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Forums - Music techology
Subject: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
Original Message Date: 18-Jan-06 @ 09:58 AM Edit: 18-Jan-06 | 09:58 AM - SX3 Midi/Audio sync
Hi
I've recently made the jump from a Windows98/Cubase VST 5 setup to a spanky new XP/SX3 on a new machine.
Few teething troubles - I'm losing sync with audio and midi (playing internally - Battery1/Arturia Moog)...
Can anyone help troubleshoot this... It was originally fine for a while (i've only worked on 3 tracks so far so for a good few sessions everything was OK) it seemed to start playing up after putting Waves R Comp on a group track - although I can't see why this would cause a midi sync problem.
WIndows XP Pro Service Pack2
Emu 1212m
Cubase SX3
I seem to remember there being a midi sync test you could run in previous versions of Cubase but cant find one in SX3. Help files aren't thowing any light.
If this has been covered in the forums previously - a quick pointer to relevent threads would suffice... the forum search hasn't yeilded anything so far.
Thank you in advance..
I've recently made the jump from a Windows98/Cubase VST 5 setup to a spanky new XP/SX3 on a new machine.
Few teething troubles - I'm losing sync with audio and midi (playing internally - Battery1/Arturia Moog)...
Can anyone help troubleshoot this... It was originally fine for a while (i've only worked on 3 tracks so far so for a good few sessions everything was OK) it seemed to start playing up after putting Waves R Comp on a group track - although I can't see why this would cause a midi sync problem.
WIndows XP Pro Service Pack2
Emu 1212m
Cubase SX3
I seem to remember there being a midi sync test you could run in previous versions of Cubase but cant find one in SX3. Help files aren't thowing any light.
If this has been covered in the forums previously - a quick pointer to relevent threads would suffice... the forum search hasn't yeilded anything so far.
Thank you in advance..
Message 11/19 20-Jan-06 @ 11:15 AM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
BTW - high spec machine was designed used for video stuff as well as music and graphics....
Message 12/19 20-Jan-06 @ 01:38 PM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
yeah, do you do HD vid then? cos we edit fine even on an old amd2000, althought i get better preview iwith my amd64 3000 (Vegas 5/6) never an issue with disk i/o using straight IDE & Vegas 6 now chucks out AVID EDL's
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 13/19 20-Jan-06 @ 02:33 PM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
again all new to me... I used to do loads of analogue editing on my degree and want to get into digi stuff... got after effects and premier winging there way to me at the mo.. so its all quite exciting. What sort of stuff do you do?
I guess I bought the highest spec I could afford with this in mind (and thinking about stuff like convolution reverbs/reaktor etc)
I work as a graphic designer so a fast system also helps for big Photoshop stuff - its so speedy.
Is there such a thing as over spec'ing? Don't some call this future-proofing? I was advised that the only bottleneck to having such a fast system would be HD access speed which is why I got the RAID strip config... also the people I got it off were doing a two-for-one on the particular HD i bought, the RAID stripe was only £6.. why not?
I guess I bought the highest spec I could afford with this in mind (and thinking about stuff like convolution reverbs/reaktor etc)
I work as a graphic designer so a fast system also helps for big Photoshop stuff - its so speedy.
Is there such a thing as over spec'ing? Don't some call this future-proofing? I was advised that the only bottleneck to having such a fast system would be HD access speed which is why I got the RAID strip config... also the people I got it off were doing a two-for-one on the particular HD i bought, the RAID stripe was only £6.. why not?
Message 14/19 21-Jan-06 @ 12:04 AM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
well obviously, you tune a car with all sorts of mods, and it can be problematic. Each to0 their own, but i kinda have a Luddite attitude to life and like things simple, if it can handle it
I'd seriously urge you to checkout VEGAS from Sony, it is superb!!!... some directors were over this week and i mentioned that in the other room i had a box with as much grunt as a G4 which could churn out AVID EDL's and 1/2 a terrabyte of disk would cost 180 - 200 quid... they were amazed.
