Serious Problems With Direct Offline Processing

[uarte]

I hear you. It used to be a very clean and simple workflow before, and for you, it's been blown sky high into a big mess.

For me, I WANT DOP to work very badly for my workflow... in fact -- some future imaginary DOP 3.0 would be a dream tool. And in theory, if they did it right, your workflow would be available again too, very simply and reliably IMO. So my POV really is honestly compatible with your workflow too... but I agree we're all way off base right now, and both workflows are messed up.

In either case, I hope they do something ASAP. If they provided an option to revert back to the old behavior, that would be a good stopgap solution for many of us. I just hope they're reading the feedback, because they clearly did NOT do good design or quality control on this feature so far.

[alexis]

I would die to be a fly on the wall in their beta testing room. I guess this must be working right for *somebody* , right?

[Romantique Tp]

It already works fine for most music mixing tasks. It's when you make an audio event omelette that things sometimes get messy, but they're already taking many steps to stop that from happening in future updates.

[uarte]

I would die to be a fly on the wall in their beta testing room. I guess this must be working right for *somebody* , right?

I'm guessing there was a very simplistic workflow they tested for, possibly justifying such a simple workflow scenario by the old feature that DOP replaced... perhaps in their minds they considered anything *more* than what the old feature offered, was good enough. That, plus likely pressure from their marketing department to make sure DOP was ready for Cubase 9.5, and that resulted in the feature being released prematurely without proper testing. Maybe I'm being generous. And this is all speculation.

In any case, I hope it has dawned on them by now that when you unleash a feature like DOP on the incredibly creative minds who use Cubase with 100 different awesome workflows, that many of us would discover uses for DOP that they didn't imagine when they were testing... and we blew right by the boundaries of testing they were able to do before release. Again, maybe I'm being generous.

Fortunately, there are also a bunch of people with Nuendo who already have a more advanced version of DOP, so they are hopefully getting a lot of feedback there too, and I hope they do the right thing and give us ALL the improvements to DOP they've already given Nuendo, plus more bugfixes. Crossing fingers they are listening.

[uarte]

It already works fine for most music mixing tasks. It's when you make an audio event omelette that things sometimes get messy, but they're already taking many steps to stop that from happening in future updates.

Thanks, Romantique, I really appreciate you replying here, as a moderator, keeping track of this issue, and I'm excited they are working on it.

But I would respectfully disagree with your characterization that "It already works fine for most music mixing tasks" -- whose mixing tasks are you referring to? Not mine at least. I was able to break it and find all sorts of issues in 20 minutes of release. Too many to list. And those were doing tasks that the feature seemed naturally designed to do, with common workflows and plugins that you guys certainly have at Steinberg to test with. Anyway, not trying to give you a hard time, but it's not really that accurate of a statement. Maybe if you added the word *simple* to the phrase, then I'd agree with you, as in, "It already works fine for most *simple* music mixing tasks."

I really hope you are in touch with the developers about DOP. And I think it's fair to ask for Nuendo's updates to DOP to be included here in Cubase too. It's bad enough we have a buggy DOP, but it's worse knowing we a have a feature-limited, buggy DOP. Hoping you are advocating for us.

No offense intended by this post BTW. I wouldn't be spending my time talking about this unless it was something that would be really valuable to me for my work (and ultimately SAVE me time and allow me to be more creative). The potential of DOP is fantastic. Just hope Steinberg spends the time to get it working really well and fulfill its potential.

[alexis]

It already works fine for most music mixing tasks. It's when you make an audio event omelette that things sometimes get messy, but they're already taking many steps to stop that from happening in future updates.

Thanks, Romantique, I really appreciate you replying here, as a moderator, keeping track of this issue, and I'm excited they are working on it ...

Yes +1, RTp I am very impressed with and grateful for the time that you are putting into educating us, especially at the very advanced and competent level that you clearly are. Your calm and gentle manner go a long way as well!

Thank you!

[Sean Ryder Williams]

I rolled back to 9.0.40 because of this and the removed Cleanup function... And my Mac Pro still crashes several times a day.

I also downloaded a DP and Pro Tools Trial.

Good luck all Cubasers. I think they are focused on a mile wide and an inch deep.

- SRW

[Romantique Tp]

And my Mac Pro still crashes several times a day.

If Cubase is crashing for you, please contact Steinberg support. It's likely something that can be solved.

