Randomly stops recording

[Zarf]

Hi! I apologize if this has been posted before. I searched on these boards, and on Google for help, but to no avail so far.

Here's the problem: Recording stops after a while. Sometimes it will be after 2 seconds, sometimes it will be after 20 minutes, others I can record for hours. I'm trying to record sermons for a church, and having to watch the screen the entire time is irritating. The program doesn't freeze, it just quits recording. The Record button is still down, and I can only continue recording after I hit Stop and hit Record again.

Here's the setup:

The source is the pastor's lapel mic. This is being sent to an Allen & Heath Zed 436 sound board. This sound board sends the sound from the board to the house speakers, and to a USB-out. The USB-out is nice and clean, with no noise or coloring on the recording that I can tell. It sounds great.

The computer is a custom-built machine, running A Phenom II X4 810 (3.6 GHz), four gigs of RAM, running Vista 64. It's also a video machine, that's why it's got a quad core.

The USB-out from the soundboard is going into a USB port on the motherboard. Audacity picks up the sound very well and it sounds good. I should also note that I disabled AMD Cool-n-Quiet due to graphical issues (It's a 780g chipset, but it was flickering for some reason. Disabling Cool-n-Quiet fixed it). The motherboard is a Gigabyte MA78GM-US2H. I do have an ASUS Xonar installed, but we aren't using it for audio recording at the moment. Recording from it gives us a buzzing noise, which we assume is a grounding problem and not the card. Besides that, the USB recording allows us to record specific aux channels from the board, which is what we want. And it sounds more clean.

Here's my troubleshooting progress:
Rebooted
Re-installed Audacity 1.2.6 (Also 1.3.8 beta, both have the same issue)
Re-installed audio and chipset drivers (Didn't update them, newer versions aren't available)
Re-installed the Asio-4-All drivers
Changed the Project rate from default to lower, then higher, then back to 44100 Hz, 1-channel at 16 bit
Changed the power settings to "maximum performance" (It's a desktop)

I've done everything I can think of, and it still stops recording after a random amount of time. This has been happening for several weeks now. Any ideas? Is there more info you need from me? Thanks in advance!

[kozikowski]

<<<Re-installed Audacity 1.2.6 (Also 1.3.8 beta, both have the same issue)>>>

Did each install ask you "English?" at first birthday? If they didn't, then you didn't reinstall Audacity. Audacity 1.2 keeps its preferences in the Dreaded Windows Registry instead of a preferences file. It can get stuck and it's an interesting process to clean it out.

<<<Re-installed the Asio-4-All drivers>>>

Audacity has terrible (no) support for Asio.

Do you have an aggressive virus protection? Sometimes the Virus Software will insist on inspecting everything Audacity does sending it right into the dust bin.

Do the hard drive lights light up brightly when the stuttering happens? When was the last time you defragged the hard drive? "Auto" is not a good answer.

Is the Xonar the only sound card in the machine?

<<<It's also a video machine, that's why it's got a quad core.>>>

So it's got all the video drivers in there, too.

Has it ever worked? You have a moderately complex machine. Complexity and Audacity tend to not go together well.

Can you capture with the video software? Our video software will let us turn off the video part of the capture.

Koz

[Zarf]

Thanks for the quick response!

Did each install ask you "English?" at first birthday?

I don't recall. This troubleshooting of mine has been drug out over several weeks. I'd assume that uninstalling it and re-installing from a freshly downloaded EXE would do it? And if, upon this reinstall, it doesn't ask for a language selection,this is a good indicator that it's not getting stuff out of the registry correctly. Would CCleaner help this, or do I need to go in and get my hands dirty? Regedit is not my idea of a fun weekend...

Audacity has terrible (no) support for Asio.

Fantastic. Do you know of any other generic USB input drivers, or free recording programs that DO support ASIO? Isn't ASIO fairly prevalent in the professional recording realm?

Do you have an aggressive virus protection?

That's a good question. I have Norton Enterprise Edition (Not my choice, I've fought tooth and nail to get rid of it). I'll try disabling that and recording.

Do the hard drive lights light up brightly when the stuttering happens?

