Lock-Up on "Save as WAV"

[Allen Brown]

Specs:
New MTU Built System, XP Pro, Krystal, External SB card, ME Vers. 5.5, twin 80 gig drives

Getting intermittant but frequent lock-ups when saving as wav. When progress meter reaches 100% it locks. Control-Alt-Delete won't work. Must turn off computer to reboot.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Allen

[geggyboy]

Hi Al and others -
Same happened to me (once so far)

5.5 - P4 - XP pro, at the moment using 1 40 gig ATA100 drive split in half C: D: NTFS (it's enough for us on this system).

Exactly as you described. Locked up when saving a wave. Meter at 100%. blah blah~ Rebooted and found that the save wave existed and in perfec knick.

Lots of other observations that have come to light with 5.5 and I was told to post here: The EQ doesnt work at all - Screen slower than the audio etc.. But I will rummige the board a bit more, make sure I have not missed anything before I speel.
I assume this is a good thread!
G

[geezer]

Are you both using NTFS and not FAT32?....Administrators: Could that be an issue?

PLEASE- Keep posting with any 5.5 anomalies.

[Allen Brown]

Ya Know, I really don't know how MTU set up this computer. I guess they'll have to answer that question about fat32.

As far as other anomolies:

When playing back audio - the screen frequently "flashes" and the on-screen VU meters peak to red. If I don't see it actually happen, I'll often just see the red peak indicator after a take which falsely leads me to believe there was a clip.

When over dubbing, if I hit the space bar to stop after a take, the screen goes stark white, with a few outlines of the ME graphics. Machine acts "stunned" but settles back on its own finally showing the "Segment Attributes" screen.

EQ is acting very squirrly. It works...sometimes. Sometimes it just "pops" when previewing a setting and that "pop" is what is output on the segment...not eq.

All this skiddishness is so foreign to me as I've grown so accustomed to working with ME as the rock-solid editor is has proven itself to be. I have a tentative feeling as I work now.

[geggyboy]

ok, so the thread is moving, then I will post here as I see nothing related in other threads, but tuther's who seem to have solid systems might miss..
Further observations with 5.5 then as long as this post is:

As previously mentioned:
1. EQ doesnt work at all you can safely say. Yeah Al, I got what you got, mostly nothing happening: If you click bypass, that works: click preview, most of the time it depresses, but nothing is going down, and the machine seems to get confused. Press OK, it appears to do something, with no effect or results. Of the odd time I did get it to act, it left nothing but a horrible 3rd or odd harmonic of something whine.. But it does remove it when you ask it.. so segment went back to normal.

Admin Note: Folks, at one point EQ did work. Thus, your computer has changed, not Microeditor. I don't know what to say. If someone else doesn't have a suggestion, I don't think Bryan can as he lacks experience on Microeditor.

2. Save as WAVE was a lock up. Happened twice now.. same as described in thread. I am formatted NTFS throughout.. 20 gig straight. I use short DOS style names for projects and when saving as .SF . When saving as a WAVE, I sometimes use longer sensible names, as I have in older systems.

Admin Note:Happens twice now? This is an absolute indicator it is your system that is screwing up, not Microeditor!!! Clean your system of Windows built up garbage or replace the faulty hardware. A failure twice that is not repeatable is not a software bug.

3. The AMP ZONE is perculiar now. Before you'd mark a section of segment, hit AMP ZONE. and a pop up window flys, to allow the parameter settings. This does not happen now, you just get the ampzone shown on the segment immediately. You have to go to EDIT ZONE on the menu and type in your parameters.. then it works. Also, if you just hit amp zone, say by mistake.. an amp zone is implanted on your segment (no parameters set though) instead of a pop up that used to appear, saying.. "First you need to mark a segment, would you like to see help menu blah blah blah" If you then go and try and set some parameters... NOTHING registers... YOU MUST MARK a section first as above.
ALSO and major importance. If you adjust an AMP ZONE by sliding the markers .. after you have set it. The parameters default back to zero. Never did that before, it always maintained your settings.

Admin Note: There is a click box in each Zone Dialog box that allows you to control whether it appears or not. You or your helper has enabled this to not show the dialog box. WHEN IN DOUBT... READ THE MANUAL... PAGE 123... Setting and Loading Zone Defaults TOPIC!

