Options->Preferences->Build 8-bit peak files

As Dave pointed out, compressed audio will take longer to load because it must be unpacked to raw PCM first. Changing the peak settings will have no effect on that.

It does seem odd though that peak building uses so little CPU. It's usually 2 to 3% on my computers too. I have a hard time believing that hard drive access is the bottleneck in these cases.

There is an option to build the peaks as you import the files or build only the peaks of the files that you put on the timeline.

I have found that these options can be changed depending upon my workflow, to make things faster. But they do speed up the peak drawing itself.

Dave T2

Thanks everyone but I know about those options....I think Kelly gets my point...so I'm guessing that you've heard that it's due to the hard drive not being fast enough?

Faster computer, or take the opportunity to chill a little !

Stop, breath, micronap, look around, say "hi" to somebody, contemplate .... ;-)

You talking 10 or 15 seconds here, or longer (bigger) events ?

geoff

I haven't actually heard anything on the topic. However, there's usually three possibilities: CPU bottleneck, disk i/o bottleneck, inefficient programming.

It's not CPU bottleneck since it's only maxing out at 3%.

I have the same problem with .WAV as with, say DV or AVCHD or MPEG which are HUGE compared to .WAV, so i can't see that it's disk i/o.

That leaves ... well ... (*sigh*)

I guess i wouldn't mind quite so much except for the fact that the computer responds like peak building is eating up 99.9% of the CPU. Yes, i can do other things while it's happening, but it takes forever. Things like simply clicking a button will take 10 seconds for the button to appear "depressed". Might as well not even bother until peak building is done. In fact, peak building is the only operation i encounter that regularly will cause VidCap to drop frames. So how does that jive with only 3% CPU usage?

Faster computer, or take the opportunity to chill a little !

How would a faster computer help Geoff? Did you not see that I wrote that it's only using 2-3 % of my CPU? And I'm not talking about 10 seconds my friend it's 10-15 minutes for larger projects. And I don't do something else because I want to edit...okay sometimes I do chill or take a break but I'm just asking why does it take so long?

> How would a faster computer help

It's about speed, not grunt! It's not just Vegas.... Other DAWs have to draw waveforms too, and in my experience they typically draw faster on a fast PC.

Usually when this subject comes up, it's because Vegas is going through the process of building peaks over and over again through what turns out to be user error.

What I mean by this is that any time the file is changed outside of Vegas (moved, copied, renamed, etc.) the peaks get drawn again. If you try to use a work flow that involves outside manipulation of your video clips this will drive you absolutely mad.

The solution (for anyone new who might be just now running into this) is to use the file manager built into Vegas. Files copied, moved or renamed will have their peak files taken care of automatically. The Vegas file manager is very much like the Window one and can be undocked so this is no big deal at all once you get used to it.

As far as that first peak draw goes, you just have to learn to live with it.

Yep.I've learnt to live with it.....but it still annoys the crap out of me sometimes. My last NLE (MSP) built audio peaks instantly. Why does Vegas need so long??

Waiting for "build peaks" to finish = time for a few games of Solitare ;-)

Here the audio peaks are built only the first time I add some clip(s) to the timeline thereafter they are stored and reused and shown immediately next time I open the project.

Just tried to add a 1 min 48 sec AVCHD 1080i 19 Mbps clip to the TL - and the video track plus the audio peak in the audio track was built and shown in about hardly noticeable 2 seconds.

Usually when this subject comes up, it's because Vegas is going through the process of building peaks over and over again through what turns out to be user error.

Not in my case; this is after I capture to laptop (partly to save time capturing tape) and drag the files to the timeline.
Like I say, I can live with it ...I'm just curious as to why it takes so long and if there's a way to speed up the process...in the meantime I'll just prop my feet up and crack open a cold one.

I suspect this is some really old code that has not been updated in a long time.
Chances are it dates back to early Sound Forge days.. ( If it works don't fix it.. )

I wonder how many formal complaints Sony has actually received about this?

Searching the knowledge base for " building peaks " only yields one hit, and doesn't address speed issues..

"I'm just curious as to why it takes so long and if there's a way to speed up the process.."

Vegas is actually pretty fast.... comparatively speaking anyway. As mentioned above other programs have to build peaks as well. I have Adobe Audition which is a pretty good DAW... Adobe Soundbooth too.... Vegas is faster at building the peaks in both cases.

Old thread but still relevant.
This is painful, 4hrs x 5 cameras .... its not a few seconds, more like half hour if Im lucky.
Then it goes to Plural Eyes and away we go again.
I dont need the peaks visually in Vegas, is there any other downside to just canceling the peak building?

Only downside is you don't see them. When I don't need them and it's going to take some times I always cancel. I did have a bug once that if I didn't have peaks the audio didn't render out (really, it rendered nothing!) but it seemed a Vegas 10 reinstall solved that issue.

Thanks.
Will try canceling and see how I go.
Cheers

When you are on a deadline (for example, the show finished at 10PM and 30 DVDs are due at noon the next day), peak drawing seems like a huge delay.

My Canon XF300's 50 Mbit/sec MXF files are really slow to have their peaks drawn. Since I typically split a show onto two DVDs, what I have learned to do is copy half the files from the memory card to the HDD, start Vegas and drag the files onto the timeline. While the peaks are drawing, I copy the other half of the files to another subdirectory, and as soon as the first part's peaks are done I open another instance of Vegas and drag part 2's peaks to the timeline. While part 2 is "peaking", I can start editing in part 1.

If disk speed was the limiter (and I suspect it is), then dragging half the files to different HDDs might allow me to draw peaks in two parallel instances of Vegas. I have tried it from a single disk, and it just bogs right down.

If I had the working room at the theater, I would take a laptop, record Act 1 on a card, load that card into the laptop and let the peaks draw while I was recording Act 2 on a second card. For that matter, Act 2's card could be loading in the laptop on the ride home. Then just copy the .sfk files onto the main editing computer after loading the video files to it.

Putting my videos on an SSD and the peaks are created much, much faster!

An SSD boot with videos on a spinner drive will not make any difference. The videos need to be on an SSD to be a whole lot faster. It has to do with the access time on an SSD being a whole lot faster. I use a 500 gig SSD for the video files.

With an SSD for boot and video files, my setup time is significantly reduced and I can start editing without the excessive waiting time. This includes making Plural Eyes much faster as well.

I do have one spinner on the system for temporary large file use and project backups.

I use Samsung SSD's. The spinner is a Western Digital black.

"Putting my videos on an SSD and the peaks are created much, much faster!"

Confirmed. Here a 1:5 improvement is seen.

The speed of building peaks is almost exclusively a function of how fast the file can be read from the disk, the CPU has relatively little to do with it. If you have 10 gig worth of files and you have a real-world sequential transfer rate of maybe 50 meg/sec, it's going to take roughly 500 seconds to generate the peak files. Keep in mind that while the computer is reading one file and also writing to the peak file, so access time is going to be a factor as well.