100 Mbps mxf in Vegas

megabit wrote on 5/26/2009, 10:50 AM

On the Convergent Design Flash XDR pages, links to sample mxf clips produced with EX camera and recorded at 100 Mbps have appeared recently. I downloaded one such clip, and while V9 recognizes it just fine, it cannot play it back from timeline at any faster than half the speed (some 10-12 fps) with Best preview settings. This is not a good news for me, as I'm awaiting my NanoFlash soon.

Anything can be done about it? Edius plays the file back at full fps!

Comments

megabit wrote on 5/26/2009, 12:54 PM

Hmm.... I rendered it out to MC MPG2 80Mbps; plays back full speed.
Why not 100 Mbps mxf?

apit34356 wrote on 5/26/2009, 1:48 PM

It may not be a Vegas related problem but a system IO bottleneck problem. The multi-core cache may not be able to write out to main memory fast enough to free up cache memory for new frame data. At 100M, a lot is happening, so any secondary system resource requests may "steal" too many cpu clock cycles.

blink3times wrote on 5/26/2009, 2:53 PM

"Edius plays the file back at full fps!"

Yeah.
I'm not sure how Edius is doing it, but its preview system quite plainly beats the pants off of both PP and Vegas. There's no other way to say it other than... quite superior.

megabit wrote on 5/26/2009, 11:31 PM

"It may not be a Vegas related problem but a system IO bottleneck problem"

It's definitely a Vegas problem - the 100 Mbps mxf not only plays back at full speed in Edius, VLC, etc., but also in Vegas' own explorer / trimmer / media bin (as opposed to the timeline).

farss wrote on 5/27/2009, 12:55 AM

Are you talking about the "nature_australia.mxf" clip?

If so it seems to play just fine down here, maybe the duck has flown north for winter :)
I set V9 to loop the clip, project 1080p25. There's a small stutter at the start as it loops, kind of expect that I guess. Apart from that it seems fine, awesome footage.

Only issue is Vegas reads the media properties as 50i even though I'm pretty certain it's 25p. This is probably because HD-SDI sends PsF. Hope we get our Nano soon too.

Should mention I'm playing it back off a basic SATA RAID 0 array.

Bob.

megabit wrote on 5/27/2009, 1:01 AM

Yes Bob - the duck is what I mean.

I just tried it in V8 and it plays the clip fine - so if your V9 can too, I have no idea what's going on with mine (I've tried the 64bit version, so far).

megabit wrote on 5/27/2009, 1:05 AM

So we definitely have some bug in the 64bit version of V9; in V8 as well as V9-32bit, the clip plays back at full speed/quality.

I'm going to report it to SCS.

farss wrote on 5/27/2009, 1:14 AM

I only tried it in V9 32bit and as I said plays back just fine.

Bob.

farss wrote on 5/27/2009, 1:18 AM

I just tried it in V8.0b, will not open at all, nor will other XDCAM 422 clips. Hardly a surprise I guess.

You did unzip the clip to a new file before you put it onto the V9 timeline I hope.

Bob.

megabit wrote on 5/27/2009, 1:44 AM

Bob,

Yes of course I did unzip the clip:)
V8c opens and plays it fine, as does 8.1.
V9-32 plays it fine, as well.

And - surprize, surprize!
V9-64 has no problems either, but only when no other format clip (even on a separate, muted track) is present on the timeline. Go figure....

farss wrote on 5/27/2009, 2:57 AM

I just tried again and find it's dependant on Preview window settings.
If I set Preview to Scale to Fit performance is not so good. Turn that Off and it's quite good. Kind of the opposite to what I'd have expected. It does suggest though that whatever the problem is it's not disk i/o performance.

Bob.

megabit wrote on 5/27/2009, 3:12 AM

Interesting...

I always have my Preview set to Scale to Fit.

So when I say the performance is OK, I mean it's full fps, with Scale to Fit on, and Best / Full.

megabit wrote on 5/27/2009, 3:37 AM

Anyway,

- now that we know Vegas can handle the CD 100 Mbps clips just fine, and

- in the light of another thread here on using 50 Mbps 422 mxf codec as "virtually lossless" intermediate

SCS, wouldn't it be nice if Vegas was capable of actually rendering to 422 100 Mbps?

farss wrote on 5/27/2009, 5:28 AM

Well from my tests it'd be nicer if Vegas didn't spit out the odd red and black frame while processing XDCAM 422, that's a bit more of a worry than anything.

Aside from that I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why the MC mpeg-2 encoder has a fence around it. Is this simply a licensing issue or does SCS think we'll get ourselves into trouble. I don't really care much what the answer is, I just wish they'd tell us.

I did have a discussion with the guys from Convergent Design at NAB. They were quite adament that the EX sends 10bit down the HD SDI output. They also suggested that ideally one should process their / Sony's XDCAM 422 at 10 bit even though it's being recorded at 8 bit. Unfortunately in Vegas that means 32bit float which leaves me cold although in V9 it gets a lot easier. Before I'd make that jump I need to go back and read Glenn's words on which FX's work correctly in 32bit as well.

Realistically so far the only compelling reason I can find to record anything better than what the EX does natively is for green screen.

Bob.

megabit wrote on 5/27/2009, 5:35 AM

"Realistically so far the only compelling reason I can find to record anything better than what the EX does natively is for green screen"

Bob,

Have you downloaded the "Green-screen" mxf clip from CD? Have you tried some chrome-key in Vegas?

megabit wrote on 5/29/2009, 7:45 AM

So Bob,

Did you try chroma keying on the clip I mentioned above?

Cheers

Piotr