See thing is, when you edit film, it's first transferred to video with burnt in time code, edited, then the edits go back to what was the cutting room in the old days, and you get 'Prints' done, like getting phot prints from Dig cameras, except they cost about 30k in the Uk (WAY cheaper in the east, hence Uk is loosing shitloads of ilm biz and studios are getting fucked as happened to the music studios back in the 90's (remember all those massive majors going bust back then?
anyways i digress, but these EDL's are Edit Lists (standard acronym), and as you'd imagine, an edit list is a series of linear digital data which contaisn inforamtion about hours:minutes:seconds:frames of where in the film and which part of which video file plays then and other tuff.. but in essense it's simply a referrence to film digitaised footage p[ositions, macthed to linear time.
anyways AVID, is sort of like the Pro-Tools of the film world, it's been around yonks, like 15 years, always developing, however, it's way clunky and the interface is fucking aweful!!... a real pigs ear all grey nasty bits and childishly simple graphic
so anyways, Vegas can create EDL's which AVI reads, so you can sort your digitaised footage cheaply then compile your basic edit, then take that to be fine tuned in a pro studio with all the approved toys. However, VEGAS does do full colour correction!... in real time so anyways it does all the pro jobs BUT, it started life as Sonic Foundry's ACID
SF sold their stuff to Sony (like Adobe bought Cool Edit), but AFAIK, ACID already had video features by that time.
Anyways, it also has a full on multitrack audio recording setup with the standard sequencer tracks etc, and it takes DX fx and the new V6 takes VST fx and also responds to generic controllers so you can use say a BCF behringer mixer to fade video levels or do audio tasks etc... I assume, haven't yet tried it TBH even tho i own & use both.
So anyways (to rewind back to the start), one of these directors started saying abouut how the drag and drop and such thinsg was so easy compared to AVID etc... things are really changing in the film video industry I can say... It's kinda where 'music studio' a few years back, with a new wave of technology thru PC's is about to alter things drasticaly.
So for example, we were working on one film last year, and the producer (my mate) ran out money, so we had to use Vegas to create a 'Teaser' edit to promote the film (like the 'Coming Soon' trailers you see on videos). We only had VHS tranferred footage!!! (low quality cos it;s cassette)
Anyways, what can you do!.. we imported the footage and mixed it, added music and burned some dvd's with a nice printed cover we did by taking stills from the video in Vegas. That went of to Cannes festival, and frankly, the response was great, and apparently, if people were told how the DVD was done, they said that perhaps we should do it ourselves and go for less money
I'm sure the lastest Premier can do similar things. I aint checked it for almost 2 years, when at that time it didn't do realtime preview (which Vegas did do)
But i still reckon you chould check the demo.
The last one we've been doing over the last 3 weeks we got the digitised mpg footage in DVD format. I ripped the DVD's to mpeg-1 files, imported them to Vegas, and then rendered off just the audio track to a mono 44.1 wav file. So for the whole film we had 5 'Reels' of mpeg-1 video with timecode burnt in, and 5 mono audio working-rough soundtracks (with silent parts where sounds had yet to be done).
We imported that video into Logic, hence we rendered it as lo-fi mpeg-1 cos it's good enuff for quality for composing soundtracks & audio to.
Then we used VST instruments to make the score. (Garriton, and some Native-Instruments stuff like Kontakt)
That's gotta now be fine tweaked to add those subtleties and do checks. Then it has to be rendered into individual audio files of the main parts for surround mixing, and also they get a finsihed full-mix so they can see hgow it should sound. In the dolby studio they do the certified mix (you cant get your Dolby Cert' display unless it's done in a 'Dolby' certified studio of course) they mix it to the final film edit along with any foley (added footsteps & whatever 'added afterwards' sounds)
anyways, im a bit drunk so i'm rambling, but hey, if you new to this, it might be fun. Your machine can certainly do it in theory powerwise. Having that extra 3rd dimension of the video/image is fascinating.
To change the subject, how do you import your video? (what card for connecting cameras)?
Tbh i'm new to this myself, picking stuff up as we go.
I'd seriously urge you to checkout VEGAS from Sony, it is superb!!!... some directors were over this week and i mentioned that in the other room i had a box with as much grunt as a G4 which could churn out AVID EDL's and 1/2 a terrabyte of disk would cost 180 - 200 quid... they were amazed.