4. I have degraded the screen size now down to 800 x 600 and 16 bit colour. Still the screen twitches quite a lot when you are asking it to record or come out of record...and right mouse play, so I dont think it is graphix card prob. (plus this is a 2 gig P4 and a new all fancy vid card) . I dont actually think there is any detriment, just looks like there might be and frightens you a bit.

Admin Note: I can just about guarentee the problem is your new graphics card is the culprit! When you take a working system (ME works even on older Pentium processors VERY WELL!) and install it on upgraded hardware and new video or hard drive controllers with different drives... don't expect it to work the same!!!!!!!!!!!! Good GRIEF!!! The ME software and Krystal DSP card works for the age of computers it was designed to run with. DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR HARDWARE.... AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5. Screen colours.. The default grey like, this bulletin board makes me sad.. durdgy.. But trying to change it seems even sadder.. impossible in fact. I have put the figures for all sorts of colours in the medit section (and outside) of the Microsnd.ini file to NO AVAIL.. In fact, I expected the default parameters to appear in the file, but ours does NOT have it. Not a mention. CAN SOMEONE POST THEIR, DEFAULT OR FAVOURED MICROSND.INI FILE HERE PLEASE, so I can see what you have. (The smaller segment size for us old blind folk is a bit hard to manipulate at times, but nontheless better I guess).

Admin Note: Again, it use to work fine. Again, the upgraded hardware is probably the culprit here. It is not Microeditor, and we will NOT make any upgrades to the code at this time. I lost over $10,000 on 5.3, and 5.4 and 5.5 were more expense on top of that. I personally am broke. DON'T UPGRADE YOUR HARDWARE. Get yourself another computer to run your other programs on that require more power, video, etc. Microeditor doesn't.

Having said that: Our 5.5 programe loaded into a virgin machine, but didnt put MTU in the PROGRAMMES directory.. In fact, we dont know where it is still, but it works.
Also, we HAD to rummage the 2.7 disks for MICROSOUND.INF file (or whatever the hell that thing is), before XP would STOP asking for drivers for New hard ware, everytime we switched on. However, NOW the yellow question mark has gone from the device manager.. which is a first for us. But still this doesnt allow Windows to find Krystal as a default wave player.

Ok. enough for now.. any insights.. more than welcome.
G

[geggyboy]

Hi.
Further to my earlier posts: Please allow me to update and correct some of the 5.5 observations. A few things changed: Bear in mind, since 1989 our MTU machines have been in CONSTANT use.. Hardly ever off, but does get rebooted each day at least once. Ironically, this morning when we switched on, while trying to show my returning collegue my findings.. a lot of what I said changed a bit.

EQ: Today it worked. But still if you click preview too many times, or perhaps too fast (dunno), it throws a wobbler and induces that horrible noise.. but it can be undone. Nonetheless, it worked, which it hasnt up until now.. Dunno why it suddenly decided to go for it.

Admin note: Absolute proof that it is NOT Microeditor that is changing. It is your windows setup. I have no suggestions other than live with it. Don't install any other software on the same computer. Gut it and reinstall Windows XP from scratch, then install Microeditor and MicroCD and don't add anything else. What else can I say. Interactions between programs under XP is excruciatingly painful. We see this in the Karaoke software we are spending our time fixing. XP, 2000, 98, ME are all DOGS! Give me the old Windows 3.1 any day and ME would work flawlessly!

AMP ZONE: This is pretty much the same but The note about moving markers after setting them, causes the parameters to reset to zero. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN today. It allowed the zone to be altered and kept the settings.

Admin note: Read the manual and understand the defaults. If it is not pilot error, it is your system installation.

Perhaps tomorrow, my original postings will be again valid.
The only change since I posted, I have enabled to on-board sound card and stuck some cheapo speakers in.. and all beautiful! MTU projects on the main monitors.. and any little .wav fiddles I wanna do in SF..before importing them back to the project I can now hear on those titchy creatives (which sound absolutely amazing funny enough)

Admin note: Be caredful using a Creative Sound Blaster Live card. We are finding it to grossly affects other programs... including the video display! Go figure that one out. You can read about this in the Microstudio Help Forum, and the Posts about version 2.4 not displaying correctly.

