Successful External Preview -- what's your setup?

jlafferty wrote on 4/2/2005, 11:00 AM
Hey,

I haven't used the external preview function in Vegas in ages -- been encoding for the web exclusively lately -- but about two weeks ago, just before sending a DVD I'd made off to a friend, I checked the MPEG from Vegas's timeline out on my external monitor. Not only was it waayyy oversaturated and dark, the monitor flickered repeatedly.

In the time that's passed since I last used external preview, I've added all sorts of FW devices to my setup...and so, after some fiddling, I figured out what was causing it -- drive seeking/access during the preview over the same firewire bus -- I was using an Audigy with a 5-pot hub, to which was connected my three external cases, my deck, and a CF card reader. When I shut down the other devices, and moved the media to an external drive, the preview was rock-solid.

I picked up a SIIG card shortly after this, and put the three drives on the SIIG card, leaving the hub on the Audigy with my deck and CF reader connected to it. This lessens the problem, but does not eliminate it entirely.

What's the troubleshooting approach one takes with this issue? It's not like I'm about to power down my FW drives whenever I need to go to external preview -- sometimes the media I'm previewing is on them.

Is there an IRQ setting I could adjust?

Any advice would be great...

- jim

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 4/2/2005, 11:12 AM
I use the firewire out of the Audigy card to the Canopus ADVC-300 then to S-Video to TV set. I only use one hookup, no extra stuff on the firewire line as I believe they do not know how to combine multiple units. I never get into trouble that way with the computer trying to regurgitate everything.

JJK
Liam_Vegas wrote on 4/2/2005, 1:27 PM
MPEG is likely not a very good format to expect a good external preview from. DV AVI yes but MPEG no.

You'll notice the best previews (in terms of framerate) is unmodified DV AVI footage as your system does not need to re-compress the frames. In any situation where the frames need to be re-compressed (and MPEG would be an EXTREME version of this) you would expect less that excellent preview results.

So... I guess I was a little surprised when you found teh solution was to simplify your FW setup. I would have thought previewing MPEG would likely always be a little bit of a problem.
jlafferty wrote on 4/2/2005, 2:44 PM
The difference between recompressed frames and the problem I was having is pretty big -- I've never had a problem seeing an MPEG over firewire with decent framerates/res. What was happening was a flicker, then complete dropout to black for intermittent periods of time. Sound was going in and out of sync, too. Idling the cursor on the timeline had the same effect -- it was unbearable.

To follow up, per JJK's advice, I've now got my deck going directly into the Audigy -- problem solved. However, now I need to figure out where I'm going to put my CF card reader -- just about to get the PMD 660, so I will be needing it :D

- jim
johnmeyer wrote on 4/2/2005, 9:22 PM
This problem is usually caused by having not applied the 1394 Windows patch. While it may not totally eliminate the problem, it will should make a big difference. See this post:

Firewire 1394 Solutions

[Edit] There is a similar patch if you have XP's Service Pack 2 (SP2).

murk wrote on 4/3/2005, 12:05 AM
i am surprised that Vegas does not support full screen output from your video card's s-video out. This would not require any recompression. It would be amazingly useful for me. I guess you could write a Direct Show plugin that could be placed on the master video bus which would send the video out s-video. I thoughtt I had seen a website that mentioned a plugin like this that was in progress, but I cannot find it now.
Kanst wrote on 4/3/2005, 6:39 AM
Overlay TVout for Vegas
http://mikecrash.wz.cz/vegas/vegas.htm
RNLVideo wrote on 4/3/2005, 6:55 AM
I've got a similar issue - was previewing fine; haven't used it in a while and now I have issues. Interesting, though, recompressed frames preview better than straight cuts. Recompressed frames often play thorugh OK (at reduced frame rates); straight cuts (straight unadulterated DV captured w/ Vegas) cause a blue screen on the external monitor and show a very low (9 - 10 fps) frame rate in the preview window.

I had a similar problem before - reinstalled Vegas and it went away. That didn't help this time. I've got XP-Home SP2 with all of the latest updates. I was going to get the one johnmeyer posted in this link, but it seems pre-SP2 and refers to XP-Pro. Any thoughts?

I've tried different firewire cables, shutting down all other firewire devices, different DV converters (two different cameras) - still the same problems. More specifically, putting the cursor on the timeline throws the picture up on the external monitor. Playing the timeline on unaltered DV clips creates flashes on the ext monitor & blue screen. Playing altered clips will often get that clip to play (reduced frame rate), but it flashes and goes to blue at transitions.
jlafferty wrote on 4/3/2005, 7:30 AM
Try disconnecting all other FW devices, and not merely turning them off, then run your viewing source straight to your FW card.

Yesterday, I had my deck hooked up to a five port hub which had only an empty CF car reader attached -- the problem still persisted. Disconnecting the hub/card reader completely, and running my deck directly to the Audigy 1394 port solved the problem.

So, to make it clear my setup looks like this:

1) SB Audigy with a Panasonic AGDV1000 deck connected directly to it, going out to a Sony PVM 14"
2) SIIG three-port 1394 card, each port with a separate drive attached -- no hub, no daisy chaining. My external cases are 1) ADS 1394/USB 2 combo case with a Seagate 160gb, 1) Wiebetech dualbay with two matching 120gb WD drives inside.

I'm using XP Pro SP1a, BTW. No reason to jump to 2, personally, i.e. why fix what ain't broke?

- jim
jlafferty wrote on 4/3/2005, 7:36 AM
Direct link for the patch mentioned above:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Patch/Q329256/WXP/EN-US/q329256_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe

edit: I note that, per the patch's describing page, there's no mention of a need of SP2, let alone XP Pro to get this to install/work --

System Requirements

* Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP

Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition

- jim
johnmeyer wrote on 4/3/2005, 9:28 AM
I was going to get the one johnmeyer posted in this link, but it seems pre-SP2 and refers to XP-Pro. Any thoughts?

For Service Pack 2 (SP2), you need to get a different patch. May I suggest to all that you put a link to the Microsoft Knowledgebase on your Favorites? It is the ultimate resource for these sorts of things. In the Knowledgebase, here is the link to the SP2 patch:

Performance of 1394 devices may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2

Here is the link to the Knowledgebase home search page:

Microsoft Knowledgebase
jlafferty wrote on 4/3/2005, 9:35 AM
john,

Thanks for the links but I think what you're posting addresses an altogether different issue:

"This problem occurs if you connect a 1394a or 1394b FireWire device to a 1394b port. This problem occurs because Windows XP SP2 changes 1394b ports to S100 speed when you upgrade."

That is to say, the patch you posted fixes a discreet problem with known variables. The other patch -- works for all versions of XP -- addresses general 1394 problems.

- jim