Wave form recording status weirdness

drbam wrote on 4/22/2008, 3:32 PM
This is a new behavior (this week) that I suspect may be connected to the video card but I wanted to post it here in case others may have some insight/suggestions.

During recording - either a mono or stereo track - on the video monitor the wave form intermittently stops and then catches up. It looks like it stopped recording for a moment but the cursor continues to move along and after I stop the recording and name the file, the recorded file shows up like normal and plays fine. I noticed this only yesterday after taking a week break from almost 2 weeks of 10 hr days of recording. My system is new - 4 months old with little use during that time and these 4-6 track projects I've been working on don't even move the CPU above 3%. The wave form behavior happens even with just a single track in a project (or 30+). I did some trouble shooting and discovered that it happens in Vegas 6, 7 & 8 (didn't try Acid 6). I've used Vegas and Acid since the first versions and never recall seeing this. Any ideas??

Thanks!

Comments

Geoff_Wood wrote on 4/22/2008, 6:42 PM
Yeah mine's always done that. Guess I've just got used to it... Now it's irritating me,.

However those vertical red lines instead of waveform have always irritated me. I assume everybody gets those ?

geoff
drbam wrote on 4/22/2008, 9:17 PM
"However those vertical red lines instead of waveform have always irritated me. I assume everybody gets those ?"

Thanks Geoff. Yes, I've always gotten those red lines when the recording time was "long" (never actually measured when it kicked in) and although distracting I've gotten used to it being "normal." However this blank space thing is new for me and certainly doesn't appear normal. It behaves like something got "stuck" > "unstuck" in an erratic pattern and continues the behavior till I stop recording. I find it quite unnerving because I've never seen it before. I hate to spend money on a new video card just to trouble shoot it but I suppose its the only thing to try.
farss wrote on 4/22/2008, 10:33 PM
I doubt a new video card will stop this behaviour. I see it happen all most as a matter of course on my old laptop. On faster systems it takes longer to kick in. I suspect Vegas treats refreshing the GUI and building the waveform file as a lower priority than writing the actual recording to disk.
Possibly if your disk is fairly full and fragemented after those long recording sessions might explain why it's just starting to happen for you.

Bob.
drbam wrote on 4/23/2008, 6:28 AM
Thanks Bob. The disc is nowhere close to full but I will check the fragmentation question. Again, I'm puzzled because I've never experienced this before, even on quite modest systems.

UPDATE: Defragged the drive (needed it) but it didn't change or fix the behavior. The story gets weirder though: the behavior does NOT occur on the sessions I was working on last week and the week before - only the new session from this Monday (when I first noticed it), and also on a much older session (3 years old) that I experimented with. I'm stumped . . .
farss wrote on 4/24/2008, 3:12 AM
It might have something to do with how much refreshing is going on of the T/L. Say your T/L is 2 hours long and you're zoomed right out then you can record for 2 hours without the whole thing being redrawn which might reduce the chances of it happening.

Then again if its a new project you cannot zoom out to anything like 2 hours.

Bob.
Chienworks wrote on 4/24/2008, 3:35 AM
One could always start a project by adding a 2-hour long (or whatever is the estimated length of the whole project) generated media event onto the timeline first. Vegas will then let you zoom out to that entire length. Remove the event and start recording.
drbam wrote on 4/24/2008, 6:17 AM
I had checked the zoom issue already (from a new default project to an older 70 min project with multiple tracks but it didn't seem to make a difference.
jbolley wrote on 4/24/2008, 7:39 AM
Interesting...
I have a MOTU 2408 mkii and a mk3 both hooked up (on one PCI card)
I started noticing this behavior a couple years ago. It would only happen sometimes. I finally figured out that it happens when the mk3 is the record device, not when the mkii is the record device. I'm not aware of any differences in the set up or configuration of these two devices (they share an ASIO driver!)
I hope this helps deduce the issue.
Jesse
drbam wrote on 4/25/2008, 12:17 PM
Thanks jbolley. I doubt if my soundcard (RME Multiface-2) is related to this. Absolutely nothing has changed in my system in the past 2 months. As mentioned in my original post, this behavior started this week and its the first time I've ever experienced it.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 4/25/2008, 7:30 PM
Wonder if t could be related to a dot.net update ?

geoff
drbam wrote on 4/25/2008, 8:44 PM
"Wonder if t could be related to a dot.net update ?"

Not sure what that is Geoff but if its connected to Windows updates (or any other updates), then no. I don't have the system online except when I do a quick registration and then immediately unplug the ethernet cable. I have automatic updates disabled. Nothing got updated or changed from the time it was working correctly (steadily and consistently following the cursor while recording) to this new "sticky" "jumpy" kind of behavior.