G

[admin]

I have answered the best I can what I believe are the causes of all of Gegs problems. See the Admin Notes: there.

Alan, I don't know what is wrong with your system. You might need to email Bryan and arrange a time to call so he can try to help you diagnose the problem. It sounds like something has changed from when we shipped the system. Have you installed anything else on the computer? Software or hardware?

[MTUSUPPORT]

Alan,
Have you changed or added anything into the system? This was working when it left here, as I set up a Large project, about 10-12 hours long. Then I run Normalize of the entire project 2 times. Then I do a Playback of the entire project over night at least once, if not twice. I dont remember if yours got played 2 nights or only one though. I believe you were in a rush and it only got one night, but not 100% sure.

We use the NTFS file system on all systems we ship out, as it works great with Microeditor.

When you use the Fat 32 format under 98, ME, 2000, or XP, you must use Partition Magic 8.0 software to format the drives. If you do not, then you can have random lockups like what are being refered to in this Thread.

Alan, open a long project (multi-hour). Then run Normalize on it. This should also hang or lockup if the Save As Wav is locking up. Also you should have it lock up when using MicroCD when you click the Make Cue and Image file. These are all related together.

Let me know what you find.

[geggyboy]

Thanks for the info and notification.. nice one! Glad to know you are so confident it's our end and that 5.5 is perfect! Plus no one else seemed to suffer those quirks. That's good news in many ways. I'm happy with 5.5.. Some interesting little snips in yr posts for sure. Sorry about the misunderstanding about the AMP zone.. I have approximately 1 million dollars of kit here from the Yamaha DM2000 board.. O2R's, AW4416's, hard disk and multitrack tape decks to Cubase, protools, Roland/akai samplers, Helicon and TC products and synths coming out my ears.. I am sorry if I missed the para relating a tick box in 'your' manual.

System is working fine, apart from the quirks I mentioned. I am extremely happy with it. I think I can live with it...until I feel in the mood or confident enough to re-install. Besides one loves to have the whoppers when they come out. (i.e P4 and fast drives) whether MTU needs it or not. I've gone from a 386 to a 486 to a P1 to a PII 300 to a PIII 550 (which had a hard time installing and when you went to 'create screen' within the first 10 or mins of operation, everything was normal. After that: the system would hang if you went to import a segment. I assumed it was the system, nothing to do with MTU as such. Waited for 5.5 and XP or W2000 version, so whacked in a P4 2gig. The only reason.
But anoraks around me tell me that like W2000 and XP, there are loads and loads of things in it that we dont need and it could do with a good stripping down, I'd leave that to the experts.

I dont have creative blaster card. You misunderstood ( I am aware of your posts before). This is the on board AC thingy on the Intel motherboard, so I guess the same results, but honestly - No odd effects that I have noticed so far. Working incredibly well with MTU.. Besides, I posted before I enabled the on board soundchip. Sound Forge is in with it and again, nothing new since I installed that.
I do have a network card in there too working fine.
I have word/xl installed for logging. So if any of those things are causing my little quirks.. the I am happy to live with it, because it is not serious.

The IRQ probs seem history now... As I posted before about USB devices (which somehow didnt hit the board..) I guess this is the way to go if you wannado loads of things on the same machine.

Last post for now.. as is, I am ok with it. Thanks loads.
G

[Allen Brown]

Bryan,

Thanks for the suggested test. Let me make sure I understand; How long of a segment do I need to have placed in this long test project that I should run normalize on?

Also, re: adding other "things"...
The "save-as-wave" lock up and the other problems I've raised here all occurred BEFORE I installed any additional software.

I am open to the idea that the Sound Blaster card you recommended and installed could be causing some of these problems.

Thanks for filling me in on the FAT32 thing. I haven't messed with the partitioning or anything. It's as you shipped it.

After reading the angry and condescending "Admin" comments here, I'm starting to feel uneasy about deciding to buy an upgraded system. I thought I had read on these boards that ME and Krystal was running fine with newer MTU systems. Now I'm told "don't upgrade"...even if I buy from you? As I did? I'm confused. But, I'm just a dumb customer. I don't even pretend to know how this stuff works. But I've had enough confidence in it over the years to buy 5 systems from you.

