Pro Audio Support

Q:
"A System Error has occurred" when trying to playback in Pro Tools 5.1.3 with AV Option XL picture.
 
A:
Later Avid systems (10.0 or greater) have the ability to use a single frame (TIF file that is small in size) and repeat it many times from RAM to create a video clip as opposed to an actual video clip that may be many MB's in size. This is often the case in feature animation storyboarding, a rough sketch will be drawn and photographed, the photograph is turned into a single frame TIF file. Avids will simply repeat that TIF that is stored in RAM for playback instead of creating a video file.Pro Tools has the ability to playthrough a sequence or clip that originated in this way but if the cursor is parked in the middle of one of these clips, Pro Tools will throw the "A System Error has occurred" error dialogue.Taking the Movie offline or removing the Video track will allow the rest of the session (audio only) to playback fine.Sometimes a sequence will be made up entirely of these "bogus" video clips so Pro Tools won't be able to playback any of this video. Other times there may only be one or a few of these problematic video clips amongst regular digitized video clips. If this is the case Pro Tools can playback video including the problematic clips as long as the cursor is not parked on one of these clips and playback is attempted.Once this error message appears, Pro Tools will need to be quit and relaunched before "ANY" video good or bad will playback.