It doesn't really stutter. It just quits recording. It does feel like a bandwidth pinch somewhere, so I'll look into that. I defrag weekly (both drives) using a scheduled task from JKDefrag, so here "Auto" is probably a better answer than you were expecting. I should note: The drive it records to is a drive other than the one Vista is installed on, and there's over 700 GB free.

Is the Xonar the only sound card in the machine?

There is an onboard soundcard. Device Manager lists Xonar, ATI HDMI Audio, and USB Audio CODEC (I think that's just ASIO4All).

So it's got all the video drivers in there, too.

Well, it's got the ATI 3200 onboard video card driver, yeah. And the WMV codec that Vista comes with. The video is not a part of the problem, I assure you.

Has it ever worked?

Yes, it worked smashingly well from February until the middle of July. It's only used once a week, which is why the debugging process has taken so long.

Can you capture with the video software?

That's a great idea! Unfortunately I'm using Windows Movie Maker for capturing, so I don't have any control over that. When we get enough money to purchase Adobe Premiere Elements, I'll try that.

[kozikowski]

<<<I don't recall. >>>

That's a big deal. Audacity does not reinstall by shuffling software around. It does it by trashing the preference system. If the preference system doesn't go away, you can reinstall the program files all day long and not get a new Audacity. A "fresh" Audacity will always ask you "Engligh?" in some form at first birthday.

<<<Isn't ASIO fairly prevalent in the professional recording realm?>>>

It's so darn prevalent that they charge American Dollars for it. Same problem with MP3. MP3 is paid and licensed software.

<<<scheduled task from JKDefrag,>>>

We had a poster that defragged once manually and discovered massive fragmentation that the auto system left behind.

<<<There is an onboard soundcard. Device Manager lists Xonar, ATI HDMI Audio, and USB Audio CODEC (I think that's just ASIO4All).>>>

I'll take that as "no." So that's three different sound services on one machine. We need to remember that Audacity 1.2 was designed during the Harding administration and has no idea how to deal with any of these newer services. You might gain fabulous benefits by installing Audacity 1.3. You can install both correctly as long as you only use one at a time. Audacity 1.3 projects will not open in 1.2. WAV exports open everywhere.

<<<The video is not a part of the problem, I assure you.>>>

So the video is always silent?

<<<Yes, it worked smashingly well from February until the middle of July. It's only used once a week, which is why the debugging process has taken so long.>>>

I have to ask what changed? Something changed. If you go into Audacity Preferences, you are allowed to change the temporary directory that Audacity captures to. Where is it? All the drives on this machine are internal, right? No USB drives?

Koz

[Zarf]

That's a big deal.

Got it. Re-installed earlier, and it did ask me for language preference. I'll record the entire time I'm writing this response.

It's so darn prevalent that they charge American Dollars for it.

Drat and blast. Do you know of any other ways to get the USB out to be recognized as a recording device?

We had a poster that defragged once manually...

That's a good point. I scanned just now, and E: has a big huge chunk of free space with a tiny yellow dot in it, and a bunch of green at the bottom. That's good, right? C: is a little fragmented, but I'm not recording to C: I'd recording to E:.

You might gain fabulous benefits by installing Audacity 1.3.

I did have 1.3.8 Beta installed. Since the first post, I uninstalled both installs that I had and reinstalled just 1.3.8 (And it gave me a language prompt, so that's good). I had both installed to see if the beta would fix the problem. Still had the old installed earlier, now it's just 1.3.8. So far, the recording has stopped twice.

So the video is always silent?

No. Let me give you a better picture of what's running: We are importing the video from a camera that doesn't have an audio input port. The audio from the tape is, for all intents, junk It's recording the pastor speaking, but it's also getting house reverb, tape noise, and people walking past. We overdub it with the Audacity recording after the sermon is over, to give it perfect quality audio. The camera is an el-cheapo Canon ZR-85. We also export the Audacity recording in MP3 so people can download it as a podcast.

Since February, we were able to record audio into Audacity WHILE recording video from firewire in WMM. In July, something went afoul and it now stops recording audio randomly. The audio from the tape is "fine" (as good as it can be from that camera, which is 70 feet from the speaker), and it keeps recording video in WMM.

I have to ask what changed? Something changed.

