I am trying out Melodyne essntial for the first time on a new project. It SCARES me. My normally stable set up teters on the brink of crashing, and actually has a couple of times. I move the buffer up to 1024 like it suggests, but after a couple of minutes it starts sputtering distorting, restarting, etc. I think I like the results, but I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into it. Some questions:
How big of a chunk have any of you been able to work with at a time?
If you work on little bits, do you have to bounce to tracks each time to get effects to stick?
Is there a way in Essential to split notes? I have a couple of two or three syllable chunks that I can't process because they are stuck together, even though they have different pitches.
Is there a way to control vibrato?
The pitch drift control doesn't do a thing. Is that an upgrade feature?
I read a post where a bunch of folks sang the praises of Melodyne vs. V Vocal. I really haven't used v vocal since my last machine 'cuz I couldn't get it to work without crashing, but now I have an i7 machine w/ 16Gigs of RAM and two hard drives and I felt, until now, that my machine was a rock. Here's an opportunity to win a new convert into the Melodyne fold. Some strategies that have worked for you would be appreciated.
Tim

Are you on Sonar X3E?
Melodyne is fine for me without buffer changes, I just make sure I edit no more than a minute of clips at a time (I find it easier to manage that way as well i.e. verse/chorus/verse etc).

Cheers..

orangesporanges
How big of a chunk have any of you been able to work with at a time?

 
I work with phrases and lines, not an entire vocal. It can do an entire vocal, but I prefer working on smaller chunks. 
 

If you work on little bits, do you have to bounce to tracks each time to get effects to stick?

 
As soon as the vocal sounds the way I want, I bounce it and move on.
 

Is there a way in Essential to split notes? I have a couple of two or three syllable chunks that I can't process because they are stuck together, even though they have different pitches.

 
I upgraded to Editor and once you do that, I don't know of any way to "downgrade" to Essential (not that i want to!!). So I can't verify, but I don't think so.
 

Is there a way to control vibrato?

 
In Editor, yes.
 

The pitch drift control doesn't do a thing. Is that an upgrade feature?

 
I'm pretty sure this works in Essential. The results may not be visually obvious, nor will be applicable to all the "blobs."
 

I read a post where a bunch of folks sang the praises of Melodyne vs. V Vocal. I really haven't used v vocal since my last machine 'cuz I couldn't get it to work without crashing, but now I have an i7 machine w/ 16Gigs of RAM and two hard drives and I felt, until now, that my machine was a rock. Here's an opportunity to win a new convert into the Melodyne fold. Some strategies that have worked for you would be appreciated.

I didn't have serious problems with V-Vocal and was hesitant to have to learn a new method. I never use V-Vocal anymore, although I did upgrade to Editor. It has all kinds of features I use all the time, like vibrato control, formant shifting, the polyphonic correction algorithm (used it to correct pitch on a slide guitar part and it preserved the slides), etc. The Percussive algorithm is great for leveling vocals.
 
Even Essential does good ADT effects and harmony creation (see my blog posts on these). 
 
For now, I highly recommend working on lines and phrases, not entire vocals. Melodyne is an amazing tool, very deep. The one caution I have is the more you transpose the pitch, the more likely the timing within the phrase will shift somewhat.

While Melodyne/Sonar allows you to run many instances and I personally prefer to leave them open, I do believe it's more stable if you bounce them and only have one open while you're working on it.

Thanks guys.
Alex, yes X3e. I decided to go ahead and experiment on a song I'm having one of my students record, where I laid down some vocals ("Aren't there any words?". so, I wrote and sang some, but threw it together pretty quick, perfect fodder for melodyne)
I used little chunks,1 part of one verse at a time and was able to step through the whole song with no problems.
I  guess what still bugs me, is while I can see the benefit of such a tool, it's kinda a roll the dice scenario, in that the least that can happen if it crashes, is you waste all the time up until that moment. The worst, I shudder to think. Why can't this thing just not be such a pig, that your not waiting for the axe to fall every time you open it? And opening multiple incidences to avoid bouncing to tracks every 5 min. is equally a crap shoot.
I know that sometimes there are better drivers/more stability with flagship products as opposed to "freebies", Craig, was that your experience with editor?

I'm the wrong person to ask, because I didn't have problems with Essential except for a few times when V-Vocal was in a pre-existing project. But I don't know if the problems were due to Melodyne, V-Vocal, or an interaction. Editor has been equally smooth for me, I can count on it.  
 
