V4/v5 Series Troubleshooting

Its late,  your on a deadline and you can't find anyone to help....here are a few things to try....

In order to better help you,  you can help us by seeing if any of these tips below help solve your problem.

____________________________________________________

GENERAL ISSUES (crash, freeze, won't launch, error initializing)

*Mac OS X 10.7+ hides the ~/Library directory by default. This is easy to reverse and show Library all the time with a terminal command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

*10.14 no longer supports the Terminal command.  Instead, go to your HOME folder and in the Finder choose View > Show View Options (or press Command+J).  Check off 'Show Library' and it will be permanent.

You can also go to the Finder>GO>Go to folder menu and enter in the hidden folder location - ~/Library then look for the Soundminer or SoundminerV5 folder in the Application Support folder.

Often a crash means either a database is corrupted or something else in the support folder is corrupted.  so you can move that folder out and that resets everything to default.  Then reintroduce items you need to find the item that likely caused the crash.

CLEAR YOUR PREFS: You need to trash com.soundminer.v4Pro.plist in the preferences folder(home/Library/Preferences) and if in "freelance" mode the file v4ProPrefs inside the folder with your databases.

Since 10.9+ Apple caches prefs, so now you have to launch terminal and run this command

defaults delete com.soundminer.smv4Pro

*com.soundminer.smv5Pro.plist

(defaults delete com.soundminer.smv4 - for v4/4.5 standard users)

You should then see the license agreement when you launch Soundminer

CLEAR YOUR DATABASES : The databases are made up of four files with different extensions typically in the /home/Library/Application Support/Soundminer folder(xxx.vdb,xxx.ind,xxx.dat, xxx.blb files) If problems still persist, delete or move the contents of home/Library/Application Support/Soundminer. This also moves your spotting panel contents.

*V5 support folder 'Soundminer V5' and V5 databases are a single sqlite file.

CLEAR YOUR LOGS : The log are found ~/Library/Logs (it's hidden by default, so in the finder use the Go menu and go to folder menu item. Delete the Soundminer folder.  It could be crashing while archiving the log file, and running out of memory. SEND A CRASHLOG TO TECHSUPPORT(support@soundminer.com) - The crashlog is found in home/Library/Logs/CrashReporter. In this directory you will find a Soundminer crash log(or in the case of Leopard, multiple files). Send these to techsupport@soundminer.com. You MUST detail exactly what you were doing step by step so we can diagnose. Please use the term "crash" if the application quits. If it locks up and you get the spinning wheel and need to force quit, call that a "freeze". In the case of a freeze, you won't get a crash log, but you can help us out by launching /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor, dbl click Soundminer(it should be in red) in the Activity Monitor window, then the sample button. You can then send this report to us. This helps us narrow down what was going on at the time of the freeze.

If none of the above works, send an email complete with your exact version, exact system and hardware details and an explanation of how to reproduce the problem to techsupport@soundminer.com

*V5 send us your log files:  go to the Hammer Wrench menu(lower left icon looks like a hammer and wrench) and go to Debug>Save Log files to disk.  Send us that output.

____________________________________________________

Rewire Troubleshooting

We only install the Rewire slave.  There are two parts to this equation.  The other is the host rewire and that is installed by Pro Tools. 

1.  I presume ProTools came with ReWire installed.  Sometimes ProTools needs to rebuild its list though… try deleting the file InstalledAAXPlugins in this folder

~/Library/Preferences/Avid

This folder is hidden so you may need to use the GO menu to go to folder and copy and paste the above in….

2.  Try this

Replace both Rewire.bundle and SM4Rewire.bundle in /Library/Application Support/Propellerhead software/Rewire with the ones in the Resources folder:

To do this control-click on the v4.5 app icon and select

SHOW PACKAGE CONTENTS

Go to Contents>Resources and find the smrewire.bundle.

Copy it out and manually place it in the the location noted above

relaunch and try

 

3.  You could try going downloading

http://soundminer.s3.amazonaws.com/Sample%20Mixer.zip

And see if it generates any errors(meaning rewire itself isn’t installed properly)

Ideally it should load and you see something like this



(SM Engine 4.0)

If that all works, then its truly a problem on ProTools side and you’d do best to reinstall it….

Sometimes a physical reboot is needed...

(Another trick is to launch ProTools, quit, launch ProTools, then SM).  That sort of resets rewire

 V5 note - make sure new preferene, 'ignore rewire on launch' is not checked.

_________________________________________________

My Sound is not playing (spacebar does nothing)

Playing via rewire or the standard mac output?  These are very different and would indicate different things.  It would be very helpful to provide details.

If rewire is engaged:
1.  Make sure your sound control preferences are set to 'built-in' and NOT the Digidesign Core audio Engine.  Digidesign hardware is NOT multi-client which means it cannot be used if Pro Tools is running.  If this is set it will interrupt rewire access.
2.  Sometime you may need to change this and restart both, making sure Pro Tools is launched first then Soundminer.

If the mac out is engaged:
Check the audio/Midi utility to see that the sample rate and output are set correctly.

____________________________________________________

Spotting is not working...why?

To spot your transfer settings must exactly match your pro tools session as Soundminer is handling the conversion.  It is therefore imperative to get into the habit of making sure you set your transfer parameters correctly.

1.  Take the active PT session document and drop it onto SM.  This should initiate a confirm page from SM - it confirms the session location and parameters and ensure a proper transfer.  Version 4.3 auto-sets your preferences/transfer page for you. This works for version 7 8 and 9 of Pro Tools.  Pro Tools 10 is a new session format and version 4.3 now recognizes PTX formats for auto-detection.

2.  Auto-detection and dragging and dropping the session document should automatically set your DAW menu to Pro Tools, but if not, check to make sure you have selected Pro Tools as your destination target.

3.  Make sure you have a filenaming algorithm that makes sense - if you just want the original filename use <Filename:1>.(in your  preferences/Transfers).  If what you have in there is not correct,  it will cause issues in the transfer.

4.  Go into your PT session an put your cursor on the target track where you want to transfer if you want to spot. Keep in mind whether its a mono or stereo file and adjust accordingly in SM. Find a file you want to transfer and hit S (spot).

5.  If you want it to go to the region bin only, then use cmb-Bgot it! Illegal character in the pathname.

NOTE:  Pro Tools will not accept files or folders with illegal characters in them.  For example if the sourced file in Soundminer  had a "/" in it. This will be deemed illegal and Pro Tools will re-convert automatically.

Also please note that the spot API from AVID is not capable of supporting unicode characters or spotting into long paths (in excess of 500 characters).

Check our ongoing Support Articles here

Thank you Soundminer Support Team