Video Playback issues.

F

Funkycoldg

Well-known member
Hello everyone. I'm having problems playing video back on my new edit system. It seems to start ok, but then it starts studdering and eventually the audio and video are totally out of sync. This is happening to (.mov) A/V that I've imported, but also happens to captured A/V from a UVW1800.



A little about the system...

I ordered a barebone HP xw8200. Came with 74GB 10k drive, 1GB DDR and WinXP Pro SP2. I added 1GB DDR (2x 512MB), 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7.2k SATA300 drive, FX 1400 Graphics card and a ADS Pryo Firewire card. After getting that all working I installed AXP 4.6 w/Mojo. Then I updated to HD and then to 5.2. Now lies my issue.



Things I've tried...

- Updated to an "Avid Approved" video driver (version 67.22)

- Fine tuned Windows for editing performance.



Any ideas on what is causing this. I'm thinking it might be the HD I added. Or maybe it's a setting that I'm just missing. I hope someone could help me figure out this problem soon.



Thanks,

- John G.
 
Are you capturing to one of the internal hard drives? Is the 10k HD a SATA drive? Is the 1g DDR the same type and quantity as the original? I wouldn't attempt editing without at least 2 gigs.

Ideally: If you must capture to an internal drive, It would not be the drive that AVID resides upon. It WOULD be the 10k drive. It WOULD be a SATA drive; if not a SCUZZI.

Some systems are picky about RAM. For example adding two 512 sticks to a system with a single 1gig stick, might be a mismatch. On my system if you add RAM that isn't exactly the same type, quality, speed, etc. ... it doesn't work. Be sure you bought the correct RAM, registered or unregistered, DDR etc....

Remove the RAM ... see if things get better. Remove the second HD...see if things get better. I buy a seperate external firewire Maxtor HD for every client, and expense it to their account. I capture to it and leave the video there. I'll never have to redigitize thier crap again. (Storage is cheap!) That saves us both money when they want to change shots down the road. And by the way...AVID recommends powering down before you connect/disconnect an external HD, no matter what Windows says.

These are just ideas.... I'm no expert and the folly of my thinking will soon be exposed.

Cheers!
 
Thanks for the reply. Yes I am Capturing to the internal 500gig drive 7200RPM. The 74 gig 10K drive is my System drive with Windows and all my other programs. The Ram is exactly the same with all 4 sticks being 512s = 2gigs of ram. I tried for the heck of it to capture to the C: drive (the 74gig 10K drive) to see if the video would play any better but it acts the same way. Yeah I kno storage is cheap but i work in a mid sized company that handles many projects a day. I just wish I could get this avid working. Here is some more info on what is going on.... When I put the footage into the timeline,* it plays fine for about 5 seconds and then studders, so when I stop playing it, there are blue marks on the timeline and then there is also a red line.* These lines, if I remember correctly, are Blue = not playing at 29.97fps and Red = needs to be rendered.* The thing is that some of the clips were digitized into the Avid correctly and the other clips are After Effects .mov files with the Avid DV codec, so they should play fine also.* Just some more info to go on.


- Thanks for all the help
John G.
 
Well, if you get the blue line, then it's almost the hard drive thats to slow.
 
Yeah thats what I'm thinking but the weird thing is that we tried dumping footage to the C: drive which is the 74 gig 10K drive (I know your not suppose to do this) to see if it played fine and it did the same thing. Also I thought this drive would be ok since they do sell them in Turnkey systems......You can referr to the link below, its a system from B&H.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...s&Q=&sku=404030&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

Thanks for your help...any other ideas or a way to test this?

John G.
 
I'd have to agree that it's not the hard drive that's the problem, but there's definintely a bottleneck somewhere on the system.

You said in your original post that you jumped from 4.6 to HD and then to 5.2. Can you detail your upgrading proceedure? The original release of Xpress Pro HD had a stuttering issue that was actually a bug in the program that got stamped out in 5.something. That was the first thing I thought of when you described the problem, but then you said 5.2 so I thought "nah, that's not it." If the upgrade process that Avid defines wasn't followed, that could cause the problem.

