Hi,

Thanks Cornico. Tried to disable the So4 Compound Reader for AVC/M2TS. It just made things worse. The hickups at clip boundaries now takes longer than 1 second. If the boundary is a crossfade the playhead on the timeline can stop for several seconds - at the beginning of the crossfade. If I during a crossfade press the space bar to stop the playback it can take up to 4..5 seconds before the playback stops.  After re-enabling the So4  makes things slightly faster, but is still that bad that multicam editing is impossible, and just waste of precious time. I am very frustrated. I had high hopes for VP15. But this software is still struggling with basic tasks.

Running the project in Vegas (just 3 HD tracks with NO FX) causes constant access to the hard drive (1TB 7200rpm external USB3.0). There doesn't seem to be any kind of read-ahead?!  Running the same part of the project in Davinci Resolve is completely smooth and the hard drive access is just occasional and not constant. Something very fundamental seems to be wrong or missing in Vegas?! Vegas doesn't seem to use much RAM either, just a mere 1.5GB. Why is it that long GOP is hard for Vegas, but a child's play for Resolve?

I would like to continue using Vegas. Do I have to convert these standard plain vanilla HD files to some other Vegas friendly format?  Vegas was once know from the ability to handle whatever you threw at it... Is there anything else to test?

Christian

Always worth running through this: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-can-i-make-my-video-preview-play-smoothly-in-vegas-pro--104624/

I remember threads about playback issues with files from that particular camera, the PXW-X70. If I remember it correctly, Sony Vegas was not able to even read the files, that was corrected later on.

You have to be careful when you compare it with Resolve as it doesn’t show you full resolution or drops frames without telling you just to make the preview smooth. But I do agree that Vegas has a long way to go especially in the preview department. It used to lead the competition but is now far behind.

My first serious project on VP15 is a 4-camera multicam edit. I worked on the project syncing and color correcting and arranging clips for tens of hours. After creating the multicamera track the problems started. The transition from one clip to another causes the preview to stagger for about half a second - whatever I have tried.

@ Christian

I tried I believe what you are doing with your type of files.

Correct me if I'm wrong at what I think you are doing or with the filetype.
4 tracks multicamera edit on laptop from signature with VPro 15 build 261.
I don't see the problems you probably have.
Playback after making some new cuts result in good playback, not full fps, but I think that was due to the screencapture with OBS at 50fps. Before I did the capture with OBS the last cuts of my example were playing full speed at Best/Full preview.

The file format makes all the difference and the PXW-X70 files are tough for Vegas, so are the 4K XAVC-S files from my AX100, AX700, Sony RX100 and a6300. They all show terrible performance during transitions but converted to XAVC-I, they play much better.

Thanx to all. Nick deserves to be especially mentioned. What would we do without him. Unfortunately, being aware of most those tricks, testing the last ones that I didn't know - did not bring any help :(

XAVC-S files seems to be a total disaster for Vegas. Davinci has no problem whatsoever. Due to the fact that I have done the majority of the project in Vegas I have to continue in Vegas. Have not used proxies before -  hopefully someone can give good hints how to as easily as possible convert those files to XAVC-I and continue the work. How much do I loose quality? How much does one minute of XAVC-I require as storage, compared to XAVC-S?

Probably I have to to read the f****ing manual...

Christian

Thanx to all. Nick deserves to be especially mentioned. What would we do without him. Unfortunately, being aware of most those tricks, testing the last ones that I didn't know - did not bring any help :(

XAVC-S files seems to be a total disaster for Vegas. Davinci has no problem whatsoever. Due to the fact that I have done the majority of the project in Vegas I have to continue in Vegas. Have not used proxies before -  hopefully someone can give good hints how to as easily as possible convert those files to XAVC-I and continue the work. How much do I loose quality? How much does one minute of XAVC-I require as storage, compared to XAVC-S?

Probably I have to to read the f****ing manual...

Christian

Sony's Catalyist Browse is free and there is almost no loss in the conversion to XAVC-I, certainly no visual loss. I even use XAVC-I as an intermediate if required. What is beyond me is that you shoot XAVC-I Long in 1080i rather than 1080 60p, any reason for that?

@OldSmoke,  Well - I'm living in PAL (Fin)-land and 50fps is the way to go. Since the delivery is on DVD that is interlaced I wanted to avoid deinterlacing and instructed to shoot 50i in HD. Since DVD's also support upper field first the downconversion from HD 50i to SD50i is relative painless and acceptable quality.Program is long for a DVD (140minutes) I save in quality since iterlaced requires less bits/second :)

Running the Proxy conversion in Vega as I write. Sadly there are no alternatives presented into what format to render when doing that in Vegas. Progably Vegas knows it best?!  I wanted to test this in Vegas to learn the Proxy workflow. When I finally render I can use my original files with no degeneration.

Vegas is NOT giving and estimate how long its gonna take (like normal renders do), my own estimate is about 24 hours or so. So tomorrow this time I can test if this solution works... Meanwhile I'm reading the Resolve manual :)

Lesson learned, used always mpeg2 when shooting for Vegas (or any other edit-friendly format)...

Cheers,

Christian

@OldSmoke,  Well - I'm living in PAL (Fin)-land and 50fps is the way to go. Since the delivery is on DVD that is interlaced I wanted to avoid deinterlacing and instructed to shoot 50i in HD. Since DVD's also support upper field first the downconversion from HD 50i to SD50i is relative painless and acceptable quality.Program is long for a DVD (140minutes) I save in quality since iterlaced requires less bits/second :)

I do deliver on DVD too, just a few customer that still want it. However, I shoot in 1080 60p, that would be 1080 50p for you. Down converting interlaced HD to SD is not a good choice, you are better off converting 50p to 50i and for anything with fast motion you can upload 50p to YT in either Full HD or 1280x720 50p and also put it on a BluRay as 1280x720 50p. If you don't have fast motion at all, shoot 25p which is still ok when converted to 50i.

You are right on the interlacing part. However, down converting interlaced is not too bad as long as you keep the field order the same. An old fart as I that has lived with interlaced the majority of my life (and also hated it all the time). Somehow its hard to let go from old habits and routines. Unfortunately there is still lots of interlaced material that circulates, I'm not alone to blame... I have never tested to render progressive 50p to 50i but will certainly test that before my next project. Certainly an easy task for a computer and this conversion certainly does not run havoc the quality. Thanks for the encouragement :)

Hurray, only 8 hours more to go to convert my proxies... Someone should invent a fast computer ;) Well, just installed an WIN update that renders everything (pun intended) slower as before...

Christian