Failed Audio playback large USB 3 Drive

DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:12 AM
I wanted to start a new thread with this even though it is similar or possibly the same as this thread.


I just hit upon this problem in the last two days. I bought two Seagate 4TB USB 3 drives. If I copy a long-ish audio file (about an hour, give or take) from apparently anywhere onto this drive and then bring it into Vegas, it builds the .sfk file filled with incorrect audio peaks and I get 2 seconds of audio, 2 seconds of nothing. Or sometimes I get a blip of the audio and then white noise. But it builds the peaks to match the jacked up audio. If I copy that same file onto an internal drive, it builds correct peaks (the .sfk file) and plays the file correctly.

Disabling Track Buffering doesn't make a difference.

If I open the very same file from the 4TB USB 3 drive in Sound Forge 9, it builds peaks (the .sfk file) and plays just fine.

My diagnostics point to that it is happening on large capacity USB 3 drives with large files and in Vegas only (10 and 11).

Would sure appreciate some insight. I'll report this to the bug folks, but I'm surprised more people aren't seeing this if it is indeed a Vegas-only problem. I have duplicated it on a desktop with soundblaster and a recent model Dell laptop.

Some folks have said you should never edit from USB drives but it has never been a problem for Vegas. Other than sluggish performance.


<edited to include info on sfk>

Comments

Laurence wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:16 AM
I use USB3 drives all the time, not big expensive ones, just the litte bus powered ones where you can get a terrabyte for less than a $100. No problems yet, but I'm not using that big files I suppose. How big is the audio file? Have you tried it from a non-USB3 drive? It might be more the size than the drive type.
john_dennis wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:32 AM
Have you tried formatting the 3 TB drive with two partitions, each less than 2 TB?
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:34 AM
I use USB3 drives all the time, not big expensive ones, just the litte bus powered ones where you can get a terrabyte for less than a $100. No problems yet, but I'm not using that big files I suppose.


=================
yep, we use those too and they work fine, Ours are 1TB. That was the source of the files that were copied onto the 4TB drive.


How big is the audio file? Have you tried it from a non-USB3 drive? It might be more the size than the drive type.


=========================
File size is about one GB. It also happens on a file that's about 500MB. These same files play fine in Vegas from every other drive we've tested.

Interestingly, it does not happen on a small file, such as a single song about 4 - 5 MB.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:36 AM
John - that's an idea. I'll try that today. Hadn't thought of that and there's no reason we can't format it into two 2TB partitions (It's a 4TB drive btw).
john_dennis wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:43 AM
I got my 4s and 3s crossed. There is a disk formatting change at 2 TB that's too complicated to remember this early in the morning. So far I've just avoided partitions over 2 TB.
rraud wrote on 12/1/2011, 10:20 AM
Are you waiting long enough for Vegas to build the necessary support files. When initially opening large audio files in Vegas, it can take a while to build the waveform. <*.sfk> In the case of a compressed audio file format, a 'proxy' audio file is rendered, and that takes much longer, then the aforementioned waveform file is built after the proxy. So you would have two additional files built.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 10:26 AM
Yes, and I've updated the original post to include info on .sfk files.
john_dennis wrote on 12/1/2011, 3:40 PM
In a more lucid moment I did a quick search about the 2 TB boundries. Here are a few places to get some background.

understanding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage

hard-drives-greater-than-2-tb-do-not-work-on-existing-operating-systems

I'm not proposing any of these possible problems as yours without further detail of your setup. This is just background information to help you eliminate the drive and interface as a problem source.
Laurence wrote on 12/1/2011, 3:43 PM
Just curious: was this the 32bit or 64bit version of Vegas? Maybe Vegas 32 can't work with large partitions and Vegas 64 can. Just a thought, and maybe not a very good one...
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 4:09 PM
Thanks John and Laurence.
It's both versions of Vegas 11. I'm using Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate for what that's worth. An ASUS mobo with updated chipset and usb drivers, etc.