See thing is, when you edit film, it's first transferred to video with burnt in time code, edited, then the edits go back to what was the cutting room in the old days, and you get 'Prints' done, like getting phot prints from Dig cameras, except they cost about 30k in the Uk (WAY cheaper in the east, hence Uk is loosing shitloads of ilm biz and studios are getting fucked as happened to the music studios back in the 90's (remember all those massive majors going bust back then?
anyways i digress, but these EDL's are Edit Lists (standard acronym), and as you'd imagine, an edit list is a series of linear digital data which contaisn inforamtion about hours:minutes:seconds:frames of where in the film and which part of which video file plays then and other tuff.. but in essense it's simply a referrence to film digitaised footage p[ositions, macthed to linear time.
anyways AVID, is sort of like the Pro-Tools of the film world, it's been around yonks, like 15 years, always developing, however, it's way clunky and the interface is fucking aweful!!... a real pigs ear all grey nasty bits and childishly simple graphic
so anyways, Vegas can create EDL's which AVI reads, so you can sort your digitaised footage cheaply then compile your basic edit, then take that to be fine tuned in a pro studio with all the approved toys. However, VEGAS does do full colour correction!... in real time so anyways it does all the pro jobs BUT, it started life as Sonic Foundry's ACID
SF sold their stuff to Sony (like Adobe bought Cool Edit), but AFAIK, ACID already had video features by that time.
Anyways, it also has a full on multitrack audio recording setup with the standard sequencer tracks etc, and it takes DX fx and the new V6 takes VST fx and also responds to generic controllers so you can use say a BCF behringer mixer to fade video levels or do audio tasks etc... I assume, haven't yet tried it TBH even tho i own & use both.
So anyways (to rewind back to the start), one of these directors started saying abouut how the drag and drop and such thinsg was so easy compared to AVID etc... things are really changing in the film video industry I can say... It's kinda where 'music studio' a few years back, with a new wave of technology thru PC's is about to alter things drasticaly.
So for example, we were working on one film last year, and the producer (my mate) ran out money, so we had to use Vegas to create a 'Teaser' edit to promote the film (like the 'Coming Soon' trailers you see on videos). We only had VHS tranferred footage!!! (low quality cos it;s cassette)
Anyways, what can you do!.. we imported the footage and mixed it, added music and burned some dvd's with a nice printed cover we did by taking stills from the video in Vegas. That went of to Cannes festival, and frankly, the response was great, and apparently, if people were told how the DVD was done, they said that perhaps we should do it ourselves and go for less money
I'm sure the lastest Premier can do similar things. I aint checked it for almost 2 years, when at that time it didn't do realtime preview (which Vegas did do)
But i still reckon you chould check the demo.
The last one we've been doing over the last 3 weeks we got the digitised mpg footage in DVD format. I ripped the DVD's to mpeg-1 files, imported them to Vegas, and then rendered off just the audio track to a mono 44.1 wav file. So for the whole film we had 5 'Reels' of mpeg-1 video with timecode burnt in, and 5 mono audio working-rough soundtracks (with silent parts where sounds had yet to be done).
We imported that video into Logic, hence we rendered it as lo-fi mpeg-1 cos it's good enuff for quality for composing soundtracks & audio to.
Then we used VST instruments to make the score. (Garriton, and some Native-Instruments stuff like Kontakt)
That's gotta now be fine tweaked to add those subtleties and do checks. Then it has to be rendered into individual audio files of the main parts for surround mixing, and also they get a finsihed full-mix so they can see hgow it should sound. In the dolby studio they do the certified mix (you cant get your Dolby Cert' display unless it's done in a 'Dolby' certified studio of course) they mix it to the final film edit along with any foley (added footsteps & whatever 'added afterwards' sounds)
anyways, im a bit drunk so i'm rambling, but hey, if you new to this, it might be fun. Your machine can certainly do it in theory powerwise. Having that extra 3rd dimension of the video/image is fascinating.
To change the subject, how do you import your video? (what card for connecting cameras)?
Tbh i'm new to this myself, picking stuff up as we go.
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 15/19 21-Jan-06 @ 12:05 AM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
of shit!!.. I just re-read your post... lol, i feel prat now cos i talked to you like a noob, lol, sorry - edit those bits 
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 16/19 21-Jan-06 @ 12:19 AM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
quote
......and thinking about stuff like convolution reverbs/reaktor etc
I work as a graphic designer so a fast system also helps for big Photoshop stuff - its so speedy.