Again, please make it a little clearer what I need to do to run that "normalize" test. Thanks for the support.

Allen Brown

[MTUSUPPORT]

Allen,
The segment can be any length. I would make a copy of any project that you have that is about an hour long. Then save this as a new project such as Test.mix. Then Open Test.mix and begin appending the original project into it over and over, until you hit about 10 hours, but don't go over 12 or so because there is a limitation when you get that high.

Once you have done this I always run Normalize, it should hang if there is a problem. Once that is done, I then move the Play cursor to the begining, and press the Space Bar for Play and let it go overnight. If it freezes, then there is a problem if not it should be ok.

The system was working fine when it left here, so there could be some issue that has popped up since or something is flaky with the board possibly. I won't rule anything out yet. The new system tha we shipped to you, should be working great, but we will figure it out. I am not sure about Admin's comments on this.

I ship the systems with NTFS formmatting, as I have found no problems with this under XP.

Also the Sound Blaster Sound card that we shipped was the USB Extigy correct? Or did your have and internal Sound Blaster Card?

[Allen Brown]

External card, Bryan. Thanks.

[MTUSUPPORT]

The external card has no way to make the Krystal board lock up this is why we use that one. So this shouldn't be the problem. Try the test and let me know what happens.

[Allen Brown]

Bryan,

While preparing the 10 hour long project for the test (which I hope to run tonight) I discovered the following:

I went to the end of the project and played the final 10 seconds.

When I play, the cursor hangs and the screen freezes anywhere from 5 seconds to 200 msec from the end of the project. The audio continues to play, but graphics freeze and certain elements of the screen turn white (such as fader bar). The time of the freezes seem to be random.

The cursor ALWAYS hesitates at 200 msec from the end of the project when playing. The best way to descibe it is that it looks like the cursor is just hanging on that 200 msec grid mark and then "pops" over to the end after the audio is finished.

I also observed the screen "flash" I mentioned in an earlier post. This where the screen does an almost imperceptable flash and the VU meters spike to red peak and leave the top red as if a clip occurred. The audio continues to play normally when this happens. This seems random and is hard to reproduce. I'll keep watching for a constant but I'm open to any ideas in the meantime.

I'll let you know the results of the overnight test.

Thanks,
Allen Brown

[geezer]

I'm pretty disturbed not only by the tone of admin responses to a couple of Geg's posts, but also by the specifics, because they directly effect the ways I am attempting to keep using MicroEditor during the time of its impending obsolescence. There are also some details in response to other posts that concern me. I'll list them here:

1)"XP is crap!" "Don't use new hardware!".....

....The problem with this is so obvious. We HAVE to use XP. We HAVE to use newer, faster hardware. That is the whole point of writing the program so that it could be used with XP, which I personally find works way better than any OS since 3.1 (once you clean it up).....We need to be able to use Medit in the modern environment that allows us to share files with other programs, ideally all living on the same computer......Are you telling us that we can't do this?....My Pentium 166 is still chugging along, but presents a lot of issues with interactivity, speed, storage space and available hardware and software and I am going to have to retire it very soon......If this response was just frustration on the admin's part, it was not very productive.

2)"Make a 10 hour project...." Now, I know that, up to and including the 5.2 or so I have installed on the aforementioned P166, you could not, at least with time code implemented, have a project over about 3 hours long. I tested this again last year, and verified it because, again, it raises a problem when attempting to share files with a time code-based HD recorder like the MX2424 or Nuendo or anything else that gives you essentially a 23 hour timeline.

Has something changed? Will I be able to have a very long time line with time code in 5.5?......My queries about this last year were not responded to.

3)"We ship with NTFS formatting...."
All the tests in Nuendo land I have seen indicate that, despite some other advantages with NTFS, there are no real audio performance advantages over FAT32.....The MX2424 uses FAT32, so I am tending to format my newer computers in FAT32.

The question then, is: Are there any issues with Medit, Krystal, etc. when it comes to using either file system?

