Hi

Im experimenting with bringing in audio via chops to control geometry deformations and etc. but houdini is crashing constantly when fidling with the sliders in the pass filter and the pitch chops?

Houdini version 9.5 (9.5.276)
MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz, 4 GB ram, GeForce 8600M GT
System Version: Mac OS X 10.5.5 (9F33)

- qral

Can you post up a scene file ? . I run a mac and would be willing to have a test of it.

Regards Rob

Hi Rob

thanks! I have zipped the scene file and the audio file…

I'm not on a mac. Tested it on Ubuntu 8.04, with houdini 9.5.224, nvidia graphics, and not encountering your problem. Moving the sliders at a single static frame or while running the animation causes no problems.
So both the hipnc and audio files seem fine.

What audio drivers does you mac use? Is it being served by Nvidia?

Hi probbins

Thanks for testing the files… I think that Apple is writing the default system Audio drivers, but it looks like its a build-in intel audio chip on my macbook pro

That suggests to me that the audio is sharing ram with the OS. See if there is a setting to boost the amount of ram the audio can use.

I tried this file on an iMac and did not manage to crash Houdini (9.5.271).

Do you experience crashes when manipulating sliders in non-audio related nodes (eg, SOPs)? If so, the issue may be not related to audio.

Looks fine on my machine as well. When exactly does it crash? Simply when adjusting the pass filter while not playing? Have you tried the filter chunk size at the default setting and still crashes?

I can't test this on a mac either but usually the main reason I've seen audio crash on the machines I've used (win or linux) is memory. But 4 gigs should be quite enough.

One thing you might try is downsampleing the resulting audio to drive the animation. But, I wouldn't suggest trying to manipulate the sliders while playing if it's doing this.

Thanks for all of your replies…

@ Probbins: I haven't found a way to allocate some more ram for the audio driver…

@ rafal: I will test if thats the case…

@ andrewlowell: It seems like the pass filter is doing ok when leaving the chunk settings on default. The pitch node seems like the most unstable especially when dragging the “minimum level” slider to the lowest value.
I think some of my first crashes was triggered by dragging the sliders while playing…

- qral

I have tried the file and I am getting no problems at all on my mac

Rob

Which sliders are we talking about here? The ones in the Parameter pane or the ones in the Motion View pane?

… the sliders in the parameter pane

- qral

I think you're going to need to give a more specific series of steps for reproducing. For example, loading the .hip file, hitting play, and then changing the High Cutoff slider on the Pass Filter CHOP.