I\'m gonna shoot somebody! Losing CPU Power! WTF????

More weirdness at the studio tonight when 3 sessions refused to bounce to disk, as I received an out-of-CPU error on each. These are all sessions that bounced 3 days ago without a problem. All I did was change a few eq settings and tried to bounce back down to disk. What the hell is the problem???? I spent two hours trashing systems prefs and the digi set-up, restarting, changing buffer settings and bouncing over and over.... The strange thing is that the system usage window looks fine, but then the clip light will come on (even the meter is safely in the green at about 60%)??? I've got PTLE 5.1 running on OS 9.1 on a G4 466 with 512 megs of RAM. I'm about at the end of my rope here, and would greatly appreciate any help. Why would a session bounce one day, but not the next, if nothing has really changed???? Also, with 512megs, how much should I allocate to PTLE and to the DAE? Any other optimization tips are also much appreciated.

Also, is bouncing at 24bit more memory/cpu intensive than bouncing at 16bit?

try copying the session. then try bouncing from that copied session. also, copy the session to another partition if available. 24 bit is more cpu intensive than 16 bit. allocate 100k to DAE 90K to PT. If all else fails save DAE folder and trash everything and re-insatll. Good Luck!

I think he meant 100 MB and 90 MB.

Make sure Low Latency is off. Make sure "convert after bounce" is checked. If all else fails. Do a "save as" and consolidate the tracks with the most edits. IF need be , apply apropiate fx with audio suite then consolidate. IF none of that works, do "copy session in" and try that version. PS: It seems Pro tools always bounces at 24 then converts to 16, even if your session is at 16. Anyone else notice this. IF you start a session at 16 and bounce at 16; even if you select a format that doesnt require conversion or stereo interleaving, THen Pro Tools still goes through a "converting files" proccess. Whats that all about?

The dither plug can be turned off in Edit Prefs.

Sometimes (rarely) plugins can become corrupted in their inserted spot. Are you using Maxim on your Master fader by chance? If so, copy settings, remove it from the insert, re-insert it and paste settings back in. You may want to ry this with other (if not all) plugins, starting with those on the Master fader, then to those that are especially power-hungry. I've had this happen once or twice when bouncing a session that's pushed to it's CPU limits.

I am seeing the same thing. I have another post running regarding Corrupted tracks, but I'm not getting any answers there either. Same flu. I've been bouncing tracks in my sessions for the last 3-4 monhts. Suddenly one day, bouncing won't work in any of my sessions. The only thing that I did 'change', if you call it that, is that for the first time, I experimented with automated effects parameters on like the D-Verb, but I actually deleted that automation and turned it off on the insert. That is the only thing that is somewhat out of the ordinary that I did. Why would that be a problem? Why would it affect all of my sessions?