Nothing is perfect and no matter how carefully you manage your system, sometimes you’ll find a session you are trying to open just won’t play nice. Pro Tools has had its moments in terms of stability but often Pro Tools is getting the blame for a crash caused by a plug-in.
If you hold down Shift while opening a Pro Tools session the session will open with all its plug-ins inactive. Once in the session you can set about identifying which plug-in is causing the problem. In a big session I find using CMD+Option+Ctrl/Start+Alt+Ctrl to activate plug-ins one slot at a time across all tracks speeds things up significantly if I’m trying to identify issues.
This is a life-saver when trying to resurrect a reluctant session.
Julian Rodgers is Editor of Production Expert. He has a background in live sound and has been a Pro Tools user since 2001. He lives by the sea in West Cornwall where he plays piano, bass and guitar equally badly and is an avid collector of microphones and opinions about all things audio.