Breaks in playback and RAM/Disk meters

Musiclover wrote on 4/29/2002, 3:15 PM

Hi, Need help from experienced folks!
I get breaks in my playback with Vegas 2.0, although intermittently. Once the break occurs, it usually stays at the same location in that session. If I reboot the pc, it may not happen at all or may happen at different location. I am running Vegas 2.0 in Windows 98, on a 450MHz Celeron, with 256MB memory,I have an 18 Gig disk with probaly better than 60% unused, all of which is more than adequate by SF requirements. I usually close most applications before running the Vegas, except Virus Shield SW.

The Vegas 2.0 manual talks about monitoring RAM and Disk usage. The manual shows a picture in which the meters are shown at the tight bottom close to "Mixer". But I do not see either of these meters on my application. What do I have to do to bring up these meters?

Any other suggestions? Do the breaks really harm the end result, i.e., the final mix down I will take to a CD burner?

Thanks a lot!

Comments

drbam wrote on 4/29/2002, 5:23 PM

You may have to lighten your plugin load, and/or render (submix) some of your tracks. Also, experiment some with the the playback buffer. I had a 450 PIII w/ an ultrawide SCSI drive for the system, an 7200 IDE drive for music, and I still had to make sure I was running everything pretty lean with 20+ tracks in a project. Lots of submixing and I also took advantage of using "non-realtime effects." I think a 450 Celeron is pretty marginal for multitrack projects.

Rednroll wrote on 4/29/2002, 8:12 PM

The ram/disk meters you see in the manual are not available in Vegas. The meters where there for the first release of Vegas 2.0 and where inaccurate and caused much havok, so Sonic Foundry removed them in subsequent releases. So the manual was released showing these meters and then they where removed later, so that's why they don't appear in Vegas, but appear in the manual. This is an old issue, and doesn't appear in newer Vegas manual releases.

As far as your problem. Setting buffer settings might help you. I believe some people have actually reduced the buffer size and gotten better results, so you might have to play around with this setting and see what works best for you. Another minimum requirement of Vegas is to have a 7200 rpm hard drive. If you have an older 5500 rpm drive, this might be a cause for the skippage problems you're having. Also, you stated you are running Windows 98. Vegas must run under Windows 98 SE as a minimum, to work properly. Also, see what video card your system has on it, and goto the manufacturers website and download and install the latest drivers. If that doesn't help, you might have to reduce your PC's screen resolution. Try something like 800x600, and also make sure "smooth edges of screen fonts" is also unchecked under your display properties. You may find, that these video settings are taking a lot of your computers resources away, and have been known to reduce the performance on Vegas 2.0. Next, goto your soundcards website and make sure you have the latest driver installed for that also. Next check to make sure all your hard drives are defragmented. Also, make sure to enable the DMA on your hard drive....this is probably the first thing you should do, this will usually double the performance of your system with Vegas. One or all of these steps, should fix your problem. BUT.....those Celeron's you can over-clock also. You'll have to read up on how to do this, but you can probably bump it up to 600Mhz also as a last resort. Also, check your virtual memory settings and set it to "let windows manage my virtual memory".

If you've tried all these items and still no luck. Go spend 300 bucks on a new motherboard, AMD Athlon processor, and system memory to match.

As far as your mixes, if you do a render mix to your hard drive, then the skips should not appear in your final mix, because this is not done in realtime.

Let us know what you find as the solution.

rednroll

Musiclover wrote on 4/30/2002, 7:16 PM

Rednroll,
I really appreciate the detailed response you have given. I should have said I am new to this SW and actually to computer recording itself. It will take me a while to try what you are saying, but will let you know. The soundcard is new, Delta 66 with the latest drivers from their website.

On the comment from drbam regarding having too many tracks etc, I only have 2 tracks and 1 bus at this time and no Fx added yet. I am just experimenting with the whole thing right now. But his comment makes me worried about the future........

Rednroll wrote on 4/30/2002, 7:38 PM

Here's how to do a few of the things I mentioned.

1. Check that you have Windows 98 SE- Right click on the "my computer" icon on your desktop. Select "properties" Under the "General" tab it should say "Windows 98 second edition." If it just says "windows 98", then problem #1, but not the most important problem. I've run Vegas under Win98 before.

2. Enable DMA on your hard drive- Double click on "My Computer", Double click on "Control Panel", double click on "system", select the "Device Manager" Tab. expand the Tree called "Disk Drives". Right click on the hard drives listed and select "properties", then goto the "Settings" Tab. There should be a box there that says "DMA". Make sure it is checked. Click "OK". Do this for all the hard drives listed under the tree. Click "OK"

Musiclover wrote on 5/7/2002, 12:46 PM

Rednroll,
Here are some updates on what you suggested and more to come. Bottom line I still have lot of cracking sound when I playback the recorded tracks.

1.Checked DMA on hard drive enabled- yes
2.I am not running Windows 98SE, I have Windows 98 now...I will have to upgrade. Q: why not go to Windows 2000 or XP? I saw on anothr forum one guy claiming all his problems went away with XP.
3.Played around with buffer sizes in all combinations, but there was no effect:
Delta control panel buffer size: 1056(default) to 1600 samples
Vegas plaback: 0.15 sec to 0.25 sec(default) to 0.5 sec
4.Defragmented disk
5. Tried with simultaneous playback turned off, no obvious effect.
6. I also have Pro Tools Free. Hence tried Delta with that and recordng was clean!. Only thing is I have gotten used to like Vegas audio now!

Here are some other things I saw on other forums;
- Use only one sound card(I have SB Live which my daughter uses for playback of MP3- I do not believe there is any IRQ conflict though)
- Use XP

I keep trying...

Rednroll wrote on 5/7/2002, 11:27 PM

I'm really betting that you are having a driver problem. Upgrading to XP, might solve all your problems. One reason is that XP will look at all your hardware on your system, specifically your sound card and video card and install the latest drivers included on the Win XP CD. This may also happen with Windows 98 SE. When Microsoft is making a Windows update, all the hardware vendors have a cut-off date of submitting drivers for their hardware to Microsoft, which get's included on the final release of Windows. If that hardware vendor doesn't make the cut-off time, then their hardware cannot be gauranteed to function correctly under that Windows release. Therefore you must go to your hardware vendors website and download an updated driver. So, you have a 50/50 chance of your hardware being supported when ugrading to Windows XP. Windows 98 SE has been out for a long time, and most hardware has drivers that have had a good amount of development to go along with that OS. So upgrading to Windows 98SE and then updating your hardware drivers is probably a sure thing. The first thing is to make sure you are meeting "minimum" requirements of Vegas Video, therefore at least Win98 SE, Windows ME, Win2k, or Win XP, may be the answer.