A Few More External Preview Q's...

Firetoad wrote on 4/26/2004, 12:34 PM
Well, as some may recall, I posted a week or two ago about problems with my external preview in Vegas. I was getting stutterring or "blanking" from compliant DV timeline playback in Vegas. Well, it turns out that a drive or some other add-on card was not taking kindly to two Intel modems that I was using for testing. It turns out that an old PCTel modem that I had solved the "majority" of the problem. I wound up back with an old ECS motherboard too that I ran about two-three years ago. Now, I am still having a little problem. It really doesn't effect my work in the end, but I am of the breed that must correct all mistakes or problems. ;) (Generally speaking that is!) OK, if I playback on the timeline (compliant DV files), the on screen preview window and the external preview window occassionally stutter. This stutter only occurs when the timeline repositions itself. That is, if I drop a 5 minute vid on the timeline, do not zoom out and hit play, when the timeline cursor gets to the visible end of the clip and repositions the window, I get a stutter that could be very small or a rhythmic stutter for approximately 20 seconds. Again, this happens on the VV preview window or the external preview. I assumed that it was just lack of resources or system taxing. However, here is the funny thing, I can be capturing video via DVIO to the system drive or the video drive while vegas is doing this "preview stutter" and there isn't a singly dropped frame. Also, if I zoom in close to the timeline, this does not happen. Hhhhmmmmm... So, I am thinking there is an issue with Vegas maybe. Possibly my setup isn't quiet fast enough. I am at a loss here. Comments, suggestions or someone just telling me to quit whining and work :) are all appreciated. Now, this could have always happened before my initial motherboard's death a month or so ago because I have never really previewed video this way before. However, since I have found this oddity, I have been trying to correct it.

Here are my system specs:
ECS K7S5A (This is actually a stable, troublefree board)
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ Tbred
512MB Crucial PC3200 DDR SDRAM
Seagate ATA100 80GB, 7200RPM, 2MB Cache, System Drive
Maxtor ATA133 160GB, 7200RPM, 2MB Cache, Video Drive
Syba Firewire PCI Card
Syba USB 2.0 PCI Card
Gainward Golden Sample GeForce4 Ti4800SE
PCTel 56K V.90 Modem
Toshiba SD-R5002 DVD-RW
Windows XP Home

The only IRQ sharing is the Onboard Sound and the USB card. As far as drivers... video I have tried the following revisions: 41.04, 41.09, 53.03 and the newest Forceware drivers, audio: everyone that I could find, XP: stutters with or without service packs, critical updates or XP updates via "Windows Updates."

Comments

HPV wrote on 4/26/2004, 6:26 PM
Try adjusting your graphics card driver acceleration down.

Craig H.
Firetoad wrote on 4/26/2004, 6:48 PM
I tried this once before to no avail, or so it seemed. However, trying it tonight seemed to reduce the severity of the problem. It didn't eliminate it, but it definitely helped. Maybe I will try eliminating some of XP's effects, etc. and see if that helps. Thanks!
Firetoad wrote on 4/26/2004, 7:47 PM
Nope, XP display effects didn't help.
HPV wrote on 4/26/2004, 8:13 PM
Check out these XP tweaks over at videoguys.
http://www.videoguys.com/WinXP.html
Might be something there that could help. Also do a search here with workds like AMD PREVIEW - AMD STUTTERING - ect. Lots of AMD motherboards have had PCI buss issues over the years. One other thing, check out the properties of your 1394 buss in the device manager (or what ever it's called in XP). Under settings you shouldn't have "support non-compliant devices" selected. That caused stuttering on my ME system. I had activated it for Pinnacle software. It's also been said that a 1394 card should be in the second PCI slot down from the AGP slot with the first PCI slot empty.
Hope you get to the bottom of it soon.
Cheers,
Craig H.
Firetoad wrote on 4/27/2004, 5:01 AM
I appreciate the help Craig! I will check everything out when I get home tonight. Thanks again!
Firetoad wrote on 4/27/2004, 10:55 AM
Wow, I did some searching on various forums and this seems to be a semi-common problem dating back more than 1.5 years ago! Also found that it didn't seem to be limited to AMD platforms either, for there were reports of similar problems with Intel boards too. It seemed that this problem can be found on systems from Uber-Speedy, high-dollar machines to Pacard-Bell 100Mhz machines (I am joking about the PB). I have also found that those that were able to correct the problem did so with different methods. Very strange!