[Cpt.Cred]

I would die to be a fly on the wall in their beta testing room. I guess this must be working right for *somebody* , right?

I'm guessing there was a very simplistic workflow they tested for, possibly justifying such a simple workflow scenario by the old feature that DOP replaced... perhaps in their minds they considered anything *more* than what the old feature offered, was good enough. That, plus likely pressure from their marketing department to make sure DOP was ready for Cubase 9.5, and that resulted in the feature being released prematurely without proper testing. Maybe I'm being generous. And this is all speculation.

In any case, I hope it has dawned on them by now that when you unleash a feature like DOP on the incredibly creative minds who use Cubase with 100 different awesome workflows, that many of us would discover uses for DOP that they didn't imagine when they were testing... and we blew right by the boundaries of testing they were able to do before release. Again, maybe I'm being generous.

My biggest issue with this (and the reason I had to revert to older cubase) is that it doesn't really introduce any new capabilities. But it fails to do the things the old offline processing could.

[hjwinge]

After this new DOP, are there no way to do actual destructive editing in cubase? I noticed that if I for example want to normalize a part, cubase will now create a new part in the edit folder instead of applying normalization on the actual part, thus creating much lager project files than needed. Where has the destructive edits gone? And can we have an option to choose the old or new behaviour?

[Sean Ryder Williams]

That’s why I rolled back to 9.0.40... I think DOP was a huge blunder, as do most.

Steinberg repeat this mantra... “I will do no harm with updates, My first goal is too make the product more stable and better, not to add features that don’t work or cause harm”

- Sean Ryder Williams

[seanbrennan]

I rolled back as well because of this messy DOP causing me a nightmare workflow. Please Steinberg, bring back the old behaviour or at least give us the option!!

[Sean Ryder Williams]

I just got off the phone with support and it sounds like this is not even on the radar? WTF Steinberg?

If I Normalize a set of vocal takes to comp them it creates GigaBites of files BY DEFAULT WITH NO WORKAROUND.

I've got a $500 Samsung 950 connected via Thunderbolt so I can use it on both my Macs... Every edit costs me $$$ in storage? WTF, NO WORKAROUND?

And to add insult to injury the CLEANUP function was removed? WTF Steinberg?

- SRW

[Romantique Tp]

The Edit folder behavior is as far as I know exactly the same as older versions of Cubase here.

Go to the Preferences window, then Editing -> Audio and set "On Processing Shared Clips" to "Open Options Dialog". Most of the time it's a good idea to allow Cubase to create a new version of the audio events being processed. This reduces the number of history entries and makes things behave more predictably when processing multiple split events.

[Sean Ryder Williams]

Romantique T, are you buying me SSD space at 50 cents a GB? And I love when people say "AS FAR AS I KNOW" that means they DON'T.

I walked through the process exactly as you described 1 1/2 HOURS AGO ON A TEAM VIEWER WITH YOUR TECH...and just now... YOU ARE WRONG, AND YOU DON'T KNOW. I can show you right NOW... Not only does it create new files, without the option not to... If you NORMALIZE an Audio file, AND need to change the setting, IT CREATES a NEW FILE EACH TIME...

This might be fine for Laptop "Musicians" - but not for people that work with REAL MUSICIANS... I am starting to realize CUBASE MAY NOT BE THE PLATFORM FOR REAL MUSIC.

I WOULD LIKE YOU TO REFUND ME THE PRICE OF 9.5 IMMEDIATELY.

-Sean Ryder Williams

[Sean Ryder Williams]

SEE PICKS

[uarte]

Hey Sean, Not trying to defend Steinberg here, but they are supposedly working on a number of patches to DOP, which will hopefully show up in 9.5.30 (and 9.5.40). The fact that Steinberg support is in the dark doesn't surprise me -- I've had to explain known issues to them myself before. But the developers DO know there are issues.

Right now, DOP is *not* up to serious, creative use IMO. Just really basic stuff and simple workflows, unfortunately. The good news is that the DOP inside Nuendo is already a generation ahead of Cubase's DOP... so one can imagine and HOPE they've addressed at least some of these issues already. We're just waiting for it to get ported to Cubase. You can check out the release notes for Nuendo and see a bunch of improvements listed. So they have been working on it. We just don't have the improvements yet.