[geggyboy]

Thanks Jim.
Ditto on that for most. Technically, I can add nothing other than my 'work arounds' or 'push buttons and see experience...' So your point is extremely valid, as sympathy for my points or otherwise.
As you know I have been off the board for a few years, coming back to find the old faithfulls and high hopes for XP and 5.5. From the posts, it is somewhat contrary to what I imagine each and every one of us old timers wishes.. Am I wrong? None of us want technology to pass us by. Although fantastic and a brilliant achievement, a non or new user might perceive from the posts that we all stick with a 386/rev J... cuz it works just fine with MTU.. Or a Pentium 1 with a Krystal cuz it works even better. Bit of an odd philosophe!
(I think Dave has made his point only too well and often about expenditure and bang for buck as sad as that is. I get the vibe that they'd like to see the back of it; even bigger shame. I think we all feel for him/them, because we are still here and die for continuation with MTU as the best editing platform then, now and no doubt as long as the future holds for it - at a competitive price obviously). Unfortunately, there are issues as usual and although not at all phased or upset by the rather condescending tones issued to me (just expect it back), I STILL get the feeling that we all have to be geeks to understand and work around this system a bit. A bit like Adobe not recognising Matrox and vice versa.

I was particularly at odds with the screen colours issue..(although perhaps the least important) It came over as "you are an idiot" Nothing constructive. I DO NOT HAVE AN .ini FILE THAT STATES THE PARAMETERS EVEN FOR DEFAULT. So I added it. and it makes not an ounce of difference. So NO ONE else seems to have experienced this, thus I guess they are right, cuz I am delving into area I really dont understand. But the point of this note is exactly that: To the layman or operators such as us, why would we think that our machines running Xp or 2K or whatever would be acting different ONLY because we have installed MTU... etc.. Are we going forward or retro?

G

[Rich LePage]

About the screen colors:
I recently put a Samsung 151B LCD monitor on one of the computers, and the MTU green for the counters etc looked funny on it, though everything else seemed fine (all other apps too, and all other greens). So I thought I'd try changing the screen colors, and did so. On the Samsung, they were just plain hard to view-- I think I wound up changing the background rather than the foreground color after trying it a few times. The setting in the file seemed to greatly improve things.

A paste of the microsnd.ini file is below. The only setting involving colors should be obvious, but pasted in whole thing anyway.

Note that it is currently running Win98SE though. The machine is an Athlon 1.3gig, Abit KT7A Raid m/board, 512 megs RAM, variety of drives that are yanked in and out. It also has a vanilla cheapo sound card in it for preview-- offhand I don't remember which one but it's likely a Pine S/blaster PCI clone (about $7 when you can find them in the US). However, as I've posted sev. times, the Direct X in Medit very often crashes, and has had problems with numerous DX plugs that work well with other stuff. The machine has all the MTU manual Win98 tweaks done too, such as virtual memory, acceleration, read ahead/write back, and so on. It also has DX 8.1 on it.


Hope this helps you.

[Medit]
SFDir=D:\
MixDir=D:\
msnddsp=33
maxrtmixsegs=10,12,8,10
minrtmixdur=0.000,0.000,0.000,0.000
microsync=none
screenmax=1
rtflagenable=0
showfader=0
gridinfo=1,0,1
displayflags=1,1,1,1
displaypoints=1,1,1,1
prepost=2.000000
handlelength=0.000000
appendoffset=0,0.000000,1
units=smpte
maxscan=2047
maxclipbdheight=0
showfilename=1
keepmarking=0
keepampzonedlg=1
keepskipzonedlg=1
zonedlgloc=35,84
deffade=1
fadein=0.010000,Linear
fadeout=0.010000,Linear
skipzone=0.000000,0.000000,0.003333,0.003333,0,1
ampzone=107374081,0.000000,0.003333,0.003333,0
lockauditiondelay=14
lockscrubdelay=14
createseg=0,1,1732247,0,0,0
ControlColors=65280,6316128



