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  • Are video edit apps a good barometer of a CPU's ability to be a DAW?
2013/02/13 07:21:18
The Maillard Reaction


No.




This is because every video editor has scaleable playback... it's like a DAW's soft drop out feature on steroids.

SONAR has a soft drop out feature... but it is a very light treatment.

Video apps have so called scalable playback and the app can shift to a lower resolution display (it throws away or drops pixels on the fly) and it can drop lots of frames (variable framerate) while the transport remains smooth.

Audio apps can't drop out very much data without the sound being effected greatly and that defeats the purpose of the DAW.


Persistence of Vision allows a video edit person to view video playback comfortably even if pixels are being cast away or the frame rate is being altered on the fly. It works ok... so it works ok.


So, what does all this mean? It means that video apps are actually pretty light on the computer compared to a multi track DAW.

Video apps rarely combine more than a few streams as layers. The video playback requires huge data transfers and sometimes massive amounts of CPU but relatively little CPU juggling.


A multi track DAW with 10 tracks and a couple dsp on each track is juggling stuff like crazy.... and we hear timing so precisely that any choke or cough is readily apparent.

This is one reason that soft drops have limitation towards their helpfulness... they can't drop much before we hear the drop. This is why when a DAW does go over the cliff so to speak... it can end up at the white screen etc. DAWs run much closer to the edge than a properly run video editor.



Now, I can operate a video editor in such a way that I can crash it every time. You can try to play back cpu intensive distribution video codecs and edit it and you will hate your video editor. You can crash a video editor easily... but you have to use it in an way that is possible but was never intended by the code writers.

If you use a DAW normally and you use any dsp you think you may use you can easily come up with mix and match combinations of CPU and PDC juggling that brings your system to a halt with a great big drop out... or worse.




This is one of the reasons so many people with systems that seem adequate find that their DAW doesn't work 99.99%. It may not be their system... it may their expectations.


The way I have found comfort using my DAW is that I use dsp and routing that seems to work... and every time I stumble upon a new routing combo of my favorite dsp that doesn't work; I don't do that anymore.

If you've gone through your system and feel it should be up to snuff then I suggest you carefully evaluate your choice of dsp and Vi and try to figure out what combo of routing may be stressing the playback beyond your sample buffers capability to smooth it over.

The first thing to do is to ascertain which of your plugs and instruments push the PDC beyond the buffer limitation and then take a look at where those plugs and instruments are sitting in the routing matrix.

Do you have a PDC user routed to another PDC user? DO you have some PDC users running in parallel?

Imagine a car engine running without a timing chain? If you can. IF you can do that... imagine a car engine running with multiple timing chains. Does it seem complicated? It is.







The best I can do is recognize the symptoms of soft dropouts and re evaluate my routing before the crash... which I do... and that keeps me at 99.99% happiness.

Maybe that can work for other people to?







Food for thought?


best regards,
mike



2013/02/13 08:29:36
Jonbouy
I tend to use Audio apps as a good barometer of whether my computer works as a DAW.
 
I do a lot of testing and some wild DSP routings both and both audio and a ton of midi both inside and outside of the box.
 
I don't crash ever. And I mean ever, this chart goes way back a year before what I've managed to show here.
 

 
I gathered awhile back from some of the guys in the hardware forum that optimising for audio and optimising for video are two distinctly different things.
 
I listened, I learned and learned to test what worked and what didn't, I haven't messed with the setup for a long time.  I stay updated with Windows updates, and drivers, and it's connected to the internet most of the time.
 
I also run a tight security and maintainence policy.
 
Not only is it stable but it maximises the performance of my interface as far as latency vs CPU goes.  I was due for a mid-life hardware update about now, I'm not going to bother.  I still have a large resource overhead on most things I do and it ain't broke.
 
I agree, resource management and expectation are a big contribution to successful operations.

Attached Image(s)

2013/02/13 09:46:40
Bub
I don't crash ever. And I mean ever ...
Careful now, you see what just happened to 57Gregy. Better knock on some wood. Throw some salt over your left shoulder with your right hand. Or is it your right shoulder with your left hand? Better skip that one, I'm not sure. Wouldn't want to make a bad situation worse! Just do something for the love of God, don't just sit there after making a comment like that!


2013/02/13 10:25:46
craigb
Mine crashes all the time, but all I need to do is shake it over my head for a quick reboot...



2013/02/13 10:59:18
spacey
Craig I'm looking at making the same exchange. I did shake my computer
but nothing changed so.....
And I know it's a crap computer because of the stuff I saw it do to X2.

2013/02/13 11:09:19
FastBikerBoy
I agree with Mike for once. I rarely get Sonar crashing or dropping out but Camtasia is a nightmare in comparison although to be fair the latest version has improved things considerably.

While I was making the X2 video I was using Camtasia 8.0.1 and I was lucky if I could run it for much longer than 30 minutes without a crash - (that's the editor not the capture software which was fine). There seemed to be a fairly major bug with markers but the latest version 8.0.3 is much better if still a little sensitive.

I've never bothered to try and 'optimise' for video simply because it's so stable as a DAW I don't want to rock the boat.

If it ain't broke..... etc...etc
2013/02/13 11:50:00
Jonbouy
Bub


I don't crash ever. And I mean ever ...
Careful now, you see what just happened to 57Gregy. Better knock on some wood. Throw some salt over your left shoulder with your right hand. Or is it your right shoulder with your left hand? Better skip that one, I'm not sure. Wouldn't want to make a bad situation worse! Just do something for the love of God, don't just sit there after making a comment like that!



I said crash.
 
There's still nothing to stop it spontaneously combusting at some point...
 
That graph even shows the period I checked out the X2 demo too.  Spooky.
2013/02/13 12:17:18
bapu
Is video a yewpheemism for pron?


2013/02/13 12:34:00
craigb
bapu


Is video a yewpheemism for pron?



Is that what you use to find pron?
2013/02/13 12:35:23
Bub
bapu


Is video a yewpheemism for pron?

This guy thinks so ...




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