saving disabled

Learn about building and using Max for Live devices.
Rixende
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2015 4:05 pm

saving disabled

Post by Rixende » Wed Jan 13, 2016 9:05 pm

I need urgent help on this one. I am completely dumbfounded right now and couldn't find any information online on either Cyclings page or Abletons.

I just got Live Suite 9 a month ago. I am in the middle of editing a huge Max patch. Suddenly Max tells me my "trial" is over and saving is disabled from now on. What the hell? I have a fully legit and authorised copy of Live Suite and it includes Max for Live. The Ableton manual is pretty clear that Max for Live allows for editing patches. Will someone please enlighten me on what's going on here?

I made some emergency screenshots of the work I spend some hours on and I tried to copy parts of the patch to my clipboard as I am typing this.

Any help is appreciated.

Rixende
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2015 4:05 pm

Re: saving disabled

Post by Rixende » Wed Jan 13, 2016 9:13 pm

i restarted max and started it again from the edit button in ableton just like the manual tells me to and like i always do anyway. still the same. saving is disabled. in addittion all the work on my clipboard is definitely lost now. f*** this s***.

Cypherclerk
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2016 6:49 pm

Re: saving disabled

Post by Cypherclerk » Sun Jan 17, 2016 7:36 pm

There is a guide here: https://www.ableton.com/en/help/article ... -for-live/ - but it didn't work for me.

This is how I solved it:

Close Ableton.
Run Max 7 standalone application (contrary to what the guide above suggests).
Attempt to login to a Cycling 74 account through Max, as if following the authorisation process for Max 7 standalone. Use a non-existent email account so Max rejects the login attempt. This step might not actually be necessary, but it's what I accidentally done because Cycling 74 has not been able to verify my email address for some reason :/
Close Max 7 standalone.
Run Ableton and open M4L.

Rixende
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2015 4:05 pm

Re: saving disabled

Post by Rixende » Thu Jan 28, 2016 5:03 pm

Thanks!

I did a reinstall and reauthorise of Ableton, I deleted the Ableton Intro installation that i still had. Now it seems to work. At least most of the time. But it still occasionally happens that the green bar pops up and tells me my trial was over. I just try to save as often as i can.

parking sun
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2009 12:28 pm
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Re: saving disabled

Post by parking sun » Fri Feb 12, 2016 7:32 am

Did you ever resolve this? It's been annoying me ever since I went to Max 7 (I have a max standalone lice for version 6)

Randomly some times my max for live devices are in trial mode, or they start working, then switch to trial mode suddenly. This would only be an annoying time waster by itself, but what's worse is that some of my devices don't actually operate in trial mode for some reason; When it happens on stage my set is half-silent. I have to restart the whole set, including Live. When I restart live, Max for live has switched out of trial mode again.

I know this has been said before, but since I switched from being a little ratbag who pirated software to a responsible professional who pays all his licensing fees I have had JUST AS MANY problems with my software registration. Bah.

parking sun
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Re: saving disabled

Post by parking sun » Fri Feb 19, 2016 6:18 am

The annoying thing is that I tried the re-install fix and it hasn't really fixed it. Now instaead of "TRIAL EXPIRED - SAVING DISABLED" I get "TRIAL NOT STARTED - SAVING DISABLED". You can't win.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: saving disabled

Post by Stromkraft » Mon Feb 29, 2016 6:04 pm

As far as I know editing of Max devices inside the Max environment is not part of Max For Live. You need a specific Max license for that, no? When you install MFL you get one month of full Max.

Editing of Max device patches obviously is part of Max For Live.
Make some music!

parking sun
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Re: saving disabled

Post by parking sun » Tue Mar 01, 2016 4:04 am

I get the error about "SAVING DISABLED" when editing M4L devices inside of Ableton. I don't ever edit patches externally. The SAVING DISABLED error still occurs. Is that what we are both talking about?

Anyway, the error is not occurring this week; it only occurs shortly before deadlines and when I am giving workshops and other embarrassing times.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: saving disabled

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Mar 02, 2016 1:50 pm

parking sun wrote:I get the error about "SAVING DISABLED" when editing M4L devices inside of Ableton. I don't ever edit patches externally. The SAVING DISABLED error still occurs. Is that what we are both talking about?

Anyway, the error is not occurring this week; it only occurs shortly before deadlines and when I am giving workshops and other embarrassing times.
The difference is editing patches, i e presets, compared to editing devices. If you're editing devices you're on Maxc license territory as far as I know.

But if you mean you use devices, make changes to settings in the interface of these, then you shouldn't see any "Saving disabled" at any point unless that is a demo device you're using. Could you post a screen dump of this the next time it happens?

Personally I just use Max devices in Live and edit and save without issues and I have no specific Max license.
Make some music!

stringtapper
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Joined: Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:21 pm

Re: saving disabled

Post by stringtapper » Wed Mar 02, 2016 3:12 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
parking sun wrote:I get the error about "SAVING DISABLED" when editing M4L devices inside of Ableton. I don't ever edit patches externally. The SAVING DISABLED error still occurs. Is that what we are both talking about?