[EQ Simple:MTU]
EQPreSet1=Rumble filter,0,0.00,100,0.00,0,0.000,0.00,0,0.000,0.00,0,0.000,0.00
EQPreSet2=Telephone,0,0.00,0,0.00,100,0.500,0.00,400,0.500,0.00,800,0.500,0.00
EQPreSet3=Midband 1K,1000,0.00,1000,0.00,0,0.000,0.00,1000,0.700,0.00,0,0.000,0.00
EQPreSet4=Midband 2K,2000,0.00,2000,0.00,0,0.000,0.00,2000,0.700,0.00,0,0.000,0.00
EQPreSet5=Midband 4K,4000,0.00,4000,0.00,0,0.000,0.00,4000,0.720,0.50,0,0.000,0.00
EQPreSet6=3 Band full range,180,0.00,6300,0.00,280,0.600,0.00,1200,0.600,-2.50,4200,0.600,0.00
default=,1000,0.00,1000,0.00,0,0.000,0.00,1000,0.700,0.00,0,0.000,0.00
Flag=1
EQPreSet7=q1,180,0.00,6300,-2.00,280,0.600,0.00,1200,0.600,-2.50,5200,0.600,-2.00
EQPreSet8=tel2.1,180,-10.50,6300,1.00,450,0.600,-1.50,1200,1.600,6.00,4200,0.600,-1.00
EQPreSet9=d5,180,-1.50,6300,-2.00,180,0.900,-3.50,1200,0.600,0.50,5200,0.600,-2.00

[Medit32 Global AddOns]
AddOn_SegImp=SegImp.dll
AddOn_MicroX=MicroX.dll

[Compress/Limit:MTU]
Flag=1
CompLimPreSet1=13r14l17,-17,1,800,-13,141,5,40,-13,141,5,40,0
CompLimPreSet2=p2,0,1,800,-17,58,5,40,-17,58,5,40,0
CompLimPreSet3=p3,0,1,800,-22,116,5,40,-22,116,5,40,0

[MTUMicroX]
ExcludeCount=28
ExcludeFilter0="Indeo(R) audio software"
ExcludeFilter1="Lernout & Hauspie SBC 16kbit/s"
ExcludeFilter2="Microsoft G.723.1"
ExcludeFilter3="Voxware MetaVoice Audio Decoder"
ExcludeFilter4="VIVO Audio Decoder Filter"
ExcludeFilter5="PCM"
ExcludeFilter6="Tee/Sink-to-Sink Converter"
ExcludeFilter7="Voxware MetaSound Audio Decoder"
ExcludeFilter8="SampleGrabber"
ExcludeFilter9="Avance Sound"
ExcludeFilter10="ACELP.net"
ExcludeFilter11="Lernout & Hauspie SBC 8kbit/s"
ExcludeFilter12="IAC2"
ExcludeFilter13="Microsoft Kernel Audio Mixer"
ExcludeFilter14="Microsoft ADPCM"
ExcludeFilter15="IMA ADPCM"
ExcludeFilter16="GSM 6.10"
ExcludeFilter17="CCITT A-Law"
ExcludeFilter18="MPEG Layer-3"
ExcludeFilter19="CCITT u-Law"
ExcludeFilter20="ACM Wrapper"
ExcludeFilter21="Lernout & Hauspie CELP 4.8kbit/s"
ExcludeFilter22="ACELP.net Sipro Lab Audio Decoder"
ExcludeFilter23="Infinite Pin Tee Filter"
ExcludeFilter24="MPEG Audio Decoder"
ExcludeFilter25="Lernout & Hauspie SBC 12kbit/s"
ExcludeFilter26="DSP Group TrueSpeech(TM)"
ExcludeFilter27="MPEG Layer-3 Decoder"

[Rob Haines]

Hello all, old friends,

3 weeks ago the motherboard on my MicroSound computer failed so I decided it was time to upgrade to ME 5.5, XP Pro, and a P4 system. I upgraded my video system with an Intel D850MVL, P4, XP Pro last summer so I’m pretty familiar with this. My video computer is rock solid. I believe XP Pro is the best OS since Win98SE.

I put together the new MicroSound system in a hurry ‘cause I had a big project to do that lasted several weeks, a very complex playlist, many hundreds of segments. I experienced some of the problems that others have described.

*<<the screen frequently "flashes" and the on-screen VU meters peak to red.>> I’ve experienced the exact same problem that Alan Brown described. I started seeing this when the project got large and complicated. It seemed like it started happening after many hours of editing and when it occurred, it happened regularly.

*I have seen a ton of weirdness with EQ, DirectX, some that others described and a lot more. See below as to what I think is a solution for this.

*Occasionally ME would lock up the computer in the “open project” dialog.