If you don't have any projects in the system yet you could uninstall Avid, delete the Avid folder from Program Files and then install fresh with just version 5.2 and see if that helps. Also the Settings files were not compatible from 4.x to 5.x. I can't imagine that being the cause, but stranger things have happened.

Let us know.
 
Hey Krestofre,

I was hoping you would reply! Yeah I just got done reinstalling Avid fresh, even with a Registry clean! And still no go. The video still studders, and when put in the timeline it gives me those yellow,blue and red marks. Well i suppose its time for soem good ol AVID Tech supposrt...I was able to get them to give me one free case number....but if you guys have any other ideas...they are welcomed! I will keep you all informed!

Thanks again for the help

John G.
 
Something else you could try for troubleshooting purposes: Remove the extra RAM that you added and just try the system with 1 GB. Maybe those were some bad sticks. Yeah, Avid recommends 1.5 to 2 GB, but it should at least run for a test.

Also, is this DV25 footage?

Hopefully Avid Tech support can help, but I'll keep thinking about the problem until I get an all-clear from you.
 
Well I think I made some headway.....I had an idea of borrowing someone elses External Firewire drive here and imported footage from there and had it play off of there in AVID and it works like a dream. No problems or skipping what so ever. So I'm pretty sure its the Internal 500 gig hard drive either being bad, too slow or that its on the same SATA controller (motherboard). SO I am still tring to get in contact with AVID tech support just to see what they say, and will let ya know. Thanks again for all the suggestions.

-John G.
 
A failing hard drive had crossed my mind, but when you said it still didn't play right off of the Raptor then it made me think that it's something else. Sounds like you're getting it narrowed down though. Good luck.
 
Yeah so the tech said that they dont support SATA drives for your media, that they only support them for the System drive. He suggested an ext. firewire hard drive or a SCSI one if we do a lot of 1:1. So we are ordering a 500Gig ext. firewire Hard drive Tomorrow. Well I suppose that solves that mystery. Thanks for the help everyone!

-JG
 
the tech said that they dont support SATA drives for your media
Click to expand...

I hope no one tells my SATA media drives that. :)

Oh well, at least you'll be working soon. Sorry I couldn't offer more help.
 
Oh really...How do you have your computer all set-up? I am curious. Dont worry about it...you gave me some really good advice! I just love how you can have mutlible people thinking about your problem because "you" may always forget something.... Well let me know...I ordered a LaCie 500gig 16MB buffer Ext. firewire drive like 10 min ago. Should be here thur.!

Thanks,
john G.
 
My system is self built.

Asus P4P800 motherboard
P4 3.4 Ghz processor
2GB RAM
1 IDE 120 GB system drive
1 IDE 120 GB audio drive
1 IDE 250 GB RAID-0 array video drive
1 SATA 500 GB RAID-0 array video drive
Nvidia Quadro FX500 AGP 8x graphics card
On-board firewire

A little unorthodox as far as Avid goes, but I researched these components before building and the machine works like a champ.
 
Try to update the chipset driver, because the chipset control the SATA port, so, if you have an old driver, It may cause a bottleneck if the driver is not optimized properly.

I don't know your computer, but, I will give you some link that may help you

- http://www.viaarena.com (if your chipset is a via based)
- http://www.intel.com (... intel)
- http://www.nvidia.com ( ... nforce)
- http://www.sis.com.tw (... sis)

Hope this information will help!

ElvisNTSC
 
Or if you use a PCI SATA raid controller, go visit the controller manufacturer website and download the latest driver.
 
I've had similar problems with 1:1 footage only. Works great with external drives if working in one of the lesser DV resolutions. But I tried to work at 1:1 recently and it sucked huge (and it was in front of a client). What I found out was my xw8200 has SCSI capability and that it's best to buy drives that run from there (striped) so you don't use the internal drive upon which the system is running. Even though my externals run at 7200 RPM, it doesn't seem to matter. It's something Avid hasn't told anybody when working in 1:1 -also you only get one stream of video at 1:1 when you do get it working. I've just downloaded the 5.2.1 version yesterday and am supposed to be able to now play back 1;1 titles but I haven't checked that out yet.
 
1:1 footage take lots of bandwidth and takes lots of load on a 7200 rpm drives. You should consider to purchase 10K SATA drives or SCSI 15K drives.
 
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