My understanding is that the underlying architecture of the Melodyne products is similar, so I don't think it's a case where Celemony says "hey, let's let the Essential people crash and save the good stuff for Editor." They want you to have a positive experience so you'll upgrade. 
 
That said, how much memory do you have in your system? I've heard rumors of memory not being released properly although I wouldn't know how to test for that. Perhaps this might be why shorter sections work better?
 
But another consideration is I usually try to use software in a way that fits the product. To me, Melodyne is for touching up vocals, so I'll open a phrase, fix, bounce, and move on. I don't ask it to keep several multi-minute vocals open while I do other things. If I really, really think I'll need to re-visit a vocal, I'll just work on a copy and hide the original until/unless needed. Overall, I've found Melodyne Editor to be an exceptionally useful piece of software on many more levels than I expected (e.g., as a quick way to level vocals, or transpose acoustic guitar strumming).

I think I may have figured out what was going on with this one. I suspected that some of the audio files may have become fragmented, as certain tracks always seemed to be the ones misbehaving. I saved the whole thing as a bundle (this defrags the files) unpacked it and saved it again. That seemed to add some stability. Then I noticed that the audio was not recorded on my second hard drive. Copied over to that when I did a second save. Opened it up, turned on all the plugs I had temporarily disabled to test the load and everything was smooth. I think melodyne was just the straw that broke the camel's back, in this case. I primarily write insrumental contemp. Jazz, so I dont work with a lot of vocal material, so this was my maiden voyage with melodyne. Add to that the fact that I'm still learning it, and didn't know what to expect, it seemed to be the one variable in my otherwise stable formula.
The jury is still out, but I think I may have to investigate this further. It would give me the confidence to possibly do more vocal stuff, and the program really is prety cool to work with.

Worked with Melodyne again. Opened it up to fix a mistake my student made in an otherwise good take, no problem bounced that, all good. Deleted old track once done and satisfied it was a keeper. Went to use it on a 2 beat phrase on the vocal track, After auditioning it a couple of times as I was tweaking it, the old sputtery "I'm on the brink of crashing" behavior began.(Oh , I did upgrade to Editor). Recall that I killed the old track that had melodyne as a region FX, so it's not a case of having multiple instances of it open. I was able to make the edits and bounce. Delete the track with region FX on it, and all was good, but Jheez! I had the buffer all the way up to 1024 samples(melodyne displays a warning screen telling me to do that.)What am I doing wrong?! I have an i7 machine, 2 hard disks, 16gigs of RAM, no indication that this is unstable, then I feel like I'm running down one of those rope bridges from cartoons that is falling apart just one step behind you. This can't be normal or acceptable behavior. Any tips,or suggestions? I tried using small regions for region FX, but if it can't handle a one or two measure phrase, what good is it?

I regularly use Melodyne Editor for lead vocal and background vocal, and have very seldom needed to bounce or freeze any tracks. Also, I can have multiple instances of Melodyne open at once with very little CPU problems.
Your system seems similar to mine, so wondering if it is some configuration issue.
Thanks for now listing your system specs, but wonder what audio interface you might be using ?

I'm using Native Instruments Komplete 6 audio. I usually can run it as low as 64 buffers, but melodyne tells me to run at 1024. I have zero stability issues unless melodyne is involved in which case it starts off smooth, then grows more and more unstable. FWIW, I am familiar with the Delta 66 ( I used the OMNI) the cards seem pretty similar to me, although I'm running the Komplete via USB(3 which uses the intel drivers , it has never crapped out on me). Right now I am running 1 instance of Roland TTS with multiple outputs (4 midi instruments) about 6 takes of my student's on a comp track, two of myself,1 stereo drums track. 1 track of vocals routed through TCHelicon Voice Live GTX. (that's not engaged, but I bring it up because I used it to generate two background voices on the same track as the lead) 1 track of Amber Piano and half a dozen plugs on the buses and some minor pro channel stuff at the track levels on most , but not all tracks. The behaior manifests itself as follows: Select region FX say two bars long max and as small as a couple of beats. Opens up Melodyne editor. audition it a few times, make subtle corrections, listen again. After listening to it 5 or six times , I start to get some stuttering and distortion, no necessarily a dropout, but I feel like I am knocking on the door. At this point I feel compelled to bounce any corrections to a separate track before something bad happens. I hate the idea of having a thoroughly robust system, that can take just about anything you throw at it  buckling under 1 instance of melodyne. I have to believe they know this plug is a CPU pig, otherwise they wouldn't tell you to up your buffers to 1024. So to cap this, I can use it and make effective changes, but I'm definitely playing it's game and when I start to hear it sputtering, yikes!