....I was advised that the only bottleneck to having such a fast system would be HD access speed which is why I got the RAID strip config... also the people I got it off were doing a two-for-one on the particular HD i bought, the RAID stripe was only £6.. why not?
......and thinking about stuff like convolution reverbs/reaktor etc
I work as a graphic designer so a fast system also helps for big Photoshop stuff - its so speedy.
....I was advised that the only bottleneck to having such a fast system would be HD access speed which is why I got the RAID strip config... also the people I got it off were doing a two-for-one on the particular HD i bought, the RAID stripe was only £6.. why not?
1. true, those con's eat cpu and Reators pretty greedy, i aint upgraded mine for ages, I think i've still got v4
2. well that depends how it's striped, I assume they did it for speed rather than data integrity. Anyways, what the hell, you can get wacking great Firewire drives realy cheap now, and thats where it's going as Firewire specs ramp up I guess. but if you keep some spare IDE cables handy and dont mid some maintainence/setup work, you can physicaly unplug standard IDE drives, bung in 2 new ones and get 1/2 Terrabyte of disk space for peanuts. Sure, it's nat as handy as caddy's or Firewire or SCSI, but it's bloody cheap!.. I have yet to test if a standard IDE setup can deliver HD video. I gotta test that out soon.
But the point is, we watch DVD's... that's the actual product, and the image is great. Well that's about 380mb for each 'reel' and thats DVD spec, and that is FINE to edit!, in fact it's overkill for editing in terms of the bulk of the work... sorting scenes/takes and compiling as you know... to tbh for everything but the hi-res stuff it's fine now to use a home system, huge amounts of work which used to cost tens of thousands (for small films that is) can be done by guys like you for alot less. It's cool do mix music work with film work, makes a change
interesting times anyways
where did you do film?
btw, the chroma-key stuff in Vegas is SO easy to use
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 17/19 21-Jan-06 @ 03:58 AM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
is this session you're speaking of the "breaking point" as in it works fine until you add that last audio track or vsti then gets corrupted? If it can play back even a stereo track continuously without going berzerk, then I would say it's not a driver issue, because all the driver sees is an interleaved stereo file coming from Cubase, what constitues that signal should be of no consequence.
I'd be curious to see if a loaded VSTI-only session would playback continuously without problem. If it does, with your CPU near full load, then I would say you have a disk issue. Probably RAID-related. From what I've read (never used it myself), RAID controllers can be kinda finicky with DAW software. Especially ones built-in to motherboards. Is this what you have?
If the RAID thing is the problem, I would do a search here because a lot of cats over there have really sick machines and have run into and solved such issues. Sorry to keep pluggin gearslutz, btw k, just I really do think they have a wealth of knowledge on this subject.
But I would just just run the disks without RAID. Unless you're doing heavy (and I meant HEAVY) 96k recording or trying to run massive Gigasampler ensembles or an HD video stream alongside your DAW, it's really quite pointless to do RAID, especially with SATA drives.
I'd be curious to see if a loaded VSTI-only session would playback continuously without problem. If it does, with your CPU near full load, then I would say you have a disk issue. Probably RAID-related. From what I've read (never used it myself), RAID controllers can be kinda finicky with DAW software. Especially ones built-in to motherboards. Is this what you have?
If the RAID thing is the problem, I would do a search here because a lot of cats over there have really sick machines and have run into and solved such issues. Sorry to keep pluggin gearslutz, btw k, just I really do think they have a wealth of knowledge on this subject.
But I would just just run the disks without RAID. Unless you're doing heavy (and I meant HEAVY) 96k recording or trying to run massive Gigasampler ensembles or an HD video stream alongside your DAW, it's really quite pointless to do RAID, especially with SATA drives.
Message 18/19 21-Jan-06 @ 11:55 AM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
sure, it's something between components which process the data cos it's breaking up gradualy over time - You hear this problem now and again (and not that infrequently TBH), and and i've never seen a straigh fix for it, as in; "Oh that's caused by XYZ, you need to go to A and change it to B".... So , unfortunately, the only advice people give is to go thru the system starting from scratch ABC style.... it sounds like over time something starts to hog some part of the delivery chain, bit by bit, so data sending to the card gradualy grinds to a halt.
