building peaks ARRRRRGH!

Randy Brown wrote on 2/16/2012, 4:34 PM
So I finally get a new i7 2600 system with 16 GB memory and load a new large project and get the "building peaks" in the lower left... it still takes forever. I go to task manager and see all 8 core chugging away at 0% to 1%.
Is there something I can do about this?
Thanks,
Randy

Comments

VidMus wrote on 2/16/2012, 4:45 PM
Since this is hard drive intensive, what type of hard drive system and drives are you using? Can make a huge difference!

Former user wrote on 2/16/2012, 5:13 PM
VidMus is right...I have the same system you do. Peaks can take a while to begin with. I use Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives...just generic 7200 rpm, and peaks take a while, but not quite forever.

When you say, "forever," how long for what length of clip?
pwppch wrote on 2/16/2012, 6:33 PM
What type of media are the clips being generated for?

Peter
dxdy wrote on 2/17/2012, 8:22 AM
Another slooooow process, which I have not figured out how to turn off, is scanning a clip for CC material.

Since none of the AVCHD clips I use have CC in them (AFAIK), this is really frustrating.
WillemT wrote on 2/17/2012, 10:57 AM
Try internal prefs "Enable scanning for closed captions". Someone mentioned that in some thread.

Willem.
dxdy wrote on 2/17/2012, 11:06 AM
@ Willem

Thank you!

Fred
Randy Brown wrote on 2/17/2012, 1:45 PM
Since this is hard drive intensive, what type of hard drive system and drives are you using? Can make a huge difference!

I did not realize this...is it working with the OS drive or the drive the clips are stored on?
Thanks,
Randy
Randy Brown wrote on 2/17/2012, 1:48 PM
When you say, "forever," how long for what length of clip?

Okay maybe I used the term forever too loosely but say 10 minutes for a 1 hour clip (for HDV and whatever the 1080 Gopro format is)?
Thanks,
Randy
Randy Brown wrote on 2/17/2012, 1:49 PM
HDV
Thanks,
Randy
Randy Brown wrote on 2/17/2012, 3:07 PM
Okay so I just reopened this veg and it is building peaks all over again even though I can see the sfk in their folders (ie cam 1, cam 2 etc).
Surely I've screwed something up on this new installation (VP10)...I don't remember this ever happening before.
Arthur.S wrote on 2/20/2012, 1:45 PM
I used to get that when capturing DV with Scenalyzer yonks ago. Changed the capture type of the video/audio and it went away.Mebbe something similar happening here?
johnmeyer wrote on 2/20/2012, 2:24 PM
I have occasionally seen slow peak building and it has always been related to using video that was stored on external USB drives. This problem went away with my current computer which uses a different USB chip set.

Is your video on external drives?

I use both HDV and 1920x1080 60p footage (similar in some ways to the GoPro Hero format) and one hour generally takes about one minute to generate peaks.

The fact that it is generating the peaks every time is definitely a clue, although I'm not sure exactly what to do with that clue. You might want to take a look at each tab in the "preferences" dialog and make sure that the paths for the temporary files points to a drive that is fast, is permanently connected, and has plenty of space. I'm grasping at straws a little bit with that advice, but it's worth a try.
Randy Brown wrote on 2/21/2012, 4:31 PM
Is your video on external drives?
Yessir they are

I use both HDV and 1920x1080 60p footage (similar in some ways to the GoPro Hero format) and one hour generally takes about one minute to generate peaks.
I could certainly live with 1 minute per hour

The fact that it is generating the peaks every time is definitely a clue, although I'm not sure exactly what to do with that clue. You might want to take a look at each tab in the "preferences" dialog and make sure that the paths for the temporary files points to a drive that is fast, is permanently connected, and has plenty of space. I'm grasping at straws a little bit with that advice, but it's worth a try.
I had forgotten about this thread until I (just) did a fresh install of Win 7 Pro (was Home). Not that that will make a difference but I'll need to reinstall VP10 and make sure the temporary files are on a faster drive.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/21/2012, 5:07 PM
Since your files are on an external drive, and since I most definitely had this problem when media was on external USB drives on my old computer (which had something funky with USB drives that I never entirely figured out), I would suggest the following.

When you have a little extra time (like when you are asleep), temporarily copy a big chunk of these video files from the external drive to an internal SATA, PATA, RAID or other drive that is not connected via USB or Firewire. Don't copy any of the sfk files that may already have been generated. Then, when you wake up the next morning, drop those files from the internal drive onto the timeline and see if the sfk files are generated more quickly (use a stopwatch to keep track of the time).

Finally, there used to be an option to build 8-bit peak files. Spot posted about this many years ago and I tried it out. It didn't make much difference on my computer, although he claimed it did on his. I just looked for it on Vegas 10.0e, and it is no longer in the general preferences section. However, it still exists in the hidden "internal" preferences, and I suppose you could try turning it on there.

However, the more important test is to try opening the same files from an internal drive.