*Way too often ME would suddenly re-boot, ouch, what a drag. Not only would it re-boot under ME, but with other programs as well (CD writing, large file copies from one drive to another, etc.). Hopefully I have this solved

I managed to get through this project and had time to think of possible fixes. First thing is, (I understand ME 5.5 might have to be tweaked) I was told Krystal can share IRQs now (better?) with a P4 board and XP. I’m not so sure. If EQ and DirectX are locking up, it’s telling me that Krystal and the sound card should not share an interrupt. If large file transfers are locking up maybe Krystal and the storage controller should not share an interrupt. So I tried Krystal in a some different slots, made sure it did NOT share an interrupt (it seems to use 2 IRQs now with XP and P4 board) and now it is behaving a LOT better. Time will tell but so far no more lockups. EQ and DirectX seem to be working fine. To those who are experiencing these problems you might consider changing slots and reconfiguring IRQs.

As for NTFS vs. Fat32, I definitely dislike NTFS for a bunch of reasons. I have Partition Magic but didn’t use it to set up my system drive. I’d like to hear more about this subject.

Let’s keep this thread going it’s very helpful.

Rob Haines

[Rob Haines]

Sorry in my previous post Alan's problem description didn't display:

"When playing back audio - the screen frequently "flashes" and the on-screen VU meters peak to red. If I don't see it actually happen, I'll often just see the red peak indicator after a take which falsely leads me to believe there was a clip."

I have experienced the exact same. See my prevoius post.

Rob Haines

[geggyboy]

Hello boys! (and maybe). Woken u up.. great!

And thanks for confirming that I am not the only one experiencing these quirks. (Rob)

Cheers Rich.. My file doesn't look ANYTHING like that...I'd also be interested in anyone else's. Very helpful and I am going to paste some of your batch into mine to see what happens.. Obviously I dont have some of the setup you have and will filter it, plus I am running XP PRO. Does this make a difference I wonder?

I have noticed that a lot of stuff than ran on windows 98 still runs in XP pro for reasons I have no idea. I understand it for XP home, cuz that is just a glorified 98. Will post results.

{side line: I have two or three athalons on the very same motherboards Abit KT7A except we cannot get the pro Raid version in the middle east ..it's only available in the states. The 1.2 gig chips cause massive probs. ...seems all other sizes ok, but I never use AMD for MTU...or our video editor.. always thought it would conflict some way.. INteresting!

[Rich LePage]

For Geg:
Glad it helped. Interesting about the Abits. They seem mostly
OK with MTU stuff for me. I just built a P4 though with an Asus
P4PE (Intel chipset). The Raid on that is of little use-- will only run true RAID array (Promise chips). But on the Abits the HPT controller has been pretty good. I have one "genuine" Intel Abit and the Athlon machine, also 2 Tyan 1598s with K62AMD500s, plus some other stuff, as well as a pile of older systems (Rev J anyone) too. The Tyans are older but still work fine for most MTU things.

The HPT Raid controller on the Abit stuff seems happy enough to just run a regularly-formatted drive, giving you the extra IDE devices. All our machines have yankable drives, so it's
handy. I keep one system at another studio in NYC to lay stuff down when I'm there, and bring the drives back to edit-land.
The one in NYC is a very vanilla old P200, with a Krystal, an outboard 2 chan i/o and also an Apogee A/D to give me a few
ways to go. Most all I do with it is straight record.

The Asus P4PE is what I'll migrate XP Pro to first. With the Intel
2.40B gig CPU(the B is faster frontside), the thing is extremely fast.
Apps like Cool Edit Pro really seem to like it. And Krystal seems
happy too -- at least with Win98. I was afraid it wouldn't be due to all the IRQs being "native" assigned to all those on the board
peripherals. But two of the slots seem unencumbered enough.

Next machine I build will prob be an Athlon "2000" XP with an Asus board again, probably the A7N8X which is nvidia chipset.
Anyone tried Krystal with that combo?

The Abits do a lot of IRQ sharing too. I wound up with the SCSI card on the first slot next to AGP with those each time, and Krystal next one down with a hard interrupt assigned to it in BIOS from back when Krystal demanded it and I never changed.
(I have SCSI boards in all machines for outboard tape backer-upppers and various other stuff used sometimes, they are mostly cheap Tekram cards with no BIOS on them so cannot boot from a SCSI hard drive-- not impt for me.)

