Can't see RAM and disk meters

jduhart wrote on 12/15/2003, 9:56 AM

I have Vegas 2.0 and according to the instruction manual a RAM meter and a disk meter should appear on the bottom right edge of the Vegas window, but they don't.

How can I activate these meters? I really need to see them because I'm experiencing gapping during playback and recording and want to know if the cause is insufficient RAM or disk speed.

I'd really appreciate any help.

Comments

stakeoutstudios wrote on 12/15/2003, 1:54 PM

press CTRL+ALT+DEL (in windows XP) and task manager will load and show you some CPU meters.

you can find task manager in other OSes also...

I can't remember Vegas ever having it's own disk/CPU meters...

Rednroll wrote on 12/16/2003, 7:41 AM

Vegas 2.0's originally release had the meters you're talking about. Thus, there's meters shown in the owners manual. The meters where not working properly and where removed in an update, never to be heard of again.

It's good to see there are users that read the owners manual.

jduhart wrote on 12/17/2003, 5:17 AM

Thanks very much for your help!

Anyway, I activated the DMA on my hard disk (it's a 7200 RPM) and gapping has diminished considerably, but not completely, so I think I might be lacking RAM. I've got 256 Mb and the processor is an Intel 1,7 GHz.

kameronj wrote on 12/19/2003, 11:49 AM

I would say you definatley need more RAM.

fishtank wrote on 12/19/2003, 11:56 AM

I seriously doubt that his gapping problem is due to lack of RAM. While it would be nice to have 512 Meg to a Gig of RAM, I haven't been able to see Vegas use much over 200 meg of RAM with my large audio projects. This may not be the case for video though.

More info is needed to determine what is going on. How many tracks, DX effects etc. What audio card he is using and the buffer sizes if ASIO.

kameronj wrote on 12/19/2003, 1:02 PM

Fishtank....I see where you are going with this - but I would tend to disagree.

Not because I think you are wrong or anything - but I just like to disagree.

Activativating the DMA on a 7200 rpm 1.7 ghz drive dimished the problem somewhat ... so the rest is the RAM I'm tellin you!! It's the RAM...so stop confusing the poor user!!

Don't you know how hard this is without throughing around all the confusing facts?!!!!!? ?

?

(I'm jus funnin with ya....I'm a funner!!)

Rednroll wrote on 12/20/2003, 1:32 AM

Actually,
For solving gapping issues these are the things I check in the order of preference.

1. Is DMA enabled on the recording/playback HD?
2. Is my Sound Card or Video card sharing an IRQ with any other devices?
3. Do I have the latest soundcard driver installed?
4. Do I have the latest videocard driver installed?
5. Does my SCSI controller card have the latest driver installed?
6. Is there any bios updates for my motherboard

It might seem strange, but my video card has been the problem more often than not. I think, I've had 3 seperate PC's with 3 different video cards, and all 3 of them, I was able to solve gapping issues with video card driver updates and ensuring the video card wasn't sharing an IRQ. I also had a Dell PC where it needed a MB bios update due to conflicts with certain video cards.

pwppch wrote on 12/21/2003, 12:04 AM

I will have to go along with Red on this one. Lack of RAM is not often the culprit in gapping. Most gapping when you are not hitting 100% is GUI drawing related.

One real simple way to see this is to hit Shift-F11. This hides some of the more expensive GUI code from being hit all the time.

The other cause is FX. Too many is an easy case to solve, but sometimes how much envelope points and such can also play into this.

The last thing I look for is how "busy" a project is at a given point in time. That is, are there lots of audio events and edits around the point where problems occur. Lots of edits means lots of calculations. Lots of tracks with lots of edits.

Oh, and one other thing.

Using a single long audio file and chopping it up into bits and pieces on your time line such that the bits and pieces are accessed somewhat randomly can cause major hard-disk access. I real complex cases it is sometimes better to save to new with media there by creating a set of new, smaller audio files for the project to work with. Yes, it can eat up some harddrive space, but performance is still more important.

Peter