Im on Avid 2022.12 and playback is pausing at what seems like random moments across a variety of media.  Happens about 5-6 times a day on average. I can just hit play to continue but Im concerned about this becoming more of an issue once the director joins me in a few weeks. 

Media is all DNxHR LB 1920x1080 with an additional Frameflex punch in. At first I thought it was just the system lagging with a timeline full of green dot realtime frameflex clips, but I just had it the same playback pause issue on imported music playing back on the source side, so I thought I should investigate and see if anyone here had any ideas. 

Specs:

Avid MC 2022.12 // Mac Mini 2023 // Chip: Apple M2 // Memory: 8gb // OS: Ventura 13.2.1. // Media is on an 7200RPM external hard drive connected via thunderbolt4/usb3. 

Additionally I am using a Blackmagic UltraStudio Monitor 3G with Desktop Video Setup Version 12.4.2. 

 

Any ideas would be welcomed! Thanks! 

-Joel

Is it definitely random or is it related to a specific period of time? If you have playlength toggle switched on and set to, say, 1 minute, then every minute the playback will stop and you will be required to press play again. You may not notice this because apart from on watch throughs you often don't play a full minute of media without pausing at least once which resets it. Worth checking maybe?

It also might be worth mentioning that the minimum RAM that the Mac Mini is qualified for is 16GB not 8. You can see the specifictions for qualified systems here.

Also, just a note about your drive; you'd be much better off with an SSD if budget allows. Despite being connected via Thunderbolt, your spinning disk drive won't even use a fraction of the available bandwidth before it maxes out. If you plan to have more than a few streams of LB media playing at once then I'd definitely recommend the investment. 4TB can be had very cheaply these days and that will guarantee you that at least you know the drive is not the bottleneck, not to mention saving space and noise in your edit suite/work environment and giving you a more robust medium if you need to carry it around with you. We've had good experiences with these from Sandisk.  

Andi

JoelGriffen:

Additionally I am using a Blackmagic UltraStudio Monitor 3G with Desktop Video Setup Version 12.4.2. 

 

 

I would also check to see if you experience the issue when any hardware is turned off.

Andi

Play length is not enabled but good idea.

Good to know about the ram. Additionally, I dont see the M2 chip on this list either. I suppose these could be the culprits. It's the production company's rig and it's an indie feature so unless I KNOW this is the issue, its going to be hard to convince the producers to upgrade the ram.  Same goes for the Hard Drive. At this point I highly doubt it's the drive since Im only in dailies and the sequences are fairly simple at the moment. But I'l consider SSD's when buying my own gear in the future. Thanks.

I will test without the Blackmagic UltraStudio Monitor 3G being on and will report back. Additionally, I previously had a UltraStudio Express years ago and with that you could never use the latest Desktop video driver version. It was always buggy. My current version IS the latest and its crossed my mind to also test with a slightly older version of that driver.  I won't have time for either test until mid next week earliest. I'll circle back once I've tried both.  Thanks for your ideas!

-Joel

Thinking that the memory might be the issue, I've bumped up my Desired Video Memory from 1 gb to 6gb. I'll report back if that makes a difference. 

Update: 

Found this Article: Recommended Settings for Media Composer when working with a Mac M1/M2 16GB system

I know im on 8gb memory but figured then these options must be especially important. 

I turned off Phonetic Indexing, background services (these were already off) and Changed my Desired video Memory to 4gb ( up from 1 default but down from the 6 I previously posted about. ) 

 

Fingers crossed. 

JoelGriffen:

its going to be hard to convince the producers to upgrade the ram.

It's not even possible to upgrade the RAM on these machines, the memory is integrated so you are stuck with what you (or the production company) bought (or hired). It sounds like you may continue to struggle unless this is addressed. If the machine isn't qualified or powerful enough then it's a false economy. You'll waste far more time (therefore money) trying to eek by than by just biting the bullet and making an investment upfront. It's always hilarious to me how all the money disappears when it's time for post.

FWIW I have found more memory to be a very important factor when working with complex sequences so if your sequences are going to get long then play length toggle will be your friend as that resitricts MC from loading your entire sequence in to memory and just loads 1 minute (or whatever you set) either side of the playhead. 

Also worth checking the console (Ctrl/Cmd+6) next time it stops and see if there's any helpful info there.

Keep waveforms turned off, try setting video quality to half (yellow/green), keep your bins small and don't have loads open. Make sure you're working with fresh settings. I'd also try copying some media to the local SSD of the mac mini and testing to see if it plays back ok from the faster internal drive. Try and eliminate various bottlenecks or pain points. 

I'd suggest a frank conversation with the director and manage some expectations if you still keep having issues. Good luck!

Andi

Take a look here: https://community.avid.com/forums/t/205819.aspx?PageIndex=7

I have had the random pauses happen as well. This seems unrelated to the beachballing with the BlackMagic cards. I think it is actually related to the connection of wireless devices. I have had my Airpods connected to my iphone connect to my computer and then the timeline playing will stop. I can play right away so there is no beachball happening. I have also had it grab the AirPods Pro sitting on the desk and the same thing happens. When there arern't any Airpods around the pausing doesn't happen. This has been going on since at least 2022.7 and still happens on 2023.3. (I haven't had it happen when using Premiere as far as the Airpods connecting randomly.) I am using a Mac Studio Ultra with 64GB Ram on Monerey 12.6.