Logic Pro 9 Color it buggy

M

macgician

Logician
I find a real nuisance in Logic Pro, at least in my program, is that the channel strip colors will change without me asking for it. I'll go through a project's whole mixing board, set up channels and auxes with certain colors from the standard palette so I know at a glance what they are as I'm working, then I look again and some or most have reverted back to the default blue/gray color. Right now, I made again my three guitar channel strips red and one of them has gone back to blue/gray, as it has before. I went through a whole process too of rerouting and making submix auxes, coloring them so I know which is submixing which instruments/fx at a glance. And, you guess it...

:brkwl:

:brkwl:

:brkwl:

Has anyone seen this? Is it a known bug? Can anyone stop the madness?!?
 
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I'm not aware of this problem. You don't say what version of Logic 9 you're running. No problems here. Perhaps it is a corrupt project? Does it happen in other projects as well?
 
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Might you have set the track color key command to something else that is causing this? I color stuff all the time and have never seen this, so user error (something simple in my experience) is often (but not always) the reason.
 
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Thank you both. It can happen in any random project at any time while working on it. That might seem to point to my doing something to cause it, but I can't imagine how that's possible. I'm a newbie here but not at Logic itself, which I've had since I think 4.3 (but it's a massive program and there's of course plenty I don't know). BTW I tend to work with the one screen, using the arrange window and opening mixer, piano roll or sample edit along the bottom when I need them, by use of key commands.

I'm using Logic 9.1.5 on a MacBook Pro. Now georgelegeriii, you raise something. I hadn't considered the possibility of a track color key command. It could be that's been operating in the background, something close or same as a keystroke I tend to do in projects, and might explain why I'll color something then find it changed a short while later.

I'm looking at my Key Commands window now. If I just searched on the word "color". Here's all that shows up.

Global Options
> Open color palette (has alt-C)
Arrange and Various Editors
> Select equal colored regions/events (has shift-C)
Arrange Window
> Color Regions by channel strips/instruments (has no key command)
Mixer
> Select equal colored channel strips (has also shift-C)

There are six items under Score but none apply here as I don't use score usually. None of these have a key command setup anyway.

I don't see logically how any of these could apply in the realm of erroneous/unintentional user action.
...:brkwl:
 
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Just a thought:
Are you changing screensets?
Maybe some screensets are locked and this is the cause.

Edit: Scrap that idea. Channel colors would be independent of screensets.
 
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And anyway I don't often change screensets. this happens when I'm busy in one screenset, to that screenset. Let's see if my going to the kitchen causes it to occur. 🙂
 
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It just happened. Unfortunately I have to wrap this Logic session up now but I'll briefly describe what I was doing in case it helps.

I changed, for the heck of it at this point, my three guitar audio tracks all back to red as I want them (the region colors themselves by the way never change, just the channel's (or track's if you like) color in the mix pane on the bottom screen, which I had open, and by extension of course in the inspector pane on the left when that channel is selected). They all go to a submix, which I (again) made yellow.

I tried to make the gremlin show up for a few minutes but he wouldn't. So I went back to work on one of the three tracks. I was deleting a no longer needed bit of automation, putting a new instance of noise gate on the channel, putting the submix in solo while variously muting on and off the other two tracks, and changing settings in the noise gate to audition. Out of curiosity I looked at the channel strip in the mixer and it had changed to default color; the other two on which I was not working (just muting) did not change. I think I remember looking at the strip when I deleted the automation I mentioned and it didn't change color by that time. Also the submix's color changed to that default tan color from the yellow I had.

It may be that this only happens to channels being worked on. But now I'm noticing some drum channels defaulted too. However I must admit this could have happened earlier as I've not been viewing those for about 30 minutes.
 
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Following that, one last thing. A watched kettle never boils. I just did plugin and automation work on the same guitar channel (never muting the others along the way, for what it's worth) and kept the mix pane open on the bottom of the screen and looked at it after nearly every move, deletion or save. Of course it never changed color.
 
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Does this happen if you start a new project from the Empty template?

What happens if you use the Project Import function to bring the contents of a bugy project into an Empty project?

If either of the two above improve the situation, then your project was corrupt.

But if not,...it may time to trash you Logic Preferences.
 
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georgelegeriii said:
Q does this happen on any other systems you use? Can you try this out on another system other than your laptop?
Click to expand...

I don't have another system handy to try it on. I'll keep this in mind though when I get a chance to visit a friend who has a similar setup.

CSeye said:
Does this happen if you start a new project from the Empty template?

What happens if you use the Project Import function to bring the contents of a bugy project into an Empty project?

If either of the two above improve the situation, then your project was corrupt.

But if not,...it may time to trash you Logic Preferences.
Click to expand...

I may just be transferring this issue forward through permutations. But I've seen this in all sorts of projects started in different ways. The project import I'll try.

What do I lose and have to set up again when I trash the Preferences?

Thank you both!
 
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macgician said:
I may just be transferring this issue forward through permutations. But I've seen this in all sorts of projects started in different ways. The project import I'll try.

What do I lose and have to set up again when I trash the Preferences?

Thank you both!
Click to expand...

Starting with an Empty project is the least disruptive first step in trouble shooting. Combined with mastering the Project Import process, and you'll be able to salvage an existing work in progress.

The least invasive method of trashing preferences is to go to the Logic Pro menu (top left of your screen)>Preferences>Initialize All Except Key Commands. Start up Logic in 32 bit mode before you do this. If you've saved custom key commands, this method spares you the extra effort of having to load them again in the Key Commands window.

After executing this command, restart your computer.

