play delay when using mojo?

[CD Productions]

Using a G4 DP 1.25Ghz, 2GB RAM OS 10.3.9 PT6.9.1, I have noticed an almost 2 sec lag between hitting play and the program actually playing. Is this common? Is the computer just too slow for this setup?

[pat yacono]

I have no delay with the mojo on a dual g5 2.0 with 2.5 gigs of ram. I have heard people having this problem, but I have not experienced it.

[1150Post]

Nothing even close to that here... Actually, pretty darn zippy. Better than the AVXL on a G4 933 (or something like that) mhz HD 3 in another suite here.

G5 DP 2.0, 2 Gig Ram, HD3 in a Digi 13 Slot PCI Expansion Chassis, UL3D in the Mac with 3xSCSI 36Gig Sound Drives, 3x FW 150Gig for SFX library on Pyro card in the Mac, 2nd internal SATA Drive for Video playback...

[Mario C]

Have you checked that *countoff* is not enabled? That has bitten me a couple of times. ( The <8> key on the number pad.)

[Richard Fairbanks]

I have always had a delay, and also had it with AVXL. It is mostly related to the speed of the drives, because the delay is caused by audio and video data filling buffers before playback begins. The faster that happens, the sooner playback starts. There can be even less delays with low track counts because there is simply less to buffer.

2 seconds is excessive. What are you using for audio and video drives? I get about 3/4 second with an average session (40-50 tracks) on a single 10K audio drive and video on either a SATA or a Medea 4-drive SCSI array, no matter what video resolution. If I use an old 7.6K firewire drive for the same audio my wait is about 1.25 sec. If I use that and put video on an older 7.6K SCSI drive the wait time is about 2 seconds.

[CD Productions]

Seagate ST173404LC SCSI for video, Maxtor 300 GB Firewire 400Mb/sec speed for audio.
Thanks for the help.

[DigiTechSupt]

Sync problems could also increase a delay (but usually not 2 seconds though). Make sure both the Mojo and your Sync I/O are resolved to black.

If you take the video track offline do you still have the delay?

Is it happening on all sessions with video or just one?

If you, temporarily and for troubleshooting purposes, play the video off of your internal drive, do you still have the delay?

What is your DAE Playback buffer set to? If it's higher than Level 2, you will see a delay in starting and stopping playback.

Jon Connolly
Digidesign Product Specialist

[CD Productions]

Thanks Jon,
If I disable the video track, there is no delay. The whole system is locked to house black. Have not checked the buffer size, nor tried switching drives. Seems to be all sessions though.

[Richard Fairbanks]

Charles, what is your wait time for a session with only a single video track, no audio? From a SATA drive or a single Seagate ST373307 (10K) SCSI I see approx .6 seconds, and from a single Quantum 7.6K SCSI I see approx .8 seconds. Jon menioned the Playback buffer should be at Level 2. H/W buffer sizes that are very large can affect it slightly also. I've never, ever seen better than these numbers on my systems (with MOJO). I'm thinking that possibly you are suffering from a combo of slightly behind-the-curve cpu speed, slow video access time(arrays are better), and firewire drives. As I meant to say in my first post, it is all cummulative.

If others are able to get instantaneous playback then I am very jelous of them, but I'll have to see it for myself before I believe them.