This flickering is driving me crazy

[Yoyodyne]

Sorry to hear you are having trouble…

“An older Sound Blaster card (because my fancy M-Audio crackled and popped with Vegas).”

Boy – sounds like you have an old VIA chipset on that motherboard. IRQ conflict?

This sounds like a hardware problem to me, more system specs would be helpful but Vegas works on almost anything so obviously it should work for you. What type of chipset is on your motherboard? I had an old VIA chipset board, can’t remember the version, and had the exact same problems.

Also what type of firewire card?

[Edward Troxel]

There has to be a conflict somewhere in your computer. Something that’s grabbing an IRQ or CPU time. What’s happening is it’s actually losing the firewire connection periodically.

Is the firewire on the motherboard or on a separate card? What chipset is the firewire using? Is there an IRQ conflict with the firewire?

Edward Troxel

[Jason Harbaugh]

I had a similar problem when I tried to output through a digital/analog converter. Our BetaSP deck is only analog and the only way out of my Vegas machine is firewire so I went with the Pinnacle Studio MovieBox DV, firewire version. Got it hooked up, video passing through, looks fine for a few seconds and then it goes to garbage, like it can’t sync up anymore. Thought it was a bad converter, bought a second, same thing. Started playing around and found out that with Vegas running, I had to unplug and plug it back in (firewire connection), then reset it before it would display correctly. I have to do that every time I want to use that box if it has been turned off, or unplugged from the machine.

Before I figured out the shortest amount of steps to get it working, I would change my preview device settings to none, then back to OHCI and that would sometimes work.

I don’t know if you could be experiencing the same thing but it is worth a shot.

One of these days I’ll upgrade to a Decklink card.

[Seatlanta]

Ed:
The Gigabyte main board has an on-board firewire, but I have also tried two different firewire cards. Same problem with all of them. I’ve also tried different firewire cables–just in case.

By the way, I don’t have any trouble capturing video from my camera using the same firewire ports.

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions.

James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

Yoyodyne:
The M-Audio Audiophile 192 card was wonderful, but when I previewed something on the timeline, I got a sizzling sound like static–over all the sound (It went away during silent parts of the track.). This happened when previewed in Vegas (not to an external monitor).

I found that if I disabled the video track and played the same events, all the noise was gone. For some reason, the Vegas video track playback was related to the issue. I have no idea what was going on.

When I burned a DVD, the sound was clean, so it was happening only during the preview. But if I printed to a tape, the noise was recorded to the tape (of course).

I yanked out the M-Audio card and dug out an old Sound Blaster PCI-128 card from my junk drawer. It seems to work just fine, and the noise is gone.

But none of that had any effect on the flashing problem.

James (seatlanta)

[Seatlanta]

Hi lynxfx:

Thanks for the suggestions. I have also found that unplugging the firewire cable and re-inserting it was helpful–for a minute or two. But the problem returned. Sometimes the flashing (to black) occurs about once per second, and at other times, the image is stable for a minute or so.

Sometimes, after making random changes, I’d think things were fixed. But after a few minutes, the flickering was back.

James (seatlanta)

[Jason Harbaugh]

That really sucks. Do you have access to another computer where you could setup with Vegas and try outputting from? If it works with the bare minimum (firewire card, A/D converter) then you know those aren’t the problem and you can start adding hardware one by one and see if anything breaks it. And it might not even be hardware related. Could end up being another device driver, or program that is conflicting. It seems like all you have left is trial and error and hope that the problem reveals itself.

[Terry Esslinger]

Have you tried using a program like End it All to stop most all background programs. Its free and works really well.

[Jim Kratzer]

Dunno if this will solve your problem or not, but;

You are probably getting a conflict between drivers due to that Pinnacle converter box (if I understood your post correctly). I don’t think Vegas works all that well with Pinnacle. I have Studio 9 on my system and the internal AV/DV board with the BlueBox, and it’s going as soon as I get a chance to open the case and pull it; I don’t dare use it with Vegas.
I’ve already got a Canopus 110 to replace it (external, but hey, whatever), and that will be my AV/DV converter from then on.
Of course, I usually export through DVD Architect 3 to a DVD, instead of burning tape, but I know at some point I’ll be exporting, as well as importing to 8mm or VHS – both on a GoVideo deck.

Good luck, and I hope you cure your problem.

Jim

[Tom Pauncz]

James,
On the offchance that my understaning of the ‘flashing’ is correct …

For my external preview setup from Vegas, I have a f/w link to a SONY DSR-25 DVTR and S-vid out to a SONY production monitor. I have seen what you are reporting and in my case it turned out that a power cord was close to some inside part of the DSR-25 at the back, perhaps the f/w connection. Once I relocated that cord my problem disappeared.

I wonder if perhaps there is something similar close to your ADVC-110.

HTH,
Tom