You get mucho USB 2 and Firewire on the P4PE, plus a load of
other stuff. Though neither Asus nor Abit give a whole lot of support , it's become better than it was. My Abit Be6-2 RAID abruptly died one day, and though out of warranty, they replaced it for a $25 US cost, so can't kick on that. First Asus P4PE came through bad out of the box though the reseller was good about replacing it.

Nice web site you have too by the way. But isn't it a little scary to be where you are in the world just now?? (I bet biz is booming for feeds out of there though... )

I checked a little more and the colors I changed with what was in the INI file were the BG gray, it is slightly more washed out looking than default, but the green numbers etc don't break up as they were doing on the Samsung LCD by setting it that way.


I've noted the rubbery cursor thing at the end of segments since the last update to Medit 54 which eliminated the need for an IRQ. It's at times an annoyance, though has been workable for the most part. Of course it let MTU work on many m/boards that Krystal didn't like, apparently-- so I guess that was pretty impt.

[geggyboy]

Well boys.. Thanks to Rich taking the trouble to post his .ini file I have experimented somewhat now and this time obtained results. From my earlier posts I was saying that whatever I typed in, didnt make a difference.. it went to default. But then I notice the "control colors" line has """SOMEHOW"" appeared under the EQ section. Don't ask.. But I shifted it and things happened. Most of you will probably NOT have the line
"VIEWWINDOW COLOURS" if you have NOT changed anything from install I guess. Well if you HATE that horrible grey that I am typing on right now. (Cheer us up for goodness sake.. yuck!)
then add the line after "Control Colors", giving it some numbers.. It's great fun chucking in odd numbers just to see what happens (It's in HELP under "screen colors") So just checking in to say I have settled for a wonderful mix.. so psychadelically arty media creative.. puts you in a great mood and looks the part for any one looking over your shoulder.
Control colors=3215,16777215
Viewwindow colors=3215,65535

This give you your data windows as "White" background and I just shoved a sort of stronger purply colour on it (English spelling of colour probably effects the entry .. I dunno) .

Then the background of the view window and the Create Segment windows is now .....wait...... Bright Yellow.... Luv it! Cuz the create screen window has the wave form as BLACK and it really looks good.. This also keeps the segments in the project window as BLUE.. against the strong yellow.. Just like my office here (and kitchen in london) Real happy stuff.

As for the EQ section, Rob has an extra line ....EQ line 9 ?????? I am still having big problems with EQ.. it just doesnt work sometimes. Anything of the Direct X plug-ins.. just doesnt work at all!! It picks up the Sound Forge parameters, just doesnt act on it.
I need to experiment a bit more with that. I suspect Jimbo will be into that with his Nuendo settings as well.. so very interesting nowaday.. Microeditor has shifted gear a bit after all.

I'll post another about motherboards later
G

[geggyboy]

Dont knock it guys! a bit of feed back on Boards and processors etc. Especially performance:
Rich's experience with motherboards is so worth noting. The guys and me build all our own PC's here.. done hundreds, used everything. For example: I guess most would think that any Intel/Intel motherboard would be ok.... absolute hog!!! MTU hated my last pure INTEL motherboard running a P2/550 . Yet I am using an Intel now with a 2 gig/P4. Apart from the MTU mini quirks.. Rock solid so far.

I always thought ASUS was by far the best.. Some are! The Via 133 series are all very dodgy. I have had FOUR bad Asus motherboards (of different P2/P3 types) in a row. Plus you have to play A LOT with jumpers when they are supposed to be automatic.
A couple of bad AMD's maybe took out a few boards or the other way around.. Took out the first MSI KT (raid version),I had. replaced it with the MSI KT3 Ultra with DDR333 memory.. Hmmmm! Seems very nice indeed ...
On the video side.. we shot a twin P3/900 running on an ABIT VP6. That ran, but probs. Particularly with Raid. So changed it out for a single P4/1.8 gig. Guess what? Nice and stable.... BUT NO more real time renders in transitions on the video,.... not even cross fades... very odd!
FIC.. boards too.. not had a lot of luck with them.