Problem: Waveform Freezes, playback continues, never unfreezes nor crashes.

[skipscada]

Does this happen to anyone else?

Lately I've had several experiences where I open an edit, start playback, the cursor moves and the sound plays back, then the cursor stops, Waveform becomes unresponsive to mouse/keyboard (mouse pointer still moves as normal, with normal image, but clicking achieves nothing), but playback continues as before. Normally it just keeps playing ad infinitum, but on some occasions Waveform has eventually snapped out of the freeze state (after briefly going through a greyed out "not responding" phase, I think), and once I think it crashed. Windows 10 task manager shows Very high energy usage for Waveform, but I guess that's normal anyway. Any ideas what might be causing this behaviour?

[mikoatkvr]

This happens on an occasional Edit here too ( Running on Linux ). It seems to be related to when a project is getting high on the CPU load, or more so when you have lots of VST plugins running and the CPU is fluctuating on the higher side.

It could be 1 or a combination of plugins causing the issue. I find freezing tracks ( check in the CPU Meter which tracks are responsible ) helps a lot. caveat being that if a plugin on the Master track is causing the problem, you may have to replace that plugin with 1 that is a bit more efficient.

You could also try raising your buffer size in --> Settings --> Audio devices --> Audio buffer size and/or try a different mode in --> Settings --> Advanced --> Performance --> GUI Rendering mode

[dpn]

Its happen for me when I have loaded an edit, with many takes/long files. It will start a very slow "rendering edit preview" and "render job" proces that can take several minuttes. Background task meter in waveform will slowly raise from 0 to 100, upper right corner. If I start to play before the rendering process had finished it can do as you describe.
I mostly use waveform 10 (Windows 10 home 22H2).

[skipscada]

Thanks for the input. dpn's description seems more aligned to my experience. Waveform tends to need a loooong time to start up, and I get the feeling that even when the edit opens it's still hard at work unde the hood. I guess I will just have to be more patient when I open a new edit. That's a bit disappointing since my edits are typically not heavy at all in terms of track count or VST count. It could be that my PC is showing its age.

[talby]

This or something alike happened to me when still using my Laptop's internal soundcard, or better to say soundchip. Since I connected an USB audio interface the problem immediately disappeared.

[skipscada]

Well, I never use the internal soundcard, so that's not the problem in my case.

[schplorg]

so just recently started experiencing these freezes/hanging and looking for answers and nothing worked - tldr; had to uninstall AND manually delete (or rename) my tracktion local temp files ([user]/AppData/Roaming/Tracktion on win - look it up for mac) - NOTE: this part is important, uninstall wont remove them.

basically tracktion/waveform was scanning so many files/projects/plugins etc that I had built up that it finally started becoming noticeably slower... everytime i:
- started waveform
- added a plugin to a track
- rendered tracks
- various other actions (cant remember precisely)

It would hang for like a minute...

If you install procmon64 (windows - surely an equiv on mac) to see the system calls the process is making you can see the ungodly amount of calls being made to check files, read registry for plugin licenses, etc etc while waveform is running.

love waveform and appreciate this amazing software... so glad I got it back in working order - hope this helps someone.

[Peter Widdicombe]

Just curious - do you use OneDrive, and is it verifying/replicating stuff up to the cloud? Nice to have it backed up, but it takes a toll when every little update has to get continually replicated...

[skipscada]

Personally I don't use OneDrive or other cloud storage solutions with Waveform. The application and the data are stored on different local drives, but I wouldn't expect that to be a problem. TBH I've not done much in Waveform lately, but when I have I've not experienced the issue described in my original post, so maybe it was a bug that's been fixed. Fingers crossed.

[Peter Widdicombe]

OneDrive is one of those things you may not realize is active. I had hit the problem, not with Waveform but with Python; and my application directory for that happened to be included in OneDrive. What I didn't realize is that ANY file change forces a file replication, so while scanning and creating an output file, it was constantly refreshing the replicated data to the cloud; to the point my Ethernet connection was overloading plus app slowing down.

If your temp/project directories for Waveform happened to be in the "OneDrive" list, I would imagine same could happen while recording ? Just be aware, though, that you may want to periodically export to an area that IS backed up somehow.

[skipscada]

Thanks for the tip

[dysjoint]

I can force/replicate the OP situation 100 percent with a bug I've posted here a few times. With an edit that contains audio clips playing and some other panels open like Actions panel/browser etc, grab the little white square in an audio clip header and drag it out of the arranger panel into the actions panel. Sometimes you need to do it a few times. Waveform will continue playing, the UI will freeze, and a memory leak will occur.