Firewire Freeze fixed in VV4?

10engines wrote on 2/6/2003, 10:05 AM
Can anyone out there in Sonic Foundry land tell me if the program freeze while playing from a firewire drive has been fixed in VV4 (as promised)?
I have the VV4beta on an Dell Dimension 8100 P4, 128 RAM. Windows 2000 Service Pack 3. All my footage is on a Lacie Firewire 80G drive.

So far this is what I've experienced. I will be playing the timeline and it will freeze (looks just like what happens on VV3), but if I can grab the Horizontal Scroll Bar right away and jiggle it back and forth it will unfreeze and continue to play. If I click anything else, it will freeze for a few minutes and then come back.

Obviously not a really valid work around, but something about messing with the scroll bar makes it unfreeze.

I sent this in to Sonic Foundry, didn't hear anything back, but didn't expect to. Before I drop the cash for VV4, I'd love to see if this problem has been fixed.

Any info out there?

Comments

Control_Z wrote on 2/6/2003, 11:19 AM
No. Mine still freezes. I must use a drive caddy for files on the timeline.

Can't blame sofo too much as Premiere 6.5 does this also, but I swear I heard people saying they'd figured out the problem and were going to fix it in V4.
pdmath wrote on 2/6/2003, 11:36 AM
The only change I have noticed (my firewire drive enclosure is about 2 years old) is that in Vegas 4, the timeline would freeze for a few seconds and then start playing again on its own. In V3 the timeline would freeze, then an error window would pop up with the "unable to mix audio" message and I would have to manually start playback again.

But, I purchased a new firewire enclosure (a slimline ultra 3 from firewiredirect.com) to put a new WD 160 gig drive in. I haven't had a timeline freeze problem using it. I don't know if it's the new hard drive or the new firewire enclosure that fixed it, but it now works.
rextilleon wrote on 2/6/2003, 11:52 AM
Great question---I thought I was the only one having the problem---I haven't had much time to load down vegas 4 but I assume its still there.
SonyEPM wrote on 2/6/2003, 1:31 PM
The operation timeout error that people saw in Vegas 3 is gone- you'll never see that error message in V4. If you having trouble with 1394 drives, then at this point I'd look at the drive being the problem (or more broadly there's a system problem at the root of it somewhere)

Also: We paid very close attention to this and I personally ran projects from a 1394 drive for the final weeks before ship. I am using a Pyro 1394 DV drive kit with a Western Digi WD 1000 Ide drive inside it, but I've also swapped a few other IDEs in and out. You can print to tape from this drive no sweat, works great, zero hiccups.
10engines wrote on 2/6/2003, 1:35 PM
I just checked the enclosure at firewire direct, and it looks like they have a next generation bridge (what gets the ATA drive to the firewire) so the older bridges might be the culprit. Anyone else out there having good luck with newer enclosures??
10engines wrote on 2/6/2003, 3:08 PM
I just opened up a project created with VV3 in VV4beta, and after playing for about 10 seconds it froze. No error message, but the program locked for about a minute then came back (just like VV3).

What type of hardware problems might cause this?

10engines wrote on 2/6/2003, 3:11 PM
I just looked at the Pyro drive kit. That kit has a oxford 911 chip in it, just like the pdmath's drive that he said solved his problem. Is it possible that there is something about this newer chip that solves the problem, but if you have an older drive you might still experience this?
salad wrote on 2/6/2003, 3:22 PM
pdmath,
Determine who manufactured the "bridge board" in your enclosure, and find their website to check for a firmware revision.
My enclosure is also 2+ years old, and I stopped getting those freezes/timeouts even in Vegas 3 after: 1) a firmaware update. 2) Moving ALL data off the drive / deleting partitions - ceate new partitions - format / move all data back over to firewire drive. 3) Moved 1394 PCI card to new slot, having it's own IRQ. 4) Last but not least, and this only coincidence......got rid of my SB Live! Platinum sound card.....installing it back to the older PC, where it STILL acted up with WinXP, until moving to the latest KX-Project ASIO drivers.

Not sure which one did the trick.




pdmath wrote on 2/6/2003, 3:47 PM
I'll contact firewiredirect and have them give me the info and report back.

Phil
pdmath wrote on 2/6/2003, 4:24 PM
I talked with firewiredirect tech support. I am going to take in my old drive to them. They are in Austin, TX where I live. They will update the firmware which is evidentally a utility that is provided by Oxford. If my old drive behaves correctly after the update, that will be great.

In the meantime, I'm going to play some more with my new drive just to make sure it is indeed working correctly. I let it play a long long time the other day and it didn't seem to freeze up.
rextilleon wrote on 2/6/2003, 6:22 PM
I have my Maxgtr 120 gig enclosed in the Pyro firewire kit--it has the Oxford card (I bought it yesterday) I will run some tests and tell you guys what happens---so far so good but I haven't really pounded the drive yet.
10engines wrote on 2/8/2003, 8:59 PM
I just talked to a tech guy at Lacie to see if I could update the firmware on my firewire drive, to see if that is the problem. While he said that that can sometimes be the problem, more often than not it's a crap firewire card with a VIA chipset. He recommended a card from Adaptec, or one with a Texas Instruments chipset. Apparently cheaper cards with VIA chipsets have trouble sustaining the bandwith.
Of course I have a card with a VIA chipset. I tried the updater he gave me on my drive, and it didn't need to be updated. So, I've ordered a new 1394 card with TI chipset. We'll see if that's the answer. I'll post when I find out.
Control_Z wrote on 2/8/2003, 11:32 PM
Glad to hear the nonsensical error was eliminated. But that doesn't fix the problem.

I don't think it has anything to do with hardware. It's something installed on these machines. My theory anyway.
Caruso wrote on 2/9/2003, 1:35 AM
For what it's worth, I run three Maxtor external firewire drives, and one WD enclosed in an ADS . . . on my 900 mhz machine and have never experienced this problem (fortunately), so, obviously, it is not universal. Will be monitoring this thread for the outcome.

Caruso
10engines wrote on 2/13/2003, 8:40 AM
Got my card with the Texas Instrument chipset, but still getting freezes. Tried moving to another card slot, but no help. I haven't been able to change the IRQ from 9 on 2000. Can anyone out there tell me how?