I agree about all the RIAD stuff. I never ever have a PC problem apart from the usual occaisional conflict, but I always keep it straight, preferring to use more cpu power to start with than tweaking something of lower power. He's got gobs of power with that AMD 4000 CPU, I frankly dont think RAID is required nowadays exccept for security, but as you say, alot of problematic motherboards do tend to be the RAID versions, and the more 'fancy' the PC the more prone it seems to be to problems (of course).
It's a bitch this one cos there's no hard & fast answer. But something's interrupting the data sync between audio & software cycles and corrupting the data I spose. That e-mu... hmm... it's the only soundcard I've had problems with myself. I one machine which also had a firewire card fitted it just wouldnt co-operate and used to close Logic and would crash when trying to browse drives. I assumed it was some conflict because the emu 1820m has firewire also and fucntions as a firewire device.Anyways, they do have problems for people those e-mu's as you can see from the www.
also perhaps try SX2, not SX3, that sx3 crack loads some sort of app which acts as the dongle as i understand it, and the proggy is continualy calling the app cos the copy protect is build deeply into evey part of the programme rather than a straight 'on-boot' dongle check of previous versions.
I'd try SX2 first just to see if it makes a a difference.
btw James, one thing althought i doubt it'd make a difference but, on alot of pc's i've seen if you change the processor scheduling to background services, it can allow the sequencer to run into the CPU redline, i dunno if that's worth changing just as an experiment. You'll find it in control-panel/system/advanced/performance/advanced
change the scheduling to Background Services & reboot, but also add the VIA Hyperion patches.
after that try the usual change card-slot... try it in slot 3, but at least in any slot NOT next to the AGP card slot.
I agree about all the RIAD stuff. I never ever have a PC problem apart from the usual occaisional conflict, but I always keep it straight, preferring to use more cpu power to start with than tweaking something of lower power. He's got gobs of power with that AMD 4000 CPU, I frankly dont think RAID is required nowadays exccept for security, but as you say, alot of problematic motherboards do tend to be the RAID versions, and the more 'fancy' the PC the more prone it seems to be to problems (of course).
It's a bitch this one cos there's no hard & fast answer. But something's interrupting the data sync between audio & software cycles and corrupting the data I spose. That e-mu... hmm... it's the only soundcard I've had problems with myself. I one machine which also had a firewire card fitted it just wouldnt co-operate and used to close Logic and would crash when trying to browse drives. I assumed it was some conflict because the emu 1820m has firewire also and fucntions as a firewire device.Anyways, they do have problems for people those e-mu's as you can see from the www.
also perhaps try SX2, not SX3, that sx3 crack loads some sort of app which acts as the dongle as i understand it, and the proggy is continualy calling the app cos the copy protect is build deeply into evey part of the programme rather than a straight 'on-boot' dongle check of previous versions.
I'd try SX2 first just to see if it makes a a difference.
btw James, one thing althought i doubt it'd make a difference but, on alot of pc's i've seen if you change the processor scheduling to background services, it can allow the sequencer to run into the CPU redline, i dunno if that's worth changing just as an experiment. You'll find it in control-panel/system/advanced/performance/advanced
change the scheduling to Background Services & reboot, but also add the VIA Hyperion patches.
after that try the usual change card-slot... try it in slot 3, but at least in any slot NOT next to the AGP card slot.
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 19/19 23-Jan-06 @ 09:33 AM - RE: SX3 Midi/Audion sync
Thanks...
Will let you know any outcomes. I'll probably ditch the raid config and see what happens there. I've got SX2 as well I think so I'll stick that on instead.
haha - don't worry! Defo noob when it comes to vid stuff. As I say it was all cine super8 and analogue VHS stuff I did at college.
Thanks again for the pointers.
James
Will let you know any outcomes. I'll probably ditch the raid config and see what happens there. I've got SX2 as well I think so I'll stick that on instead.
quote
k wrote:
of shit!!.. I just re-read your post... lol, i feel prat now cos i talked to you like a noob, lol, sorry - edit those bits
k wrote:
of shit!!.. I just re-read your post... lol, i feel prat now cos i talked to you like a noob, lol, sorry - edit those bits
haha - don't worry! Defo noob when it comes to vid stuff. As I say it was all cine super8 and analogue VHS stuff I did at college.
Thanks again for the pointers.
James
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