing, an additional two chips will be accessed during the mixdown. I experimented and have verified this to be the case. I opened the PowerCore application and had 1 plug-in enabled in Audition CS5.5. During the time when I exported the track, 2 cells were being accessed, even though only one was being accessed during mixing. This means that if I had four plug-ins enabled in the mix, they would all be dropped in the mixdown because there would be no available slots in the PowerCore card.

           

          So I am going to get back to you on a possible solution that I haven't tried yet. You can change the maximum number of processes allowed in the Audition preferences. I am wondering if changing that to 1 before exporting will solve this problem. In effect, this would return Audition to non-multi-threaded processing for the mixdown. Then, when I wanted to mix again, I would return Audition to multi-threaded processing. If this works, I'll let everyone know. I think there should be a quick option in Adobe Audition to do this before mixdowns. A preference option box like "Allow Audition processes to run in the background during Mixdown." I personally would have that box unchecked.

          • 2. Re: PowerCore Plug-ins aren't represented in Exports?
            Cubed Root Sound Community Member

            Nope. Changing the concurrent processes preferences does nothing to address this issue. The problem remains. Anyone from Adobe care to address this? Is there a way to "shut down" multi-thread processing during mixdowns?

            • 3. Re: PowerCore Plug-ins aren't represented in Exports?
              _durin_ Employee Hosts

              Our Effects guru, Matt, has been looking into this issue this morning and has reproduced it.  He's digging deeper into the whys and potential workarounds right now and should post an update in a bit.

               

              CAn you verify whether enabling Track pre-render (essentially a combination of Freeze from Au3 and Background Mix from 1.5 and before) helps reduce the overhead and solves the final mixdown?  In the Track Panel Effects view, click the small lightning bolt icon to enable Track Pre-render for a track.  It should perform a background mixdown of that track and reference this rendered file, reducing the overhead on the TC hardware.  Matt is looking at this as well.

               

              Screen shot 2011-06-21 at 11.31.24 AM.png

              • 4. Re: PowerCore Plug-ins aren't represented in Exports?
                Cubed Root Sound Community Member

                I have a work-around. Pre-render does nothing to solve the final issue because I think Audition re-renders all effects in export (as it should for best sound quality). My work-around is not ideal, but it does allow me to at least use CS5.5 with my current setup (albeit very inconveniently):

                 

                1) For least annoyance, go to preferences and uncheck the box in "Effects" that stipulates that Audition should process disabled effects. This way you can have all your effects preset, and disable all of them but one or two without processing the disabled effects.

                 

                2) Make sure you have no more than two cells of your DSP processing accessed. Then bounce down the indivual busses or tracks that have the third-party plugins in them. Do this individually, monitoring your plug-in application to make sure that it is not being asked to process more than it has capacity for. Then listen to your bounce downs to make sure they are exactly the same as the original busses or tracks (sometimes this requires "exclusive soloing" to be checked in your preferences... especially if you have pre-fader sends to effects busses). Mute the old busses and tracks and disable their effects, but don't delete them in case you need to make changes later. Then enable the next one or two effects, and keep doing this process until all the third-party plugins are represented as .wav files in the mix.

                 

                3) Do this only at the mixdown stage... the mixing process should be unaffected for the most part. This also allows you (conceivably) to use more than just four cells of processing on a given track.

                 

                4) On the other hand, you could have twice as many DSP chips as you needed for mixing. For instance, I could buy another PCI-e card to be used for the Export process, and then pretend I only have one card while I am mixing (yeah, right!).

                 

                Adobe could do the following to fix this problem:

                 

                1) Allow for single-thread processing mode in mixdown.

                2) Allow for use of "Rendered" tracks during mixdown. This would be a native version of my workaround. Rather than going to the source for every export, the user could have the option of exporting the final with a combination of rendered tracks and unrendered tracks.

                 

                Message was edited by: Cubed Root Sound

                • 5. Re: PowerCore Plug-ins aren't represented in Exports?
                  Matt_Stegner Adobe Employee

                  Hi,

                  Matt here from the dev team.

                   

                  It is not multitreading that is causing this but the fact that we clone the Multitrack when we render a mixdown.  Changing the threading preferences will not make a difference.  So, if you are using 1 DSP chip, when we perform a mixdown, we will use two (the original used durring mixing and a new cloned one durring mixdown).

                  This works well when you have virtually unlimited instances of plugins availble with native effects, but can lead to Audition 4 filling up a hosted card with duplicated effects rather quickly.

                   

                  The only fool proof work around would be to bounce finished tracks down to new tracks and dissable the original tracks that rely heavily on hosted effects.  Or, you could just make sure that you have enough free DSP left in the Powercore to to render down.

                   

                   

                  -MattS

                  • 6. Re: PowerCore Plug-ins aren't represented in Exports?
                    Cubed Root Sound Community Member

                    Yeah. That's what I came to as well. Check out my post, though. Maybe Audition could help us out and have an option to use pre-rendered tracks in the export process?