Recording problems

MikeA wrote on 8/22/2011, 8:45 AM
Yesterday I used Vegas 10e (64 bit) to record a accapella choir. It was my first attempt at a live multi-track recording with this setup. (I have plenty of experience in multi-track recording, just not to a computer.) I had 4 inputs into my Presonus Firestudio interface and 4 tracks setup in Vegas. I found that I had 2 intermittant problems throughout the session that really bugged me. I was not connected to the internet during the session so I don't think it was anything related to that (IMs, incoming emails or whatever)

1. I would have all 4 tracks armed and when I hit the record button sometimes only 3 tracks would actually record. It was never the same track that refused to record but the only way out of this was to shut down Vegas and restart. I might go 2 takes or 10 before it would happen again, possibly on the same track, maybe on another.

2. I had about 4 instances where everything was humming along smoothly and all of the sudden Vegas just quit recording. No warning, nothing, it just stopped recording. The timeline would keep moving on the screen but all the inputs just cut out. I had to restart Vegas, put all tracks back into Record Ready mode press Record and all would be fine. Until the next time it happened...

I'm using an HP HDX16 laptop with 64 bit Vista Home Premium on it with 4GB RAM. I had close to 100 GB of HDD space and was recording less than 2 hours of material. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mike

Comments

rraud wrote on 8/22/2011, 10:21 AM
Were all anti-virus and other security applications and utilities disabled, as well as screen savers and other applications and non-essential services?
MikeA wrote on 8/22/2011, 11:19 AM
No. I did not disable security or non-essential services. I don't use a screen saver so that wasn't it. Would that be the fix for both issues or just one of them?
musicvid10 wrote on 8/22/2011, 12:22 PM
In addition to rraud's excellent suggestions, you would need to look at your recording drive throughput, your audio drivers and buffers, and run some sustained tests before taking it to the field again.

You would also want to try to duplicate the issues using the 32-bit Vegas.

There is no reason a well-configured system should drop tracks or stall during audio recording.

One thing that happens with USB "home" hard drives is they get warm from continuous use, and throttle back or quit to protect the physical drive.
MikeA wrote on 8/22/2011, 2:20 PM
Thanks guys. Yeah, I didn't even THINK about disabling the anti-virus or shut down non-essentials. And I recorded directly to the internal HDD. And THAT may have been part of the problem too. I know of no off the shelf laptop HDD that run at 7200 RPM. Mine runs at 5400 so the cutting out of the recording could possibly be due to that.

The problem of one of the tracks not starting to record while the rest did is what really had me scratching my head. I mean, why? And like I said it wasn't every time I pressed Record either, it was just intermittent. Strange...
Geoff_Wood wrote on 8/22/2011, 3:51 PM
Throughput itself shouldn't be a problem with 4 tracks. But heat might, or laptop power-saving widgets.

Is this the same computer that you are having SF problems on ? Could be the HDD on it;'s way out ...

geoff
musicvid10 wrote on 8/22/2011, 4:36 PM
A 5400 rpm internal drive will easily record several tracks of audio.
If you are trying to record at 24/96 you may be pushing the envelope a bit.
LarryP wrote on 8/22/2011, 9:29 PM
I have a somewhat similar problem to your second one with an Alesis io14 FireWire (4 in and 4 out). I use it mostly for playback but every now and then I see it go through a power on reset for no good reason. The symptom in Vegas 10e is as you describe where Vegas seem to loose track of the device.

This isn't a Vegas problem as I see the power on reset occur while surfing.

There have been some comments about using the "legacy" FireWire driver in Windows 7:

Might be worth a try as the FireWire drivers are all new in Window 7.

What's frustrating is that the Alesis interface may work well for days so it is hard to tell if a change, to the legacy drivers for instance, has helped.

Larry
MikeA wrote on 8/23/2011, 9:35 AM
Yes, this is the same machine that is having the SF problems I related in the SF forum. I've kind of felt like it's getting close to time to look for a new one, I guess I need to get in gear. Like I said, I've got numerous projects in the works and I don't need my machine having a catastrophic failure without a backup. I've had all my production apps on this laptop for at least 3 years and haven't had a hiccup. So, I think I've gotten my money's worth out of it; at least as a production hub.
imac wrote on 8/25/2011, 8:45 PM
the 'refuse to record' thing is like a problem many versions ago..

even cheap pcs are so powerful these days, they should be able to record 4 tracks even if something is wrong, conflicts, doing virus and other background things etc

4 years ago i was doing concert backup recording 32 tracks 44/24 on a stock Dell mobile no sweat