QuickTime bug (in MacOS 9.x)

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samplaire
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Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Warsaw to Szczecin, Poland
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Post by samplaire »

Hi,

Just have a look at this:

[...]
Special MacOS 9.x note:
QuickTime has got a bug that leads to crashes in the file engine of
Nuendo, mostly when you punch in or out of recording. To work around it you have to turn of QuickTime Exchange. To do that go to the QuickTime control panel uncheck the QuickTime Exchange button.

Background: QuickTime Exchange patches the operating system with code that is not compatible with multithreading and multiprocessor support, which Nuendo uses extensively.
[...]

It's a fragment of a readme file found on Steinberg's ftp site in Nuendo/Mac folder. I wonder if this bug can affect (or just make the program less stable) Cubase, Logic or Pulsar app??? Can anybody of you answer this question? Meanwhile I disable the QuickTime feature. Just for insurance. :smile:
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Micha
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Joined: Tue May 08, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Berlin
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Post by Micha »

Depends on the machine you have. If your machine is multiprocessor the kernel of the OS will support this and side effects are to expect. In the case of a single proc normally everything should run smoothly. In this case, i.e. problems with multithreading, also side effects are possible. All these programs use multithreading, (like: each VST instrument uses his own thread) so problems would be no surprise.
I would have done like you did. Is the feature QuickTime Exchange important to have? I hope not.
And they should repair this, at least for the point of multithreading, but I suggest that it is only a problem with 2 processors upwards.
I think this is one of the main reasons they switched to a UNIX kernel. Multithreading with multiprocessor is a damn complicated thing compared to a single proc. In a single you just need a simple array to keep track of your threads connected with each process. With more CPUs you have to divide the processes and now:
which thread on what CPU? Can you see the mess?
CPU5 has thread 2,5,7 of process 3, CPU4 t 1,3,6 of p3 ... MUCH more complicated: what part of process 3 is running on CPU2?. Hey, this is kind of a bug factory.
So they made a very wise decision and took a rock solid thing out of the free source community :cool:
Happy pulsaring
Micha
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