I did a major system resource "test" last night and I pretty well have concluded that it is not my system causing the problem (at least when it comes to "available power.") I was playing music from iTunes, playing a video from my video drive in the Vegas timeline (watching it through the computer screen preview), capturing with DVIO to my video drive and then even started transferring a 1GB file from my video drive to my system drive. I only lost two frames during capture when I first started the file transfer. Then I tried the same thing but this time outputting the video with DVIO rather than capturing. Again, only frame drops were at the start of the file transfer. [Now, if that isn't taxing the system's bandwidth/throughput/processing power, I am not sure what is.] Each time the Vegas timeline repositioned itself, the video would stutter in the preview window, similar to what it does during external preview (external preview generally stutters repeatedly for a few seconds or more though).

Like I said before, I am going to try some more tweaks tonight and see if that helps.
slambubba wrote on 4/27/2004, 11:37 AM
firetoad, your problems sound like they might be similar to mine i posted earlier today. if you find a solution, please let me know. here's my thread:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=276171&Replies=3&Page=0
Hunter wrote on 4/27/2004, 3:14 PM
What is your screen resolution? 1024x768 - 1260x1024 - higher? My ATI 9000 pro and two 17s will get slow when I run the monitors at 1260.


Hunter
Firetoad wrote on 4/27/2004, 3:52 PM
Well, I tried tweaking and it hasn't helped any. I did find something interesting and maybe Sony Support can step in here and shed some light on the subject. In order to more quickly test my changes, I dropped a 5 minute DV avi on the timeline and did not zoom in or out and moved the cursor towards the edge of the window. I did this so that I only had to watched 10 seconds of video before the timeline repositioned. I noted that if I left the current session of VV open and played the video through the timeline position, the second playback (not zooming or changing anything) was flawless. That is, if I played the clip through once, the second time it was played back, the external preview was flawless. If I play through once, click a new cursor position, even a few frames forward or backward, I get the stutter. I can't quiet figure that one out. Anyone have any ideas?

Hunter, my resolution is 1024X768 and my second monitor is 800X600 (this all happens with one or two monitors, video preview docked or undocked). Changing resolutions doesn't help. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Firetoad wrote on 4/28/2004, 5:54 PM
Anyone else have any more ideas? Thanks!
Firetoad wrote on 4/30/2004, 8:16 PM
I hate to keep bringing this up, but I cannot solve this problem no matter what I do. I am beginning to think that this is a bug within Vegas or something. I have tried this on several different AMD iterations from 1700+ with PC2100 RAM to 2400+ with PC3200 RAM and nForce2, Via and SiS chipsets and even tried it on my wife's Compaq Presario 2100 Laptop, 2.4GHz Intel Celeron and PC2100 512MB RAM with an IOGear Firewire PCMCIA card and an external Maxtor Diamondmax Plus, 7200RPM, 2MB Cache 160GB hard drive in an ADS Dual Link Enclosure. Every single computer exhibited the exact same problems. Each one had different software, hardware, etc. installed on/in it. The only commonality really was Windows XP Home and Sony Vegas Software. I even installed Sony Vegas on a fresh Windows XP install with nothing else. I then added SP1a, DX9.0, DX9.0b, hotfixes, etc. while testing Vegas between each one and always the same problem.

The situation is as follows:
-Drop a compliant DV-AVI on the timeline ~ >4 minutes
-Move the cursor to just left of the right-most edge of the window
-Start External Preview
-Press Play and as the timeline repositions as the cursor moves past the righ-most edge of the screen, the external preview output then stutters
slambubba wrote on 5/14/2004, 8:19 AM
firetoad - i'm still having my similar problems, even after a fresh install of windows xp pro. have you had any luck with yours?
slambubba wrote on 5/14/2004, 10:33 PM
firetoad - scott replied to my problem. his suggestion fixed BOTH my external preview and print to tape problems. if your board has a VIA chipset, try this:

http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/#PCI