Trying to do a print-to-tape using Sony Vegas

January 28, 2006 3:45 PM

caught in print-to-tape trap.

Using Sony Vegas, a FireWire and a miniDV camera, I have tried without success to do a perfect print-to-tape of a 33 minute video I have recently finished editing on my PC.

Everything goes well for 99,9% of the print-to-tape. The thing is I get 2 or 3 "glitches", one-second blue screens interruptions, during the process.

I've made many attempts. the glitches always occur (at seemingly random moments, never at the same place).

Are they called "drops", I don't know. All I know is I would prefer not having a tape of my video that has blue screens popping up 2 or 3 times!

I've had the problem before with other video projects. I would manage to squeeze in a glitch-less print-to-tape after five or six attempts. (those videos were much shorter, so risk of glitch was lower.)

I think the problem is with my computer, not my miniDV camera.

there are no other programs than Vegas running during attempts.

Should I just get more ram? I'm at 512 mb of ram right now. maybe the computer needs more to perform this task?

Can anyone help ?

Thank you.

posted by amusem to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Check how much memory you're actually using, and also your CPU utilization.
posted by orthogonality at 4:13 PM on January 28, 2006

I'm not a vegas guy...but...the ram might help.

Make sure that everything is rendered. Try to have everything coming off your internal drive (NOT your firewire drives)

Try exporting the video and reimporting in DV format if that doesn't work.

A 'blue' screen could be a dropped frame (a drop out, or tape hit, is when the tape 'drops' out data - usually causing 'blocks' to appear in the video.)
posted by filmgeek at 4:31 PM on January 28, 2006

I don't know how much memory i'm using. I do know that there are close to 7 gigs of free space on disk (I have a 1,53 GHz system).

CPU usage stays between 4 and 7% during print-to-tape process. but, say the screensaver kicks in, or if I move the mouse to make it go, the sudden spike of activity will cause a dropped frame. I now make sure that doesn't happen but there seem to be yet other processes going on that I don't know about. I'm guessing that when they come on, that's when I get dropped frameds.
posted by amusem at 5:22 PM on January 28, 2006

RAM is always useful, but hard drive fragmentation *could* contribute to dropped frames, in my humble-and-totally-unsubstantiated opinion.

Defrag your hard drive, and feel free to grab DiskKeeper's free trial to make sure you get it done right and fast. (Windows built in defrag tool, Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Disk Defragmenter, is a licensed form of DiskKeeper's tool, less advanced and slower.)

Check your memory by right clicking on the Task Bar (start bar) anywhere there isn't an icon, and clicking Task Manager. Click the processes tab, sort by Memory Usage descending and watch the Vegas process.

Sort by CPU usage and monitor everything. Close anything you can that has the user "Your Name", versus System or Network. Do so by selecting the process and choosing "end process" in the bottom right corner. DO NOT end explorer.exe, ANY svchost.exe, or, again, anything with a "User Name" of SYSTEM. You'll also want to avoid ending the Vegas process.

This'll kill off the last of your applications. Make sure you've shut down and saved everything else, before trying this out.

Monitor memory and processor usage itself might cause a brief spike, and potential frame drop, but it'll let you see if anything else is grabbing your CPU cycles away.

Good luck. Perhaps you can post your full PC specs?
posted by disillusioned at 12:14 AM on January 29, 2006

Thanks guys.

more RAM seems to be a good bet.

disillusioned, thank you, I did defrag yesterday but will re-defrag using DiskKeeper free trial. Sounds good. Looking at the list of processes "live", i.e. while print-to-tape is under way, is a good idea. should of thought of that. I had looked only briefly at CPU Usage (under Performance tab). And I did close unimportant processes (except for explorer and vegas); to no avail.

So I will monitor the processes... and probably find something out.

PC specs: I'm using XP Professional with an AMD Athlon XP 1800+. 1,53 GHz with 512 mb RAM. Out of 40 gigs, I have close to 7 gigs of free space. The version of Vegas I'm using is 5. (there must be other useful specs to tell about, but I don't know which.)
posted by amusem at 7:50 AM on January 29, 2006