I'm trying the 2 TB partition thing this evening, will update with results.
PeterDuke wrote on 12/1/2011, 6:30 PM
I have two 2TB internal drives configured in RAID 0 to be 4TB, with Win 7 64 bit. So far I have not noticed anything strange.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 8:28 PM
Creating partitions less than 2TB had no effect. I have tested this now with two 4TB USB 3 drives and they behave exactly the same way. The file(s) play fine in Sound Forge and other programs, but will not play in Vegas.
Laurence wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:36 PM
OK, another idea. Isn't the formatting structure for a large drive different? Aren't the blocks of data larger or something like that? And can't you control this formatting and override the formatting that is automatically selected of increasingly larger data blocks for increasingly large drives? I'm sorry that I have no idea of the correct terminology.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 9:43 PM
I thought that was the idea behind partitioning to 2TB. I'm like you, I don't know. But, I do want to continue to emphasize that it's only Vegas that won't play the files (nor will it build the peaks file - .sfk - correctly).
john_dennis wrote on 12/1/2011, 11:23 PM
"But, I do want to continue to emphasize that it's only Vegas that won't play the files (nor will it build the peaks file - .sfk - correctly)."

Neither Vegas or any other well disciplined Windows application should be doing direct I/O these days but that doesn't keep it from being a victim of bad I/O.
I'll beat this dead horse one more time and ask that you create one and only one, 1TB Simple volume (MBR, not GPT) and see if it does the same thing.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/1/2011, 11:50 PM
Here's a link where there are two partitions, one just under 2TB and one under 2GB. MBR, Simple Volume.

<edit> It's late, I forgot to say that the problem exists on both partitions.

In a related but OT note, I'm unable to format or otherwise allocate the 1678.02 GB of unallocated space shown in the yellow highlight box. Probably due to an error when choosing how to partition. If you know of a way to reset the whole thing, feel free to PM me and we'll take it offline. I'm up for about another hour or so. david <REMOVEat > mcknightvideo.com

<edit>
As it turns out this exercise is the first time I've partitioned drives and I did something wrong / different as I have no logical volumes, only primaries. I've always read that you gained no benefit in partitioning so I've never done it. I understand though that with high capacity drives, something is different. If I munged something in this process, let me know how to reset and I'll do the 1TB thing.

john_dennis wrote on 12/2/2011, 12:31 AM
Primary partitions are fine as long as you don't need more than four partitions. Then you would need to use extended logicals. That is seldom the case for editors or anyone else these days, I suppose.

To "reset the whole thing" you Right-Click on the individual partitions and delete the volume until they are all gone. Then you can start all over. Be sure to operate on the correct drive. I have to hit it, myself.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/4/2011, 10:15 PM
Thanks john_dennis for some IT support offline. I was able to successfully create a 1 TB partition on that 4TB drive using DISKPART with the same failed results.

<edit>
However, SCS suggested rendering the wav to a flac file, copying that to the drive to test - and it worked. So they are aware of it, they're working on it, and they've offered a workaround of sorts (though we don't have time to render all the source files for this project.) Will update this thread if and when they find / fix something, hopefully soon!

David
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/5/2011, 8:47 PM
bump b/c I edited the last post instead of replying.
DM
Laurence wrote on 12/5/2011, 9:17 PM
On the bright side, flac is half the size and exactly the same quality.
john_dennis wrote on 12/5/2011, 11:17 PM
"Neither Vegas or any other well disciplined Windows application should be doing direct I/O these days"

I think I've slipped into an alternate universe, either when I made that statement or when you found out Vegas is sensitive to the type of storage device on the system.
DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/6/2011, 12:34 AM
What SCS said in their message about the FLAC is "Vegas may be handling file formats differently".
john_dennis wrote on 12/6/2011, 1:16 AM
I have since read about application programs doing I/O and found that Windows allows it for games but the burden shifts to the application program to handle. It may be worth it for games and other high performance programs like video editors.
Lovelight wrote on 6/17/2013, 10:00 PM
Has this problem been solved?

USB 3, 3 TB drive won't play audio files, but USB 2, 2 TB plays the same files.