Soundtrack Pro 3 Cannot Save On Project Build

Question

All, I have been fighting a problem all weekend. STP is unable to save my large project. Before I give up and tell my friend to mix the project on his Windows machine because my MAC can't do it, I'd figure I try one last post here to see if anyone has ideas that I haven't tried (and I've been searching the posts too.) Here goes:
I have an IMAC 3.06 Core2 DUO with 4GB memory. I have two external GRAID FW800 drives. All disks have plenty of space on them. The project is on the MAC HDD and the audio files are on the external GRAID 4GB FW800 drive. I am running STP 3.0.1.
I am mixing a Christmas service that has up to 33 audio 24 bit AIFF files. The files were originally provided to me in a WAV format. I also have a reference HD 1040i24P reference movie MOV with accompanying referenced soundtrack. The service is about 1 hour 10 minutes long. The tracks run continuously through the entire service.
The problem is that I can't add all the tracks and get STP to save my work. When I attempt to save, the system pauses for a moment and then comes back. I can see the free memory dip as it attempts to save and then the free memory goes back up. I receive no indication that the save has occurred. However, I do watch the project file in the finder. When the non-save failure occurs, the project time stamp is not updated. It is updated on successful saves of course. If I attempt to save a second time after the non-save event, I get the pinwheel and it's all over. Or I get an error, "Uncaught Exception". I get the log file and typically it says the application has hanged (hung?).
OK - here are the specifics if you care to suffer through this thread further:
-I can add about 10 tracks and save the project ok. It saves - the time stamp increments and I continue. As I add more and more tracks the problem occurs sometimes at the 15th track, sometimes higher (but I never get them all added.)
- I have mixed the tracks in the WAV format and in the Apple native AIFF format (Used compressor to convert them all). The typical WAV file is 673MB. The typical AIFF is 976MB.
-I have opened two clean projects, added five at a time to one project (call that the source) and copied and pasted the 5 tracks to the final project. I would delete the 5 tracks from the source project, added 5 more to it, selected copied them all, went the final project, made sure I had one blank track at the bottom, pasted the tracks to the playhead (STP notifies me it needs to add tracks - I acknowledge) and then SAVED SUCCESSFULLY. I repeated this process and it got me the furthest - reaching all the way to the 33rd track when it refused to save - same error (ugh!). In this case, I did this without the movie in the project figuring if I could mix just the audio, I could get by imaging the video piece.
I've tried several things though these exploits. None of these have fixed the issue.
- Added a few tracks at a time, saved, added move, saved (watching the date stamp) until I get to about the 20th track at which time I get the save problem.
- Converted the 24 bit tracks to 16 bit AIFF files using compressor - same result (doesn't matter if I am mixing WAV or AIFF.)
- Started new projects, to attempt a clean slate - same failure
- Watched my memory closely through the process. Closed all applications to insure I have free memory left. Between free and inactive, never had an issue although I have seen free go close to 100 MB a few times.
- Trashed my preferences
- Verified and fixed disk permissions on IMAC drive and external drives.
- Moved the audio files to another external drive to insure it is not a drive issue. The disk activity seems to peak at 20MB/Sec but is not consistent.
- I make sure there are no non-alpha numeric characters in the file name (no dashes or slashes.)
One of the 'Unexpected Problem' failure messages I have received is the following: "NSMallocException * -[NSConcreteMutableData appendBytes:length]: unable to allocate memory for length (30555608). This occurs even though I have about 500MB between Free and Inactive memory showing.
My conclusion in all of this is that STP has an internal memory allocation limit and depending on the state of the system at the time, memory is misallocated or mis-read. I have plenty of log files to send in case Apple is watching this thread.
Thanks for anyone's help. Hopefully, the Apple discussion thread would crash when I press 'Post Message.'
Happy New Year!
Chris

Answer 1

OK guys, I did another test. System:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro2,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 8 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Results: Crash & burn.
First I attempted to open one of my prior projects that would no longer save. The project opened but would not save. To this I attributed to a corrupted project and moved on.
Second, I opened a new project (after force quitting) and opened the prior project. I copied and pasted all the tracks into the new project. I attempted to save the new project - no joy. I forced quit. (Ok - I was being lazy on building the project so I went to test 3.)
Third (and final test): I built the project from scratch, saving along the way. No problem on the saves up to 25 tracks. I put the final 8 tracks in (up to 33) and went to save. THE PROJECT WON'T SAVE. At the time, I had 3.53GB of free memory. Apple, if you are watching, I sent the crash report for this machine at about 4:30 PST.
So, the problem is not free memory. It is in the way STP is allocating memory. The issue isn't a corrupted track as I have added the tracks in various orders with the same result.
The only option I have is to mix down tracks. I'll start with the drums (10 mics) and go from there.
Shucks.
Chris
Post note - I saw very little performance difference between my dual core 3.06 with 4 GB and this machine. STP just does not use the assets at its disposal. The processor barely gets above 14 percent....