Subject:building peaks: Is this a bug or just stupid?

Posted by: ibliss

Date:10/17/2005 7:30:50 AM

When I drag and drop multiple files into SF8, it tries to mulitask and start building peaks for more than one file at a time - this actually slows things down because the files are on the same drive, so you get a huge number of disk seeks, increased wear on the drive, not to mention the horrible drive noise!

Intelligent behaviour would be to build the peaks for one file and then move on to the next, or if the files came from different drives, have one 'peak build' routine active on a single drive at any one time.

Subject:RE: building peaks, and file handling

Reply by: Sound Dog

Date:10/18/2005 7:30:40 AM

I, too, am somewhat annoyed by this and wish there were better control of how much 'multitasking' is attempted. (or if there is, someone please holler! :)

I tend to use a couple of different disk drives (e.g., one to record to, then process to another). It doesn't help with your mentioned problem, of course. In fact, it introduces another: the waveform's "window bar" (as far as I know) cannot show the entire drive/file path (it just shows a filename). Which means that I have to show file properties to make sure I'm dealing with the file that I think I'm dealing with. It doesn't sound like a big issue, but when you have a whole bunch of open files it's easy to lose track.

Any feedback on either of these issues is appreciated; Thanks in advance!
Sound Dog
Colorado USA

Subject:RE: building peaks, and file handling

Reply by: ibliss

Date:10/18/2005 7:49:39 AM

Well I went to 'Product Suggestion' to suggest that they sort out this behaviour, so fingers crossed.

This issue can really take it's toll when you have projects like mine where I want to drop 16x 2-hour long files from a multitrack into SF8, and then it starts trying to build multiple peaks at the same time.

glad (sorry) it isn't just me!

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:10/18/2005 10:33:57 AM

Hmmm. I don't see that. When i open multiple files simultaneously i see all the files queued to have the peaks built, but then they are processed sequentially. The progress indicator only advances for one file at a time. The rest stay at 0% until their own turn comes up. So it looks to me like SF8 is doing what you ask.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: ibliss

Date:10/18/2005 12:46:05 PM

Nope, not here. I can replicate this over and over, with different file formats etc.

1) open SF8

2) open your explorer window or do 'open' within SF8

3) select multiple files

4) drag them into SF8 or open them in SF8

5) SF8 will start building peaks on two files with the others queued up. No more than two files will be worked on at any time, but never just one at a time either.

You can make it easier to see this happening by going to the 'window' menu and choosing 'tile horizontally' so that you can see all of the windows at once.

I think it's a BUG. I'm running SF8b on XP SP2.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:10/18/2005 12:50:06 PM

Curious question ... are you using dual-processors or a dual-core processor? It may be running a peak building thread for each processor. Since my computer is a single processor it only attempts one at a time.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: ibliss

Date:10/18/2005 1:25:58 PM

No (wish I was!), just a lowly Althon 64 3000+ single core, 512mb RAM.

Are you running Sound Forge 8?

I ask because I just tried the same test if SF6 on the same machine - it builds peak files one at a time. The result of dropping 8 16-bit wav files, each around 3.5 minutes long is as follows:

SF6 - all peaks built in approx 13 seconds.
SF8 - all peaks built in approx 60 seconds.

You can understand why this is frustrating for me!

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:10/18/2005 2:22:43 PM

Version 8.0a, build 74 on this computer. I've got 8.0b at home and it behaves the same.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: Sound Dog

Date:10/18/2005 2:27:06 PM

I'm using a uniprocessor as well but with 768mb memory. What's causing this could well be a Windows setting--although I can't recall which (?)

It might be related to the setting that allows you to do two downloads at once (obviously at half the speed--and probably less).

I kind of work around this problem by "walking away" when I drag and drop a number of files. Then, naturally, my disks needs a good defrag--but what the heck.

Obviously I'd prefer single-threading as well.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: ibliss

Date:10/18/2005 4:41:09 PM

the 'two downloads per web site' is the windows default, so 99% of systems (including mine) are set like that. Can't see how it would have effect on any other software, plus SF6 behaves properly for me.

hmmm...

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: Sound Dog

Date:10/18/2005 6:57:36 PM

OK, sorry, never mind.... :)

Regards
Sound Dog
Colorado

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stupid?

Reply by: porkjelly

Date:10/20/2005 9:24:24 AM

Ditto for me on the same problem. Very annoying.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stupid?

Reply by: ibliss

Date:10/20/2005 10:05:42 AM

Well I haven't solved the problem. I sent a support request in to Sony about 7:30pm on Tuesday, describing the problem, giving a link to this thread and attached a video clip of a screen capture show the problem happening.

I haven't heard back from them yet - I keep checking my email and this forum but nothing yet. But I think that now there are three of us we can say that there is a definite issue with SF8.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stupid?

Reply by: ForumAdmin

Date:10/20/2005 1:04:49 PM

Fine, I don't like to mention these sorts of things, but if this is really that big of an issue:

1) Hold down Ctrl+Shift and select Options->Preferences
2) Select the Internal tab
3) Type in or navigate to the entry labeled "Use 2 Processor DataWnd processing"
4) Change the value to 1 or 0, tab or click out to commit
5) Click Apply and OK
6) Restart Sound Forge.

This should give you the behavior you want. This means all background processes will be queued to a single thread.

j.

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stupid?

Reply by: ibliss

Date:10/20/2005 1:58:52 PM

Yes, it is a big issue when I'm working to a deadline and peak building is taking 5x long than it needs to while my hard disk is being thrashed and the system slows to a crawl, thanks for your concern.

I wasn't grumbling about slow reply from Sony in my last post; I know that the support is on a first come-first serve basis. I was merely pointing out to others in the thread what stage I was at in trouble-shooting.

The fix you suggested worked - thankyou.

Checking the internal prefs of SF6, datawind is set to 1 by default, but changing it to '2' didn't make SF6 build 2 peak files at a time.

I still believe this is a bug in SF8, because it doesn't matter how many threads you have being processed at the same time, you may still only have one hard drive as the source, so the 'dual peak building' will still crawl along. It's like when you copy one huge file from a CD-ROM to HD, then copy another while the first is still going - the whole thing slows to a crawl.

When you say "This means all background processes will be queued to a single thread" what implications does this have? Does it effectively disable the mulitasking nature of SF8?

Might this be fixed in the future?

Thanks again!

Subject:RE: building peaks: Is this a bug or just stu

Reply by: Sound Dog

Date:10/22/2005 12:29:19 PM

Thanks Adm, this worked for me as well.

I find it interesting that not everyone seems to have the same default.

Also: I'm not so sure that this feature should be all that hidden. Have you done any performance testing re this multitasking (vs. not multitasking)? Or looked into how fragmented disk(s) get after considerable work in SF?

Regards,
Sound Dog
Colorado