Anyway, the error is not occurring this week; it only occurs shortly before deadlines and when I am giving workshops and other embarrassing times.
The difference is editing patches, i e presets, compared to editing devices. If you're editing devices you're on Maxc license territory as far as I know.
No, this is getting muddled. Here's how it works:

A Max patch is a file with the .maxpat extension that can only be opened by the Max standalone app. Note that as of Max 7 you can open .maxpat files even without a Max 7 license, you just can't edit them. Max 7's demo mode has replaced the separate Max Runtime app that could be used to run but not edit patches.

A Max For Live device has the .amxd extension and is meant to run inside Live as an audio, MIDI, or instrument device. You need a M4L license to both run M4L devices and to edit them. When you hit the Edit button on a M4L device the full Max application is launched and devices are able to be edited but can only be saved as .amxd files. In other words you can't save as a .maxpat file with only a M4L license.

You could however design an entire standalone Max patch inside of a M4L device, copy that standalone code and save it into a text file. Then someone with a full Max license could copy that code into a Max patcher and save it as a .maxpat, which could then be run (but not edited) in Max 7 demo mode.
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Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: saving disabled

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Mar 02, 2016 3:45 pm

stringtapper wrote:
Stromkraft wrote:
parking sun wrote:I get the error about "SAVING DISABLED" when editing M4L devices inside of Ableton. I don't ever edit patches externally. The SAVING DISABLED error still occurs. Is that what we are both talking about?

Anyway, the error is not occurring this week; it only occurs shortly before deadlines and when I am giving workshops and other embarrassing times.
The difference is editing patches, i e presets, compared to editing devices. If you're editing devices you're on Max license territory as far as I know.
No, this is getting muddled. Here's how it works:

A Max patch is a file with the .maxpat extension that can only be opened by the Max standalone app. Note that as of Max 7 you can open .maxpat files even without a Max 7 license, you just can't edit them. Max 7's demo mode has replaced the separate Max Runtime app that could be used to run but not edit patches.
That was good refocus on the proper terminology of Max. Thanks.
I used "Patch" as a synonym for a device preset which likely was not the most clarifying use in this context — compare to a preset for a plug-in or a Live effect that I would say are equal in concept here. To run as well as create and save presets for a Max device a MFL license is all you need.
Make some music!

stringtapper
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Joined: Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:21 pm

Re: saving disabled

Post by stringtapper » Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:57 pm

The whole Max vs. Max For Live thing has never been totally crystal clear, although I've done my best over the years to try to understand it myself and explain it to people. To my knowledge neither of the developers have ever come out and just given a detailed explanation of how it all works.

From what I've gathered M4L is code within Live that lets .amxd files run as devices on Audio and MIDI tracks in Live. It also facilitates the launching of the standalone Max app when the Edit button is clicked on a M4L device. So you are actually using full Max when you edit a M4L device, with the main difference being that you can't save .maxpat files and that Max will only run while Live is running. So the M4L code inside of Live is basically handling a "temporary" licensing of Max with certain restrictions.

This has always seemed to be a rather kluge-y way to do it, and I've wished since the beginning of M4L that Cycling 74 could just license the code for a Live-centric version of Max to be rolled into Live's codebase. I imagine it would be a ton of work, but it seems like it could make a more solid foundation for M4L being an integrated modular programming environment rather than the sort of Frankenstein way that it has worked since its inception.
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parking sun
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Re: saving disabled

Post by parking sun » Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:43 am

Max for Live (i.e. amxd) editing is included in Ableton Live Suite. I think we can all agree.

I think Rixende is right that it is a messy way to do things. AFAICT if you ever accidentally open Max outside of live you have to re-install it, and even if you don't, sometimes it just decides trial periods have ended or whatever.

FWIW, there are alternatives to max4live. FAUST - http://faust.grame.fr/ - is a free and open source DSP language which can build VSTs, although you can't access the Live API of course. but if you want to access something more powerful than the live API, Renoise has a complete embedded Lua scripting engine, i.e. it uses a mainstream language to control the software, instead of the - ahem - "niche" Max programming language. For that matter, the LiveAPI project has brought limited access to Live scripting using python, once again a mainstream language.

All these are more difficult than max4live, and have limitations of their own, but all of them in my experience are cheaper and less crashy, and do not suddenly tell you that you are in a trial period. Additionally, FAUST cross-compiles to other languages, including Max (!) and Supercollider etc so you get to reuse your work elsewhere, whereas Max really just leaves you ever more stuck in the Max ghetto.

So my solution to the flakey registration procedure: gradually migrate my code to FAUST. In the interim, I'd really like it if Max4live would not randomly decide I am a software pirate at regular intervals so I can use the live devices that I already made. But I don't think any of us have a solution that one here.

stringtapper
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Joined: Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:21 pm

Re: saving disabled

Post by stringtapper » Thu Mar 03, 2016 6:05 am

Max bashing notwithstanding, this is a bug or at least the result of some conflict with your system.

It's not supposed to be doing that and if it's happening to you then you should be reporting it directly to both Ableton and Cycling '74 tech support.
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jonbenderr
Posts: 133
Joined: Sat Feb 27, 2010 11:20 pm

Re: saving disabled

Post by jonbenderr » Thu Mar 03, 2016 10:54 am

you can't save .maxpat files
This isn't true and I have tons of .maxpat files strewn about my hard drive to prove it.

If this were the case we wouldn't be able to utilize bpatchers and poly~s.

I think the key point is the max editor must be launched through Ableton. That's pretty much the extent of it.

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