10.0a still requires the .dll hack to load fast

NickHope wrote on 11/29/2010, 8:15 AM

I am trialling 10.0a with a view to upgrading with the discount before tomorrow. I have set up everything on 10.0a as close as I can to my 8.0c installation (I skipped 9.0). As my source footage is all DV and HDV I don't really need the upgrade, but amongst other things I quite fancy the grouped tracks, the closed captions, and (for when I get my desktop machine going again) the updated 64-bit HDV codec that 8.1 never included. I'm testing under 32-bit XP SP3 on a Dell Precision M6300 with a Core 2 Duo T7800 and 4GB of RAM. Source files are on an external eSATA drive. "Automatically open last project on startup" is un-checked. "Close media files when not the active application" is checked.

First thing I notice is times for the program itself to open. Here is how long Vegas itself takes to open and be ready for action:

8.0c - 0:19
10.0a - 1:00

Here is how long Vegas takes to re-open after shutting down (and not rebooting):

8.0c - 0:05
10.0a - 0:24

Not too impressed with 10.0a taking 3-5 times as long, considering the few extra features that I'll actually use, but I guess all the new supported formats etc. that are included come at a cost.

As for my projects, 8.0c and 10.0a open most of them in a similar time, typically 10-15 seconds. However I have one big and complex project that is very important to me and that I plan to do more work on. In 8.0c it opens in 1:33. In 10.0a it opens in 13:14, which is unacceptable. It just contains DV-AVI files and WAVs plus colour correction, titles, ducking etc..

So I replaced C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 10.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\aviplug\aviplug.dll with version 1.2.0.9787 as discussed here in relation to 9.0d. This appears to fix the problem and the project now opens quickly.

I'm a little wary of this solution as I wonder what functionality I'm missing out on by using such an old file. In addition, I'm not officially licensed to use it because I skipped 9.0.

Questions...

1. Who else is still having to apply this .dll hack in 10.0a?
2. Has anyone suffered any problems by applying the .dll hack?
3. Has anyone yet got to the bottom of what exactly has been causing the slow project load? I know there was discussion that Virtualdub-generated files might be one cause, and Cineform, FRAPS etc. being others, but the media in my project are just DV-AVI originating from Scenalyzer Live, Vegas 6-8 and perhaps Premiere 6.5.
4. Would anyone care to throw me the 32-bit aviplug.dll from 9.0c for testing? I think it was the last one that didn't show the slow load.

Cheers

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/29/2010, 8:21 AM

Very odd. I just got 10 over the weekend and the first thing that struck me was how much faster it loads than 8 or 9. I haven't actually timed it, but i'd guess on the order of 3 to 5 times faster. I'm using stock 10.a, no extra additions.

NickHope wrote on 11/29/2010, 8:37 AM

You mean loading the program itself, or project files?

TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/29/2010, 9:04 AM

Veg 8: 5seconds
Vegas 10: 1 second.

same project.

NickHope wrote on 11/29/2010, 9:45 AM

Digging deeper here with my "problem" project.

Both 8.0c and 10.0a report most of my DV-AVI files as "dvsd" in the Video Format column of the project media window. But a few of them are reported as "DV" in that column. I suspected those few "DV" files so I blew those away, but still the project loads slow.

So I started suspecting my "dvsd" files, but now this gets really weird. If I drop a couple of those "dvsd" files onto the timeline they get reported as "DV", but if I drop a lot of files onto the timeline then those same files get reported as "dvsd". It's as if Vegas will only report a few files as "DV" and then it reaches a limit and starts reporting further files as "dvsd". This is happening in both 8.0c and 10.0a, but 8.0c can handle it whereas 10.0a can't.

Really interested to know if others are running 10.0a with an older aviplug.dll

NickHope wrote on 11/29/2010, 10:07 AM

Looking at the 9.0 release notes, here are the changes pertaining to avi files that I can find that they made in 9.0d (when slow loads first appeared). So these could be causes for the problem, but they are also benefits that we might miss out on by using an older version of aviplug.dll.

Notable fixes/changes in Version 9.0d

Then at 9.0e they attempted a fix (which by most accounts did not help).

Notable fixes/changes in Version 9.0e

Over-simplistic all this, I know.

Chienworks wrote on 11/29/2010, 1:48 PM

Opening both the program and projects is very fast in 10.

Renders are noticeably slower, but not enough to make me ditch it. I'm not usually hampered by rendering time since i run them in the background or overnight.

Rob Franks wrote on 11/29/2010, 2:48 PM

How long it takes to open the program will depend on how many plugins/extensions/directx filters, etc you have on your machine.

Opening a project of course depends on how long and complicated it is.

Therefore opening times (in both cases) will vary from person to person.

John_Cline wrote on 11/29/2010, 3:06 PM

The issue with slow loading .AVI files seemed to only occur with AVI files that were generated with an application other than Vegas, like files processed with Virtual Dub or captured with Scenalyzer.

NickHope wrote on 11/29/2010, 8:48 PM

Well yes, a lot of my early files were rendered in Premiere after trimming, or remain exactly as Scenalyzer captured them.

So using something like Proxy Stream to smart render my entire DV archive back to "Vegas flavour" DV might not be a bad idea then.

MTuggy wrote on 11/29/2010, 8:51 PM

Takes 6 seconds after a fresh boot on my 3.5 year old quad core. And the same time after I close and re-open the program. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Mike

wwaag wrote on 12/1/2010, 7:47 PM

I tried the ".dll hack" on my 10.a 64bit/win7 64 system and it works "extremely" well. Been using avisynth through virtualdub for noise reduction and bob deinterlacing on DV files that are then saved using Cineform Neo. On one 10 min project, the load time was reduced from roughly 50 sec. to 6 sec--quite a time savings. FWIW--the aviplug.dll from 10a is only 576kb compared with 3426kb from the downloaded ".dll hack". It also seems to reduce the load time for other projects consisting of HDV files, although I haven't timed it. In any case, I'm extremely happy with the quicker load times and haven't seen any negative consequences.

wwaag

NickHope wrote on 12/1/2010, 10:01 PM

Thanks wwaag. Good to know that it's working OK in your scenario.

Does anyone have the aviplug.dll from 9.0c? I'm interested in both 32-bit and 64-bit.

NickHope wrote on 12/26/2010, 11:07 PM

Based on very limited testing, 10.0b appears to fix the problem of slow loading of projects containing DV files that were captured with Scenalyzer etc.. Nice Christmas present. Thanks SCS :)