My humble suggestion on DOP is to limit your usage of it to the most simple tasks, and create a workflow *around* DOP's behaviors for now. Personally, I don't use it except for testing new patches as they come out for now, because it is still too broken to get serious with it, but I've seen a very slow improvement here and there. It was embarrassingly bad when C9.5 first launched IMO. Just unacceptable. Now it is barely okay for simple workflows with 9.5.21. Yes, it's disappointing, but chances are several issues are already in the pipeline waiting to make it into Cubase.

So hang in there, or work around it, or *gasp* roll back to C9. Again, this is not meant to defend Steinberg or minimize your struggle. But at least in this case, we do know there are significant improvements in Nuendo, so we can hope they'll bring all those over to Cubase soon.

As for your righteous anger about the situation, I can't help much in that... maybe a little yoga? Just kidding. I've already gone through my stages of frustration on this and similar issues with Steinberg and I've moved to a mental state of "acceptance" and frankly, I've also spread my creativity to other DAWs too, so I don't slam my head into the wall too often with Cubase. And of course, the consequence of that, for me, is that if Steinberg doesn't fix these things, Cubase will continue to slip down the usage in my studio... until, alas, I fear it may be 100% replaced... if this keeps up.

Hope that 9.5.30 is a big improvement... should be out in a couple of months...

Best of luck with it!

[uarte]

And BTW, Romantique Tp is doing the best he can -- he is trying to help, and I applaud his efforts. But I think this thread clearly shows he hasn't pushed DOP like some of us have done, but I think he's coming around to realize Steinberg screwed up on this feature release. He's a good guy, taking a lot of negativity, so I give him big props for hanging in there. He's in a tough position because as a moderator, I'm sure he doesn't want to say something bad about Steinberg... and he's obviously a strong Steinberg supporter for voluntarily doing moderation here in the forum. But I'm sure deep down he knows there are too many of us disappointed with DOP and I just hope he conveys our feelings about the matter to the developers. Someone has to light a fire under them to get this fixed. Cheers to Romantique Tp, and please be our advocate with the developers!

[Sean Ryder Williams]

Thanks Brother, good advice... I’ve been on 9.0.40 for a long time... As well as downloading Digital Preformer and F-IN Pro-Tools... I’ve used CB for years and I pay for software to work and be tested for release...

THE FACT THAT THEY DIDNT KNOW ITS A F-IN ISSUE AT SUPPORT AND HERE AS OF TODAY is UNBELIEVABLE, UNACCEPTABLE, IGNORANT, and INCOMPETENT.

For the last 3 1/2 years I was working for a small Oracle Partner and Selling Our Reporting & BI Software to companies including Universal, Avis, City of Chicago, and about 20 others I personally closed. I understand software is a living breathing thing and progress comes slow BUT... I don’t pay Steinberg / Yamaha to be a BETA TESTER. I am the customer and releasing features that do no work is not acceptable, and not knowing 6 months in is sad.

Again Steinberg / Yamaha may be focused on the “Laptop Musician” and their software may work for those people. People who listen to MP3s and arrange loops of music created by other people, press virtual knobs and make virtual music... But I’m on hiatus because of a Non Compete and I don’t have time to wait to finish a self produced, self funded, self everything project. Not with 50k worth of gear and time and money running out.

I am the customer when I PAY Steinberg / Yamaha they owe me a product with updates that don’t break the product I depend on to work.

Corporations continue to as much as they can get, and give as little as we will allow...And that effects employees and customers.

Time is limited. Social media and forums are one of the last places we can hold nameles, faceless corporations accountable.

Several companies are effecting my workflow, so... Steinberg / Yamaha is one.

- SRW

[uarte]

Hey Sean, I hear you and understand what you mean completely. Like you, I've been in this game a while, and I've finally truly learned -- after much self-inflicted pain BTW -- that you get to choose your battles, and sometimes those battles are simply not worth it. And while I agree someone has to hold these companies accountable in this example, there's also a trade-off for accomplishing what you *really* want and need to do vs. getting lost in too much frustration.

Bottom line, you've got some precious time on your hands, you need to get to working on your special projects. Various things are holding you back (i.e. Cubase). So your experience should inform you which battles are going to be worth your time, of course. Then march forward.

In this case, there is some good news:

1) Steinberg theoretically knows about the issues since they've already been improving Nuendo with a better version of DOP. Yes, it's embarrassing that their support doesn't know what is going on. And yes, it's pretty insane that they haven't ALREADY given us the Nuendo version of DOP.

2) Fortunately you have options!

3) You can rail briefly here to keep this thread and issue elevated in Steinberg's peripheral vision. We can only hope they are listening.

