My "undo" quirk

[N2RCDNG]

I have been using SS for several years. Recently, I have discovered that when I delete a small portion of a region that is part of a large file, it takes a long time for the deletion to take place, especially if the deletion is attempted near the begining of the file. I should explain that by "deletion" I mean creating start and end boudaries within the region, and then hitting the "delete" key. Also, it seems the program is writing "undo" information (or perhaps re-writing the entire SF) to the hard drive. If I uncheck "auto undo" in the options window the problem does not exist .... but, of course, I no longer have any "undo" :(
Have I inadvertantly optioned something incorrectly?

Perplexed,

George
National Media Services

[Bob L]

With each edit that creates undo files, the disk is being written. The undo files are pretty much a complete edl file... these are usually small and should take but an unnoticable blink of an eye, even on the slowest of systems.

My guess is that something is impeding your disk writes in a severe way if you are having delays as mentioned.

Make sure no virus checker software is active... because they will usually try scanning everything written to disk against their database of known virus patterns, which could effectively bring your disk access totally down into the mud.

Otherwise, I would suggest that perhaps the DMA access to the disk drives is not active, or the disk write cache on the physical drives is not active.

You may want to right-click the My Computer icon, then choose Manage, then Device Manager... then look at the individual disk drive properties and make sure the Write Cache is ON. Also check the Disk controllers and make sure DMA is active for each.

If you are using external usb or firewire drives, make sure you are getting proper drive speed. Win 2K and some XP installations set the usb to version 1.1... which is too slow for disk storage... make sure your machine is up to 2.0 speed. If you are using firewire, and XP Service Pack 2... make sure to do the fixes listed on the RME site for the firewire which SP 2 usually breaks.

You may also consider setting your default undo path to your fastest drive.

Bob L

[N2RCDNG]

DMA and Cache options are all OK on the drives. One more clue: If I cut part of a region by using the "K" key and the "R" key method, things seem to work normally. It's only when I create boundaries with the "K" key and then hit the "delete" key. Note, no fire wire active at this time.

george

[Bob L]

Nothing unique that I can see off-hand about using the DEL key... unless some other background app is trapping it and trying to do something with it in the background.

I just tried a series of K cuts and then went back and used the DEL key to remove certain regions and the result is instant on my machine.

There may be something else about your particular setup in SAWStudio or otherwise on the machine that is causing the issue.

Any more clues you can find would be helpful.

Also, make sure your priority boost is set to Applications and not Background in the Windows Control Panel/System/Performance area.

Bob L

[N2RCDNG]

It acts as though it is re-writing both the edl AND the associated sound files .... when you tried duplicating my problem did you use a large file, such as an edl for a CD with 15 or 20 tunes (SFs) in it?

George

[Bob L]

The undo edl files do not include the soundfiles... SAWStudio edl files do not write soundfiles only links to soundfiles.

My guess is that if you actually do the save and update command, you will take the same amount of time to save the edl... this should be instant, even on the largest of sessions with dozens of plugins and hundreds of file links.

The problem you are seeing probably has nothing to do with the undo function, except that is where you are noticing the slow disk writes interfere with your work flow.

I would bet all disk writes on the system are slow.

Download my HDSpeed utility from the Misc downloads on my site and give me back the read/write values you obtain.

They should be well over 20KBytes per sec.

Another problem could be a specific plugin that is patched into the session and creating a huge amount of storage data for their settings. This does go into the edl... remove any plugins and see if that helps... if so, then let's look at what plugin is causing the slowdown.

How large is the edl file in size on the disk?

Bob L

[N2RCDNG]

edl file size is 103kb. Now, the wierd part: when I first bring up the edl into the MT window and do a "Save and update session" it seems to complete the operation normally,(i.e. I get the message "Session Saved Successfully" right away); however, the write indicating light on the HD drive continues to glow for 10 seconds or so. But, initiating a subsequent "Save and Update Session" command this [HD drive] light does NOT stay lit for 10 seconds.....just gives one quick blink. :confused:
This is the only machine that exhibits this problem. Others are OK with SS.

George

[Bob L]

Perhaps others will be able to chime in with some suggestions about what might be going on with the harddrive system.

Bob L

[MMP]

A thing I have noticed, which may or may not be related, is that any EDL I create with EDL Convert takes ages to undo...I have no idea why.

Regards,

MM

[Naturally Digital]

edl file size is 103kb. Now, the wierd part: when I first bring up the edl into the MT window and do a "Save and update session" it seems to complete the operation normally,(i.e. I get the message "Session Saved Successfully" right away); however, the write indicating light on the HD drive continues to glow for 10 seconds or so. But, initiating a subsequent "Save and Update Session" command this [HD drive] light does NOT stay lit for 10 seconds.....just gives one quick blink. :confused:
This is the only machine that exhibits this problem. Others are OK with SS.Is the drive close to full or badly fragmented?

Can you try re-pathing the whole project to another drive and see if the problem goes away?

[N2RCDNG]

This is happening regardless of the drive that I use....even firewire-connected drives. All my drives are only 30% full, at most, and have been defragged recently. I wonder if it has anything to do with networking. I am set up to allow neworking to my laptop. I do not have a connection to the internet, though, on the studio computer.

george

[Bob L]

I have all my machines networked and connected to the internet through one firewall box and do not have any of these problems.

There is something else going on... and if you say everything works fine on your other machines with the same edl, then it sure looks like there is something specific about this machine and its harddisk handling.

Bob L

[Bob L]

How much RAM... do you have enough or is Windows buried in the swap file?

If the harddrive light stays on like you mentioned, it could be Windows forced to swapping all the ram out to write the undo file.

Bob L

[N2RCDNG]

I have 1gb of RAM.

george

[Yura]

Please describe this "specific" machine where the weirdness occures (h/w).
And again, for any case, what plugs do you use in this edl.

[N2RCDNG]

Hi George. This machine is a P4, 2.8gHz, dual processing, 1gb DDR RAM, with MS XP Home OS. SS is version 3.9
I have no plug-ins assigned to this particular edl. It really doesn't seem to make any difference, anyway. I am starting to think that something is behaving peculiarly with the use of RAM and virtual memory use on HD (as if it were RAM). I don't really know how to check that out.

George

[Yura]

Hi George
Very strange.
one else, what the chipset exactly. I experienced not less weird things some chipsets (not rare enough) may provoke with rare software - very weird. untill unbelieveble.

[Bob L]

Make sure you are on SS 3.9b or c.

Bob L

[Jay Q]

Just grasping at straws here, George, but do you have some kind of system restore utility running on that machine? If so, disable it.

Jay

[N2RCDNG]

Jay, I don't have any system restore functions activated.
Bob, this ver. [3.9] seems to work fine on another machine here. Have not put in 3.9b or c yet.
Thank you all for the time you have devoted to this problem. Nice to see the SS users band together in time of need.

george

[Carlos Mills]

Hi Bob and George,

Maybe a corrupted EDL?