Project edited on older Ardour version no longer opens on newer ones

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

I realized too late that my colleague has not installed the update and I can no longer open a project. The project was created on Ardour 8.12, then edited by Ardour8.4. Now I get the following error message when I try to open on 8.12:

ardour-8.12.0: ../libs/ardour/playlist.cc:2671: void ARDOUR::Playlist::relayer(): Assertion `start_division >= 0 && end_division >= start_division' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

We have tried the following:

  • When my colleague tries to open it on Ardour 8.12, he gets the exact same error message.
  • If we archive the project and open it from there, the same thing happens.
  • Safe mode does not help
  • I tried to downgrade to 8.4 and get error messages when compiling. Don’t know if it’s worth the time to dive into it.

Does anyone have an idea how we can solve the problem? I will continue to try to get 8.4 to run.

Update: I have compiled various versions of Ardour and tested whether I can open the project. With 8.6 it worked (8.4 gave me errors for incompatible pointers, which I could not fix). 8.7 already gave me the error as shown above. So we are currently working on 8.6 until we have a solution. Would be great to be able to work on the latest versions. So if anyone knows anything: very welcome.

#2

An optimized build would likely load the project (assert ions are disabled there).

This is likely an issue caused by using Music Time (bar beat) as Session Time domain, when laying Audio regions, when using Ardour 8.x earlier than 8.12.

If you upload the .ardour session file we can likely fix the session.

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#3

Thank you Robin
I briefly tried to compile with the --optimize flag. However, I still had the assert errors. Also, Ardour version 8.7 gave me the same error. I suspect it must have been a change from 8.6 to 8.7 that caused the problem. I did not know how to upload files to the forum. I made a link to the file: 2.82 MB file on MEGA If you can see something, that would be great!
Edit: we are currently working on the Project, so we could not use a fixed file. I could try to make a diff and see what to change on the acutal one.

#4

OK, this is caused by two Regions that have zero duration.
An Audio region should be at least 1 sample long. Not sure how this came to be.

  • Region “Cogela guit dry_XPYTH5.8” in playlist “Guitar 1 1.1” for Track “Guitar 1 Solo”.
  • Region “Cogela guit dry_XPYTH5.6” in the same playlist.

So you have two options: remove those regions, or set some non-zero duration. I’ve done the latter (set them to about 1 sec long):

Search the session file for a line matching id="990893" and then change length="a0@a50019984000" to e.g. length="a50000000@a50019984000"
Same for the other region id="1005547" set length="a50000000@a55438992000".

The diff below may not directly apply if you have already modified the session again, but above edits should do:

After that you’ll see two regions appear:

image
image1475Ă—279 60.3 KB 

--- /home/rgareus/Downloads/coje_la_gitarra.ardour	2025-05-06 17:40:14.279173858 +0200
+++ /tmp/coje/coje_la_gitarra.ardour	2025-05-06 18:50:18.084538858 +0200
@@ -32741,7 +32741,7 @@
           </AutomationList>
         </InverseFadeOut>
       </Region>
-      <Region name="Cogela guit dry_XPYTH5.6" muted="0" opaque="1" locked="0" video-locked="0" automatic="0" whole-file="0" import="0" external="1" sync-marked="0" left-of-split="0" right-of-split="0" hidden="0" position-locked="0" valid-transients="0" start="a49340579400" length="a0@a50019984000" sync-position="a49340579400" ancestral-start="a0" ancestral-length="a0@a0" stretch="1" shift="1" layering-index="2" tags="" contents="0" rgroup="0" envelope-active="0" default-fade-in="0" default-fade-out="0" fade-in-active="1" fade-out-active="1" scale-amplitude="840.3038330078125" id="990893" type="audio" first-edit="nothing" source-0="623" source-1="625" master-source-0="623" master-source-1="625" channels="2">
+      <Region name="Cogela guit dry_XPYTH5.6" muted="0" opaque="1" locked="0" video-locked="0" automatic="0" whole-file="0" import="0" external="1" sync-marked="0" left-of-split="0" right-of-split="0" hidden="0" position-locked="0" valid-transients="0" start="a49340579400" length="a50000000@a50019984000" sync-position="a49340579400" ancestral-start="a0" ancestral-length="a0@a0" stretch="1" shift="1" layering-index="2" tags="" contents="0" rgroup="0" envelope-active="0" default-fade-in="0" default-fade-out="0" fade-in-active="1" fade-out-active="1" scale-amplitude="840.3038330078125" id="990893" type="audio" first-edit="nothing" source-0="623" source-1="625" master-source-0="623" master-source-1="625" channels="2">
         <Envelope>
           <AutomationList automation-id="envelope" id="990899" interpolation-style="Exponential" time-domain="AudioTime" state="Off">
             <events>a0 1.0000001000000001
@@ -32901,7 +32901,7 @@
           </AutomationList>
         </InverseFadeOut>
       </Region>
-      <Region name="Cogela guit dry_XPYTH5.8" muted="0" opaque="1" locked="0" video-locked="0" automatic="0" whole-file="0" import="0" external="1" sync-marked="0" left-of-split="0" right-of-split="0" hidden="0" position-locked="0" valid-transients="0" start="a49340579400" length="a0@a55438992000" sync-position="a49340579400" ancestral-start="a0" ancestral-length="a0@a0" stretch="1" shift="1" layering-index="3" tags="" contents="0" rgroup="0" envelope-active="0" default-fade-in="0" default-fade-out="0" fade-in-active="1" fade-out-active="1" scale-amplitude="840.3038330078125" id="1005547" type="audio" first-edit="nothing" source-0="623" source-1="625" master-source-0="623" master-source-1="625" channels="2">
+      <Region name="Cogela guit dry_XPYTH5.8" muted="0" opaque="1" locked="0" video-locked="0" automatic="0" whole-file="0" import="0" external="1" sync-marked="0" left-of-split="0" right-of-split="0" hidden="0" position-locked="0" valid-transients="0" start="a49340579400" length="a50000000@a55438992000" sync-position="a49340579400" ancestral-start="a0" ancestral-length="a0@a0" stretch="1" shift="1" layering-index="3" tags="" contents="0" rgroup="0" envelope-active="0" default-fade-in="0" default-fade-out="0" fade-in-active="1" fade-out-active="1" scale-amplitude="840.3038330078125" id="1005547" type="audio" first-edit="nothing" source-0="623" source-1="625" master-source-0="623" master-source-1="625" channels="2">
         <Envelope>
           <AutomationList automation-id="envelope" id="1005553" interpolation-style="Exponential" time-domain="AudioTime" state="Off">
             <events>a0 1.0000001989072964
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#5

PS. fixed session file: https://robin.linuxaudio.org/tmp/coje_la_gitarra.ardour

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#6

Amazing! We are back on track. I could fix thanks to you without losing any progress. Thank you guys. Just made a donation! Really happy about having open source audio tools like this!

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