4) You can then cut your losses of frustration and time and just NOT use the feature, roll back to v9, etc, etc.

5) You can try the plethora of other DAWs out there that might do the trick

6) While every DAW has issues, and the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill, one of the other DAWs might just have the magic combination of working features that does the trick for you

7) We are living in an amazing time when even DAWs with bugs as annoying as DOP are STILL pretty amazing to work with. So you might need to suck it up and just work with Cubase as-is, warts and all.

8) PLUS there's no need to be a single-DAW kind of guy -- my recommendation, use at least TWO DAWs these days.

Whatever you do, may I suggest not to blow too much steam and get back to work on your awesome creative project, which is what I need to do as well tonight. Check back in when 9.5.30 drops and see if they did anything. We can raise a little more noise if it still sucks, then move on again. Which is basically what I've been doing (although tonight I'm apparently spending more time than I should on this -- partial self-therapy I guess). Our time is more valuable than Steinberg's issues. It's not even worth it to fight for a refund IMO. If they don't fix DOP, then don't buy Cubase 10. I've been quite happy phasing out Cubase bit by bit and using one of the other great DAWs too. It's up to Steinberg if I ever upgrade again.

And above all, good luck with your project. You CAN do it without DOP.

[Romantique Tp]

Romantique T, are you buying me SSD space at 50 cents a GB? And I love when people say "AS FAR AS I KNOW" that means they DON'T.

I walked through the process exactly as you described 1 1/2 HOURS AGO ON A TEAM VIEWER WITH YOUR TECH...and just now... YOU ARE WRONG, AND YOU DON'T KNOW. I can show you right NOW... Not only does it create new files, without the option not to... If you NORMALIZE an Audio file, AND need to change the setting, IT CREATES a NEW FILE EACH TIME...

This might be fine for Laptop "Musicians" - but not for people that work with REAL MUSICIANS... I am starting to realize CUBASE MAY NOT BE THE PLATFORM FOR REAL MUSIC.

I WOULD LIKE YOU TO REFUND ME THE PRICE OF 9.5 IMMEDIATELY.

I don't work for Steinberg.

Offline processing creates new files for each offline process you apply. This part isn't new, and this is required to allow you to remove effects without re-rendering the whole file, which could take a very long time depending on its size and effects applied.

Direct Offline Processing takes this concept of using pre-rendered files from the Edits folder many steps further by allowing you to undo all of your edits, not just modify the last one, along with allowing you to freely reorder, add, bypass and remove offline effects from all selected events at the same time. This is all done as close to realtime as possible, and this requires each applied edit to be written to disk.

This certainly could be optimized to use less disk space in the future, and I'm sure that such changes are already in the pipeline, but this isn't a bug.

Support didn't mention a workaround, but there's one. Just click Audio -> Make Direct Offline Processing Permanent and any unneeded files from the Edits folder should be gone the next time you close your project. This applies to all selected events.

If you need to save space after finishing your project, you can also click Back Up Project and tick Make Direct Offline Processing Permanent. This will make a copy of your project to a new folder with the Edits folder 100% empty. You can then safely delete the original project folder.

This might be fine for Laptop "Musicians" - but not for people that work with REAL MUSICIANS...

It's usually laptop users who are constantly running low on disk space, not pros.

[Sean Ryder Williams]

I thought you worked for them, apologies.

[peakae]

Would be nice to be able to restrict the number of undo’s in DOP directly. (Even Zero)
I was surprised/ignorant when I ran out of disk space normalizing 32 tracks 1.5 hour long live recording.
Not a bug, but DOP really feels like it is still in Beta stage, and that is being generous.

[Sean Ryder Williams]

We all work for this company now apparently...

Yamaha Corporation (ヤマハ株式会社 Yamaha Kabushiki Gaisha) (/ˈjæməˌhɑː/; Japanese pronunciation: [jamaha]) is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services, predominantly musical instruments, electronics and power sports equipment. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest piano manufacturing company. The former motorcycle division became independent from the main company in 1955, forming Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd, although Yamaha Corporation is still the largest shareholder.

[Cpt.Cred]

Come on Steinberg! its been a long time now since i payed for an "upgrade". But you removed my trusty old offline processing, that I used A LOT, and you replaced it with this DOP crap that DOES NOT WORK! Cubase 9.5 is broken, bring back the old offline processing AND fix the DOP or give us a refund please!