What do you lose? Your preference settings. Open your preferences and make notes on changes you've made before using the above command, as you'll need to reset them. Not a big deal.
 
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CSeye said:
The least invasive method of trashing preferences is to go to the Logic Pro menu (top left of your screen)>Preferences>Initialize All Except Key Commands. Start up Logic in 32 bit mode before you do this. If you've saved custom key commands, this method spares you the extra effort of having to load them again in the Key Commands window.
Click to expand...

Hey there. I checked the manual; I'm not sure how to start in 32 bit mode. I definitely have and use custom key commands, real used to them for my workflow.
 
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macgician said:
CSeye said:
The least invasive method of trashing preferences is to go to the Logic Pro menu (top left of your screen)>Preferences>Initialize All Except Key Commands. Start up Logic in 32 bit mode before you do this. If you've saved custom key commands, this method spares you the extra effort of having to load them again in the Key Commands window.
Click to expand...

Hey there. I checked the manual; I'm not sure how to start in 32 bit mode. I definitely have and use custom key commands, real used to them for my workflow.
Click to expand...

Quit Logic. In the Applications folder control-click on the Logic app icon. Select "Get Info". Click on the "Open in 32-bit mode" box. That's it.

If "Initializing All..." doesn't to the trick, you may need to look at setting up a new user account as described here: https://logic-users-group.com/forums/threads/my-plugins-have-disappeared.7298/
 
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I just tried to import data and settings from the bugger to a new empty project. Funny thing was that, despite close following of the manual, the I/O settings did not copy over correctly. Aux numbers that weren't used before were created out of whole cloth. Also I noticed that a logic noise gate's sidechain didn't copy over (a sine wave was humming that should have been muted by lack of signal in sidechain), which makes me less than confident about the rest of the plugin settings. And it's too deep in on this mix to be chasing down a lot of errors. I tried individually replacing track stuff with the individual import-replace function per track. At first I thought this worked, but then I noticed it would just create another instance of an aux in the mixer view, same settings new aux channel.

Still I'm going to try another 15 to half hour to see if I reassign everything, comparing new to old back and forth, whether this sounds right and behaves well.

Judging by the above though, I may just have a larger and more amorphous issue on my hands.
 
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Update. In the midst of it as I changed I/O settings I looked over at one point in the mixer and there, already, was the reversion of some channel colors back to their defaults. Like an old friend, quite unbidden.

I'll have to stop this for now because I have to get work done on this file this morning. Looks like I'll have to deal with the prefs too as suggested, but methinks there sadly could be more to this all than that.
 
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macgician said:
Update. In the midst of it as I changed I/O settings I looked over at one point in the mixer and there, already, was the reversion of some channel colors back to their defaults. Like an old friend, quite unbidden.

I'll have to stop this for now because I have to get work done on this file this morning. Looks like I'll have to deal with the prefs too as suggested, but methinks there sadly could be more to this all than that.
Click to expand...

Then read Apollo's comments in the LUG link I provided above. You have nothing to lose if you try it.
 
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Hello. In case anyone's interested I have an update. I continued to work on that other file with no time to deal with the problem. This morning I've begun a whole new mix. Though I could have picked up from an earlier version (could have done a resave) I decided to start from scratch as advised in this thread. Before doing that I did Initialize All Except Key Commands and was careful to follow recommendations. I had already mapped out all the busses and auxes I would need for the project, so it was just a matter of doing what I needed in the Environment then giving names, colors and in/out assignments to all my channels in the mixer.

After this I noticed just under what condition the problem occurs, because I did something that made a channel's color revert to default. I was putting a plug in an aux insert and decided against having it there. I undid the operation and that aux's color reverting; none of the others changed. A redo put back the plug but did not change back the color. I tried some other things and undid them. It seems that any change in channel strip sufficient to put the words "Undo change BLANK in channel strip" (the BLANK being "input" or "plugin or "send" or whatever I may have just changed) under the edit menu for the Undo operation, if that step is undone the change in channel strip goes away and its color reverts back to default. If I then redo the step the strip change is redone but the color does NOT go back to what I had.

There is one more thing that makes me wonder. I noticed that if I change a channel strip's color in the Mixer it is not an undo-able step, it does not put words like "Undo change in channel strip color" in the edit menu as something I can command-z. Hmmm, is that normal? If I change the color of a region in Arrange I find that that IS undo-able. This may explain (but not solve) what is happening. Because as much as I always noticed channel strip colors changing I never once saw a region's color change unless I changed it myself.
 
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macgician said:
Hello. In case anyone's interested I have an update.
Click to expand...
First of all, thank you for revisiting this situation. So often, questions are asked here, and excellent advice is given by well known Logic educators, industry pros, and the general membership (which is my only claim😉), without any indication from the thread starter that the issue was resolved.

...I noticed just under what condition the problem occurs, because I did something that made a channel's color revert to default. I was putting a plug in an aux insert and decided against having it there. I undid the operation and that aux's color reverting; none of the others changed. A redo put back the plug but did not change back the color.
Click to expand...
I just checked that out on my system and it looks like that is normal behavior.
Rather than use the Undo command, I manually select No Plug-in. Explains why I never noticed that changes to the channel strip color and plug-in act in this manner with Undo.

Couple of things to consider:
Try clicking on the insert slot to choose No Plug-in instead of the Undo command.
Color the Mixer channel strips first. (You can color them in sections as the song progresses), then in the Arrange window, select all of the regions, then in the local Region menu, select Color Regions by Channel Strips/Instruments. From that point forward, only make manual changes to plug-ins to avoid losing the custom channel strip color.
 
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