Vegas locks up during playback, but I found out why

johnmeyer wrote on 5/5/2004, 6:42 PM

I'll try to keep this short (which is tough for me). Suddenly, on a long project (three hours of video on the timeline), Vegas kept freezing during simple playback from the timeline. The whole application was locked ("not responding" message in the timeline), but after about 15-20 seconds, it would free up and everything was fine. I thought it was a problem with Vegas 5, but then I switched back to Vegas 4 and got the same thing. What had changed?

I will spare you all the details of what I tried. Bottom line, it was the paging file. A few days ago I read that performance could be improved in XP Pro systems by putting the paging file on a different physical drive from the O/S. Up until then, I had always had the paging file where the O/S had installed it, namely the C: drive. My D: drive is actually just a partition on my C: drive, so I decided to put the paging file on my E: drive. This is an identical drive to C:, but is physically a separate drive. I then removed the paging file from C:.

I didn't edit the past few days, so I didn't notice the problem until now.

When I started trying to fix the problem, I first put the paging file back on the C: drive, but didn't delete the paging file on E:. After re-booting, the problem still existed. I then deleted the E: paging file, and re-booted, and the problem was solved.

Other relevant information: I was working on files stored on an external Firewire Western DIgital drive. Also, my Vegas temporary files are stored in the E:\TEMP folder, not the default folder on the C: drive.

I have read various posts about somewhat similar problems others have had. While I doubt many people have moved their paging files, perhaps this particular behavior may give Sony engineers a clue as to how to fix other hard to reproduce problems.

Comments

Grazie wrote on 5/6/2004, 12:25 AM

JM - Thanks for your report. Even I understood it. Says a lot for your desrciptive style - thanks.

. . and yes . .maybe Sony will take on board what you mention. I've never had the courage to mess with defaults for anything Windows . . scared stiff of the stuff.

Best regards,

Grazie

farss wrote on 5/6/2004, 12:48 AM

Even though I should know how to fiddle with Windoz stuff, I'm a software developer, it scares the what nots out of me as well. I'm writing this on a 500MHz 386 running Win2K and it's never missed a beat and it runs all kinds of wierd stuff. There's a lot to be said for the old If it ain't broken don't fix it approach. I know I could probably tweak my Vegas PC and get it running a bit faster but at least it's 100% solid, well it was until 10 minutes ago, my first BSD in a Sony app, DVDA 2 crashed during preview, soon as I tried (again) to switch on external preview, hmm..

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/6/2004, 5:35 AM

I know what you mean by "if it ain't broke don't fix it." I installed the Microsoft recomended patch for that sasser virus (i normaly don't use windows update) & it made my computer run very slow (took 90 minutes to boot from the "starting windows 2000" screen). Took me all of yesterday to get the patch uninstalled. :)

john, I 've never put my swap on a seperate partition. All my other partitions/drives are linux or for video. Did you put the swap on the same drive as a Vegas temp folder?

Randy Brown wrote on 5/6/2004, 6:13 AM

Hi John,
I'm one of those that have complained of the lock-ups; I would like like to try what you have done but don't know how. Is it something you could give specific instructions on how to do?
TIA,
Randy

Bill Ravens wrote on 5/6/2004, 6:44 AM

In Windoze XP:
1-rt click "MY COMPUTER"
2-select PROPERTIES>ADVANCED
3-select PERFORMANCE>SETTINGS>ADVANCED
4-select VIRTUAL MEMORY tab, then hit the change button
5-this puts you in a screen that allows virtual memory changes.be sure to hit the SET button after making your changes

cacher wrote on 5/6/2004, 6:53 AM

farss: I'm sorry but I just can't believe you are running Win2K on a 386....maybe a pentium III?

Randy Brown wrote on 5/6/2004, 6:59 AM

Thanks Bill! Now that I've seen this page, as I recall, I've also heard of people selecting no paging file or changing the initial and maximum sizes to equal amounts but it seems there were conflicting opinions on whether to do it or not.
Randy

tvwonder wrote on 5/6/2004, 7:24 AM

"farss: I'm sorry but I just can't believe you are running Win2K on a 386....maybe a pentium III?"

This caught my eye, too. The 386 never made it past about 33 - 40 MHz, if I remember correctly. The 486 made it up to about 100 MHz, maybe a little more. After that the original Pentium took over and then came the Pentium II, which topped out at about 450 - 500 MHz. The Pentium III came in at 450 MHz and made it on up to about 1.1 GHz (at least 1 GHz anyway) and then the Pentium 4 came out.

I could believe he's running Windows 2000 on a 500 MHz Pentium III. I was running Windows XP Pro on a 550 MHz Athlon at my former job and it was very solid and pretty fast, too with 384 MB RAM.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/6/2004, 8:34 AM

TVW, I think he said he was writing the reply on a 386 and that his "Vegas PC" was a separate computer. Go back and re-read that paragraph and see if that's not what he's saying. I could be wrong...

J--

johnmeyer wrote on 5/6/2004, 9:57 AM

John, I 've never put my swap on a seperate partition. All my other partitions/drives are linux or for video. Did you put the swap on the same drive as a Vegas temp folder?

Yes, both the paging file (nee swap file) and my Vegas temp file were on the E: drive which was a separate physical disk (as opposed to simply a different partition on the same disc) from the C: drive where the O/S and Vegas are both stored.

