I'm afraid I'm in serious trouble

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

Good evening Ladies and Gentlelords,

I run Ardour 8 on Debian 11.

I have always been discontent with the fact that Ardour collects every snippet of recorded sound in the interchange folder, leading to project sizes of over 30GB in some cases, and clean-up doesn’t seem to delete much of it.

So today I moved appr. 15 GB of audio files from the respective folder to the bin, namely those I thought I could be certain that they fell into the category “unused sources”. I didn’t empty the bin though.

When I started Ardour afterwards, it complained of course that it couldn’t find those files, so I checked “Skip all missing files” and the project loaded without problems.

I spent the rest of the day recording and mixing, saved everything and quit.

When I started the project again, I checked “Skip all missing files” as usual and got the following message:

Session “#Path-to-(snapshot XY)” did not load successfully
Cannot initialize session/engine: Invalid or corrupt session state.

—ERROR: Could not set session state from XML
ERROR: Session: failed to load active playlists
ERROR: Session: cannot create Playlist from XML description.
ERROR: Playlist: cannot create region from XML
ERROR: Session: cannot create Region from XML description. Can not load state for region 'RYTHM GUITAR 2-6'
ERROR: Session: cannot create Region from XML description. Can not load state for region 'RYTHM GUITAR 2-5'
…

I reimported the files from the bin, but the above message keeps popping up.

Please don’t tell me it’s nobody’s fault but mine, I know that by now. I would very much appreciate it if somebody would point in the direction of how to repair whatever got corrupted. Several hundred hours of work are at stake…

Thank you for your attention.

1 Like
This DAW is incredibly unstable and unreliable
#2

Before making any more changes or attempting anything, make at least a single 1:1 backup of your affected project folder.

Do you still have access to the .ardour.bak version of the snapshot you were last working on?
If so, try duplicating that and then renaming it like so:
MySnapshot1.ardour.bak
→
MySnapshot1 (Backup 1).ardour.bak
→
MySnapshot1 (Backup 1).ardour

And then try opening that Ardour file instead.
Let me know what happens.

The Stepford Crash Pilots: A remix. Ardour is very good at that, too
#3

Can you upload the .ardour session file (not the whole session folder) somewhere, and I’ll have a look at fixing it.

It’ll either involve removing the regions “RYTHM GUITAR 2-6” or fixing their length (due to an odd bug in early Ardour 8 some regions can be longer than the actual source)

1 Like
#4

What precisely did you that is described here?

#5

Thanks for the advice, I followed it but to no avail. I get the same notification that the session did not load because of an invalid or corrupted session state.

#6

I couldn’t think of where to upload the .ardour session file in question, but it is just 7.4 MB, how about I send it attached to an email? You could contact me via the email address given here, provided you have an account:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheStepford_CrashPilots

Thank you for the proposition, much obliged!

#7

I copied the files in the wastebasket and pasted them in a new folder within the session folder. When I started the session again I included the path to that folder in the search for the missing files.

#8

I would just have put them back in interchange/MySessionName/audiofiles

1 Like
#9

I was afraid I could possibly mess it up even more if I did that. Plus, in the meantime, I had generated new audio files, since I had continued recording, and there might have been different files with the same names. Is that actually possible in a case like that?

#10

Yes, it is possible,

#11

Hence why you should just duplicate everything, and then experiment with the new backup, imo.

Try this though for sure:

#12

Ok, I’ll do that. It will take some time, and since it’s already late, more about that tomorrow. Good night!

#13

I put the files in question back in interchange/SessionName/audiofiles today but nothing changed, I still get the same message when I start the session.

#14

Funky username by the way! Makes me think of The Godfathers’ “If I only had Time”:

Things and what they used to be
Cary Grant on LSD

1 Like
#15

Now, to take matters further let me quote John Lennon and say “Help me to help myself”.
I have three vital questions:

  1. Is there a log file where incidents like this are documented?

  2. If something like this happens again, where in the .ardour session XML file do I have to look and
    what is to be done?

  3. I’m running Ardour 8.11, should I upgrade to newest version to prevent something like this from
    happening again? Since Robin Gareus mentioned a bug in early Ardour 8 releases.

Thanks for your time and your help, ev’ryone.

Cheers, Frank

#16

Hello, :wave:
Okay, so I re-read all that you’ve written…
Did you send the xml file to Robin?

Out of my own curiosity, I might be able to help.
(I’ll send you an email now, from jklook…)

A log file on your machine you mean? Not sure. But I would guess no.

It’s complicated, and depends on the specific situation. Fixing this xml will probably require targeted, manual editing/adjustment of certain lines of code. Anyone solving this will have to go off of the specific error messages your getting. Speaking of that, downloading and installing a debug-build of Ardour might(?) be of use to you for further diagnosis: https://nightly.ardour.org/ -Might give a more verbose list of reasons for not opening, not sure.

-Cheers,
-J

1 Like
#17

Problem Solved! GhostsonAcid saved the day, THANK YOU!

And THANK YOU Robin for spending valuable time, it is very much appreciated, even though this time somebody was faster :slightly_smiling_face:

Apparently the bug you mentioned earlier was responsible for the hickup.

Now ev’rybody knock on wood that it won’t happen again before the song is finished, we’re that* close.

May the Universe bless the Free Software Movement!

Cheerie-oh!

4 Likes
#18

No worries! :grin:
-Glad I could help!

Now, for anyone stuck in a similar bind, here’s what I did:

-Kinda lame, as it does mean you loose the corrupted/faulty regions…
-But better to have potentially 95% of a project rather than 0%.

-J

1 Like
#19

The latest version of ardour does something similar, but it corrects the length error in the XML file so you get all your original regions back as well.

#20

If this is true, then that’s great!
I did not have access to this guy’s full project. -Just the .ardour file.
If I would’ve had access to the full project I would have simply tried opening it first, yes. haha

I suppose I could test that behavior now by purposefully messing with one of my region lengths in an xml of a test project… Hmm… I’ll try this soon.

All's Well That Ends Well - The Stepford Crash Pilots