Subject:AP7 - Vertical lines appear while recording?

Posted by: Vocalpoint

Date:10/28/2008 8:03:00 AM

Morning!

In my first "whirl" of AP7 last night - I wanted to test the audio recording so I loaded an 8 Pack from this past summer, armed a track and overdubbed a guitar for a good 2+ minutes....

About halfway into the recording - while watching the waveforms draw on screen - I noticed that AP7 began to draw a grid full of vertical lines starting at the beginning of my long clip in progress and it slowing worked it's way across the track. As soon as I hit stop - this strange grid disappeared and all appeared to be fine.

I never noticed this in 6.0d. Is it something new? A graphics glitch? A new algorithm gathering timing/stretch data?

Ideas? Am I seeing things?

VP

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while recording?

Reply by: thirdnostril

Date:10/28/2008 8:08:53 AM

I believe what you're seeing is a form of "greeking," which is a printing term for placeholder gibberish type put in as an expedient for page design until the copy showed up.

I believe those closely-spaced lines are ACID's way of saying, "At this level of view zoom, I can't create the peaks for this waveform fast enough to keep up, so I'm putting these lines here. When you stop, I'll generate the peaks and display them." Which is what it did.

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while recording?

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:10/28/2008 8:16:33 AM

I believe those closely-spaced lines are ACID's way of saying, "At this level of view zoom, I can't create the peaks for this waveform fast enough to keep up, so I'm putting these lines here. When you stop, I'll generate the peaks and display them." Which is what it did.

Fair enough. But my zoom level was not microscopic or anything. It was actually quite large. And like I said - never saw this type of behavior in 6.0d over the past month - and I recorded a lot of audio.

So - is it new? The waveform as I was recording was created normally and in real time. These lines didn't start appearing until about a minute into the recording....

?

VP

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: drbam

Date:10/28/2008 8:21:40 AM

In both Vegas and Acid, this has always occurred after recording for a certain amount of time - at least this has been the case for me on several computer systems and configurations over several years.

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:10/28/2008 8:37:58 AM

In both Vegas and Acid, this has always occurred after recording for a certain amount of time - at least this has been the case for me on several computer systems and configurations over several years.

Cool! I thought I was seeing things!

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while recording?

Reply by: pwppch

Date:10/28/2008 9:03:14 AM

This is how it has always worked.

ACID (and Vegas) create a temporary memory cache of "peak" data used during recording. This cache has a fixed size. If the length of recording exeeds the size of this cache, the ealier peaks are discarded and 'placeholders" are used.

Peter

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while recording?

Reply by: Ben 

Date:10/28/2008 11:09:17 AM

Peter, surely "worked"?

One would have assumed that this could be resolved in 2008...

Ben

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while recording?

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:10/28/2008 11:34:55 AM

ACID (and Vegas) create a temporary memory cache of "peak" data used during recording. This cache has a fixed size. If the length of recording exeeds the size of this cache, the ealier peaks are discarded and 'placeholders" are used.

Can the size of this cache be changed? With 4-8GB of memory on hand now - I don't have a problem increasing that cache (if I can) to do away with any "placeholders" so I can see the real deal at all times.

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:10/28/2008 12:00:55 PM

What do you mean by resolved? Are you saying that something that hasn't changed since the beginning is now broken?

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:10/28/2008 12:01:38 PM

How often do you *need* to see the completely waveform all the way back to the beginning on your screen *while* you are recording?

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:10/28/2008 1:09:58 PM

How often do you *need* to see the completely waveform all the way back to the beginning on your screen *while* you are recording?

Well - since I have been doing the same length of recording type in ACID 6.0d and never saw these lines - I am wondering why now? Same main workstation, same memory etc etc.

And how often do I "need" to see it? Well - always - if you must know. Nuendo gives me the whole thing, Wavelab...even Vegas - I have never seen this redraw occurring there either.

But perhaps "need" is too strong? How about "like" - I would "like" to see...?

Cheers!

VP

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:10/28/2008 3:05:44 PM

I would guess the buffer is a fixed size in bytes. This means that if you do anything to increase the amount of data per time period, the duration of 'active' waveform you get to see shrinks. If you switch from 16 bit to 24 bit then you'll only get 2/3" as much waveform before the buffer is full. Have you recently started recording at a higher sample rate or more channels? This might account for seeing it sooner.

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:10/30/2008 7:25:47 AM

I would guess the buffer is a fixed size in bytes

I found the "buffer" setting and made some adjustments. Will try this out tonight and see if a larger setting if fact does make the "lines" not appear.

Cheers!

VP

Subject:RE: AP7 - Vertical lines appear while record

Reply by: b4dawn

Date:10/31/2008 5:06:11 PM

My reply would be, as long as I buy what is advertised.