There are two drives: An IDE 250 GB drive (C:) and a 1 TB SATA drive (E:). Windows is installed on the IDE, we record both audio and video to the SATA. I don't think anything has changed. The hardware hasn't, and I am unaware of any software changes. There are no external drives, the keyboard is PS2, the mouse is USB. We can't find a correlation between the audio stopping and the mouse moving, so I doubt that.

To recap: I uninstalled both Audacity installs that I had. Re-installed just 1.3.8, disabled Norton, and the recording has stopped twice so far.I did scan for a defrag, but the stops weren't related to my scan.

[kozikowski]

I got nothin'.

If you have two capture programs running at the same time on the same computer, I would expect one of them to misbehave. I think what you have now is normal (which is why you can't fix it) and what you had then was an accident.

Koz

[steve]

we were able to record audio into Audacity WHILE recording video from firewire in WMM.

It does not surprise me that you are having problems, and agree with Koz that you were probably lucky to ever have it working. If you are recording in Audacity while simultaneously recording video in WMM, your computer has to read a bit of video data in one program and write it to disk, then read a bit of audio data from the other application and write that somewhere on the disk, then back to the first.... and keep doing this all in real time without dropping any data. This will cause the data from the two files (audio and video) to be completely intertwined, which is definitely not good for disk access speed. Also, USB has a nasty habit of disconnecting if it loses synch with the processor and that could be the cause of the Audacity recording stopping.

If you want to record both the video and audio at the same time on the same machine it would be much better if you could do so with the same program. The audio and video would then be correctly interlaced within the file format which is much more efficient. Some video recording programs will allow you to configure the source of the audio independently from the source of the video - I don't know if you can do that with WMM.

Does you computer have a conventional (non USB) sound card? If so, can you do a test recording with that? If that works reliably, then it may be worth considering installing a decent quality internal sound card.

[kozikowski]

<<<Does you computer have a conventional (non USB) sound card?>>>

Several, plus the built-in.

<<<do have an ASUS Xonar installed, but we aren't using it for audio recording at the moment. Recording from it gives us a buzzing noise, which we assume is a grounding problem and not the card.>>>

I think you're the poster child for how to configure a PC so it doesn't work with Audacity.

I had a PC recording setup that would buzz and I cured it with Jensen Transformer products, but it wasn't cheap. Jensen DIN 2LI. I bought the raw transformers and made myself a box and it wasn't as expensive.

The hard way to eliminate buzz is to find out where it's coming from...and sometimes even then. My problem was coming from the cabling to the roof FM antenna. Disconnect that and BAM, perfect audio. Of course no FM, either.

You may find that where you plug stuff in and to which wall connection has an enormous effect. I've been known to run extension cords across the floor in order to have everything plugged into the same wall outlet.

Koz

[steve]

<<<Does you computer have a conventional (non USB) sound card?>>>

Several, plus the built-in.

OK - I missed that bit.c

I would start by disabling the on-board sound card (in BIOS, or better - on the mother board if there is a "shunt" link for doing so).
Then I'd see if I could fix the hum from the ASUS Xonar.

<<<Can you capture with the video software?>>>
That's a great idea! Unfortunately I'm using Windows Movie Maker for capturing, so I don't have any control over that.

I don't have a machine to test this out, but doesn't WMM record the sound according to the default settings in the control panel?

When we get enough money to purchase Adobe Premiere Elements....

Do try out a demo version before you buy. You may decide that you would rather use that money elsewhere.
Encoding videos for burning on DVD with Premiere is very very slow - typically you will leave the computer running overnight to turn a video into a DVD.

[waxcylinder]

When we get enough money to purchase Adobe Premiere Elements....

Do try out a demo version before you buy. You may decide that you would rather use that money elsewhere.
Encoding videos for burning on DVD with Premiere is very very slow - typically you will leave the computer running overnight to turn a video into a DVD.

You might want to consider Nero. I use Nero 9 to encode my DVDs (I am working on a project to convert the non commercially available VHS tapes that I have to DVD - and I also pull the odd show off my PVR to DVD). The encode time is roughly somewher between half to two thirds of the playing time of the piece - normally closer to half. I am working with MPEG-4 H.264 files imported into Nero - and I then use Nero to edit the show before burning the DVD. Produces good results for me. BTW I discovered that it was cheaper to buy from Amazon rather than direct from Nero's website (plus I got I physical disc with the s/w from Amazon - not just the online download that Nero provide).

WC