Audio editing going from Mac Pro to Not amazing PC?

You can, but I guess I'm just not all that used to Reaper yet (or really any DAWs for that matter). I took a course in Protools and another in STP at my school, but that was ages ago, most of my editing for sound has (unfortunately) been inside FCP to save time to meet semester deadlines. And, weirdly enough, my department teaches you Protools in a sound studio upstairs, but then when it comes to your senior project, you don't have access to the Protools labs unless you're in a "sound" class at that time. I guess that's what happens in a state school, sadly.

So, in any case, this will be a re-learning experience, though it does seem like Reaper's video window is a bit of an afterthought.
 
Ah, more trouble.

So it seems like the video, no matter how low quality I make it, is totally slowing down my system. Without the video window up (and using minimal plugins), Reaper zips along, even with 15-20 tracks going at once.

Like I said, not amazing PC, but my laptop is dead and I'm not really flowing with cash right now.

1.8 ghz Pentium 4, 1 GB ram, pretty old but functioning. I used eboostr/flash drive to boost the ram, but of course that doesn't really help the CPU.

Would using the video from an external hard drive help? What bitrate/size should I be shooting for? Am I going to have to give up and just max out my CC with a new Mac?
 
Yeah, I was thinking of doing that since RAM is pretty cheap. I tried using that ReadyBoost-type software eBoostr and it really didn't help much (I used a flash drive to supposedly boost it up to 4GB of ram). It seems that whenever I use Reaper fullscreen and do things like scrub audio, it eventually maxes out the CPU (and I eliminate all other uneeded programs). I don't really care if it lags a little here and there, my main concern is that I can step frame by frame accurately through the video, something it doesn't always seem to do, although this may just be a Reaper problem.

Oddly enough, I've had the best video experience using a random .wmv test video I found on the internet, it played smoothly and clearly, but MPGStreamclip doesn't let you export to .wmv.
 
MeAgain said:
Yeah, I was thinking of doing that since RAM is pretty cheap. I tried using that ReadyBoost-type software eBoostr and it really didn't help much (I used a flash drive to supposedly boost it up to 4GB of ram). It seems that whenever I use Reaper fullscreen and do things like scrub audio, it eventually maxes out the CPU (and I eliminate all other uneeded programs). I don't really care if it lags a little here and there, my main concern is that I can step frame by frame accurately through the video, something it doesn't always seem to do, although this may just be a Reaper problem.

Oddly enough, I've had the best video experience using a random .wmv test video I found on the internet, it played smoothly and clearly, but MPGStreamclip doesn't let you export to .wmv.
Click to expand...


If you are using a really 'underpowered' machine, the idea is that the 'video' is only a reference, you won't be building your final output from this reference. So, you can converte the reference to a very small frame size, just large enough for you to work with, and not bog your system down, say 360x240 Or something...

The other aspect is how many traks and how much processing your going to be doing with the audio.

While not 'audio' but for the longest time I used After Effects on my iBook. I could only realistically do about 10 seconds of near real time previews, so, i would go chunk by chunk testing each transition, or effect. Occasionally exporting a section of the video, say 30-40 seconds to check to see if these were going together as I thought they were...

It is tedious, but that's what one has to do with the tools at hand if one doesn't have the money for high performance equipment.
 
So first off real RAM is essential. This other stuff is just giving you virtual memory and that is slow and a flash drive is REALLY slow with rights. Second as folks have said you need to make the video easy to play. On a Mac that translates to either MJPEG, DV or h.264 (but you need to make it a special way or it will drive you nuts). I imagine a Windows box is pretty much the same. DV is very low on processor but the files can be big. MJPEG looks pretty bad but you can jet the size way down and it's not very intense to play back. h.264 is really small and looks great but it takes some processing to uncompress. Also you have to make sure every frame is a key frame or scrubbing backward will be a nightmare.

Memory is what $20 a gig, or less? Give up beer for a week and buy a few gigs.
 
I'll give .DV a whirl next. I read somewhere in a Reaper update that .mp4 files should work, but a low-res .mp4 seems to be causing Reaper to shut down.

And yeah, RAM is cheap enough (and I don't drink!), but I'm pretty much at my rope's end with money. I'm pretty sure it's time for me to actually get some sort of money first.

But a RAM upgrade should make things run smoothly though? What I mean is, the 1.8GHZ CPU sn't going to be a crippling factor? Or will I be able to get away with say- 20 tracks (minimal processing) with a RAM upgrade?

I'm actually thinking of breaking it down shot by shot, since a lot of the shots are pretty long and there are so few in the entire film. I imagine this could lead to some complications down the road, but doing it piece by piece would probably help a lot.
 
Last edited:
I haven't been on Windows in a long time BUT I was then running 32 tracks on a 486 and Win 98 (I don't think I ever got to the pentium chips but if I did it would have been first generation). Don't know the clock speed but it would have been in the hundreds (probably very low hundreds) of megahertz... and WAY below a gig of memory. No video though. I did run PT and video off a G3 with a gig or so of RAM.

You need more RAM today because the OS is bigger. You want enough RAM that the OS and the programs you are using can all be in real memory not swapping off the hard-drive as virtual memory. Sound is not very CPU intense, until you add a bunch of realtime plugins, so the speed of the CPU probably is more of an issue with the video decoding than the audio playback.
 
Haha, more problems-


I finally solved my video problems and sat down to edit for real today, plugged in my Sony MDRs directly into the headphone jack on the computer- and there's a ton of interference. The sound I play overpowers it, but it certainly going to be confusing for any accurate noise removal.


Do I need something like this now: http://www.audiophileproducts.com/fireye2

And is there a cheaper version of it on the market?
 
Headphones outputs are for headphones only... they're to bad in quality mostly.

To bad to connect other stuff though.

A good thing would be indeed an USB audio hardware or PCI.
 
The video problems were a combination of things: while more RAM will obviously make things way way more smooth, with a low-res .avi I seem to be OK on CPU and playback. But the problem was that although Reaper said somewhere it would play .mp4 pretty well, it seems to have problem with that and .mov. I was shooting for .dv on suggestions here, but for some reason MPEG Streamclip freezes when I try to make a .dv stream that's a custom size and frame rate.

So in the end, I realized half the problem was that Reaper for some reason needs some .dll files downloaded from a third-party site to play most video without crashing- although this wasn't very apparent to me. I got those and wound up trimming my video down to a manageable 30-second chunk, all told it's about 3MB I think. I'm not sure if it's such a good idea to break the movie into segments, but it seems to make things go a little smoother. In any case, it proved to me that video can function somewhat smoothly on here, even without a RAM upgrade.

So, my first stop is solving my audio jack problem, then getting some RAM, and most likely re-installing Windows on here. This isn't my computer and I've scanned everything using hijack this, but I figure it might not hurt with a fresh start. The only thing that has been bugging me with Reaper is that I'm used to directory windows and bins like in FCP and the like, where I can just point to everything on my external and preview clips in real time. In Reaper, it seems you have to "Insert" each sound on a track individually, which is a pain.


PS_ I'm now looking at this USB device for a digital in between:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...CA202_UCA202_USB_Audio_Interface.html#reviews

It seems to have decent reviews, and the price point is quite good. I wouldn't mind shelling out more if I had it, but right now I just need something to let me listen to this cleanly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top