FIREWIRE Drive problems with VV3! help?

Arks wrote on 4/23/2002, 3:51 PM
Hello fellow VV3 users,

I have a quick question on a problem that started today with my system and VV3.
Yesterday everything I had set up worked fine, no problems at all.. today... this is what happened:

I have a P4 1.5 w/ 512 RDRAM, a 100 GB IDE HD, and a 80 GB ADS FIREWIRE HD (both 7200 RPMS)

Well, I filled up the firewire drive with atleast 75 GB of footage and captured more on my 100 GB to fill it (i'm editing a documentary and have tons of footage). Yesterday I was loading some farely large interview clips (like 6-8 GB) into the trimmer and marking shots I want to use in the film.. Everything was going smooth. This afternoon I loaded everything up and started to do the same thing. I loaded an 8 GB file into the trimmer and played it. Every random second or minute, VV3 would freeze for a few seconds...then come back to normal. I placed some in and out points on the large file to make a small clip for the timeline as well. It was still freezing during playback. I also placed a smaller file in the trimmer and the same thing happened.. I am baffled. I didnt change anything from yesterday, what the heck is going on? It keeps doing this.. I am assuming its the transfer from the FIREWIRE drive to the PC and vice versa, but why didnt it do that yesterday on me as well? Any suggestions as to smooth out the transfer of the files so these annoying freezes and pauses dont happen at all? If anyone can help, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Brian

Comments

swarrine wrote on 4/23/2002, 9:24 PM
Hmmm, I think you have too much on your firewire drive (or any drive). I wouldn't even think of filling it past 75%. Really closer to 50% as I have always understood it.

Not sure how to solve your problem without starting over and purchasing another 80 gig drive. The good news is that they are relatively cheap at about $120. http://gogocity.com .
Arks wrote on 4/23/2002, 11:23 PM
hmmm.. well, I tried some other suggested stuff as far as how and when to plug the 1394 device into the PC...and now its back to not freezing. I just spent the last 3-4 hours marking and logging clips in the trimmer with no problems. Wierd if you ask me..

Thanks for the website though. Let those drives get cheaper and cheaper! =)

Brian
asafb wrote on 4/23/2002, 11:52 PM
Brian, it's interesting. I have similar problems, but for me, it doesn't matter how I plug it in or unplug it in. Here's what I am experiencing and tell me if it matches yours. Also tell me exactly what you did to fix your freezing problem I would really appreciate it.

(1) I capture video from my DV camcorder using the Video Capture tool. When importing the AVI file into Vegas, I then hit PLAY. It starts playing the video with the audio and then after a couple of seconds, freezes. I try then to go to other sections of the file, but same freeze crap. "Unable to mix audio" it says.

(2) If I DELETE the audio track and keep the video, it plays perfect, no problems. If I then add a WAVE file to that portion of video either by recording from dat or select file import wave file, and then play the audio and video together, it plays perfectly.

(3) If I delete the VIDEO track of the original AVI file, but keep the AUDIO track and then render a wave file, the thing works. I just have to import the wave file, but this process is unacceptable.

Does this sound familiar?

Thanks Brian! Let me know what you did with plugging in power.
asafb wrote on 4/24/2002, 12:01 AM
To re-iterate, my problems of freezing are in the timeline, not in the trimmer
asafb wrote on 4/24/2002, 12:21 AM
Okay, update as of 1:20 am - i just did a full defragmentation of my firewire drive using microsoft xp disk defragmenter and..... voila, i have no problems, no freezing, everything plays back smoothly.

Well had I known that's all i had to do i would have saved so much time. So if anyone is reading these posts, the first thing to do is to defragment your firewire drive, then if the problem is STILL there, then there's probably a serious issue here.