I've also heard of people selecting no paging file or changing the initial and maximum sizes to equal amounts but it seems there were conflicting opinions on whether to do it or not.

Do not set the Paging File to zero. Some programs want to see the Paging File "structure," even if they don't actually need the memory (since you probably have a ton of RAM in your computer). I would not recommend that most people change the Paging File settings. The only reason I did is that DVD Architect 2.0 continues to tie my hard disk in knots, although not as badly as DVDA 1.0. The behavior looks exactly like a "disk thrashing" situation which happens when the Paging File has to be used in place of RAM. I thought it might have something to do with an interaction between DVDA temp files and the Paging File, so I made the change. In the process, I killed Vegas (both 4.0 and 5.0 ceased to playback without glitches).

If you are having a temporary freeze problem (where the application freezes for about fifteen seconds, but then recovers and works normally for awhile) and you haven't changed settings, based on whe I have seen, you could try first putting your temp file on a different drive. If that doesn't help, you could move the Paging File to a different physical drive (which CAUSED my problem, but might possibly CURE your problem). If you do change the location for your paging file, make sure you turn off the paging file for the C: drive, and make sure you re-boot before you try Vegas.

If things get worse, it is pretty easy to just change back. Also, if you use System Restore, you can just set a System Restore point before you do this testing, and then simply restore the computer back to its previous state when you are finished.

Cheesehole wrote on 5/6/2004, 10:29 AM

Maybe he meant 50MHz.

vitalforces wrote on 5/6/2004, 10:40 AM

johnmeyer wrote on 5/6/2004, 10:54 AM

I too get the 15-second lockup, both on Vegas 4 and 5, while editing off a firewire drive (Cobra brand with the Oxford 911 chip). I might try moving the paging file but what file or folder name does one look for on the C: drive? Is it different from the Temp folder? And if so--what files does Vegas put in the Temp folder? --vitalforces

Ah, so you are editing off your Firewire drive ... that was what I was doing when this occured. My drive is the Western Digital WD800. Don't know what chipset. After I changed the swap file back to where it was originally, the problem went away, but late in the evening, after I did the original post, I did get one more, brief lockup (it was happening every minute before I made the change). There have been many problems reported with Firewire drives, but only with some of them. My Maxtor One-Touch Firewire has never had problems, whereas this one didn't work at all with Vegas until I sent it back to Western Digital to be refurbished. When it came back, all the problems (couldn't print to tape; couldn't send video to an external monitor when it was connected) went away. Perhaps there is still some lesser problem that remains, and which is triggered by where the paging file resides, although I don't have much confidence in that theory ...

ken c wrote on 5/6/2004, 11:59 AM

look in your C: subdirectory in windows explorer for " pagefile.sys" ..

on my win2k P4 it's a 1.5 gig pagefile, hidden attribute file..

I believe you can relocate it to another drive, not sure... likely a very good idea, to have the pagefile on 1 hard drive, the o/s on another, and the video temp files on yet a 3rd/firewire drive../

ken

baysidebas wrote on 5/6/2004, 12:08 PM

I run Win2K on a vintage Sony Vaio laptop with something like a 200Mhz PII under the hood. No, I don't run VV on it ;>)

vitalforces wrote on 5/7/2004, 11:55 AM

Thanx for the feedback, johnmeyer & kencalhoun. My solution is that I have developed enough patience for the pause to resolve, since there seems to be no other ill effect.

I also note that, once I'm into the project (I have 6 hours on a timeline while reviewing DV "dailies"), the pause recurs if I skip far down the timeline--but then it resumes and I'm back in business again.

vitalforces wrote on 6/18/2004, 12:24 PM

I wanted to return to this thread for one thing--I had the 'Vegas short freeze' problem with a Cobra 120GB firewire drive. Last month I bought a Cobra+ 250GB drive (notice the "plus" added to the Cobra name on certain models), moved all my movie files to it, and there has not been a single instance of timeline freeze. The freeze phenomenon may therefore be related to the processor chips in given firewire drives where long projects are running. I believe Cobra is using a faster processor in the 'plus' models (both drives still just have a 2MB cache), plus I recall reading about the effect on seek time with drives that have two versus three platters inside, or points to that effect. Offered for whatever value the other users may glean.

johnmeyer wrote on 6/18/2004, 1:02 PM

The freeze phenomenon may therefore be related to the processor chips in given firewire drives

Yes, that is true in some cases. I found out that my WD drive had problems that my Maxtor Firewire drive did not. I then sent my WD drive back to the factory for an upgrade, and it then worked properly. (See External Firewire Test, Conclusion-Some work, some don't)

However, after posting this thread, I found additional reasons for the problem, and posted them here:

Firewire/1394 problems fixed

MJhig wrote on 6/19/2004, 11:16 AM

Here's some info you may want to review on Virtual Memory in Windows XP John.

MJ

johnmeyer wrote on 6/19/2004, 9:41 PM

Here's some info you may want to review on Virtual Memory in Windows XP John.

Thanks! I took a look at that page and followed their advice about keeping a small page file on the C: drive. Most of my problems with Firewire were unrelated to the swap file, and were instead the result of the bug in the Windows XP Firewire driver that I described a few days ago in another thread.