720p choppy, dropping frames basically not working

liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:04 AM
I'm currently testing sony vegas to figure out if it will work with my camera and stuff. Well I have a little sony hand held camera that records at 720p. It's playing back really choppy, dropping frames and just not fun to work with at all. It plays back just fine in my windows media player, or quick time...is there anything I can about this?

Comments

liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:09 AM
Oh I just wanted to add that I have gone to the project properties and set my properties to correspond to the video. So HDV 720 30fps
kairosmatt wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:43 AM
Try setting the preview monitor to "preview, auto."

I think it defaults to "best, full" or something, which will choke most systems when dealing with HD.

kairosmatt
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:45 AM
That's what i'm set too...thanks for trying.
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:51 AM
I have downloaded platinum and the pro versions, both are doing the same thing. I wonder if I don't need to convert my file from mp4 to something else ???? Any ideas?
kairosmatt wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:54 AM
Oh, what does your camera capture? Is it AVCHD and not HDV? If it is, you need a really powerful computer to get decent preview.

You could try the cineform demo to convert, or there is a current discussion here recommending rendering to XDCAM which comes free with Vegas and previews very well.
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:54 AM
I've even tried going as low as draft one quarter and there is zero improvement. Oh and I'm on a pretty smoking machine, with external graphics cards, 6mb ram intel core 2 quad that works like a charm for everything else I use it for.
kairosmatt wrote on 5/30/2009, 11:58 AM
Well, the graphics card won't help you in Vegas preview unfortunately. The extra RAM will only work if you are in Vegas 64 in Vista 64

And if it is AVCHD, then even draft runs slowly!

kairosmatt
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 12:05 PM
I'm using a $300 sony dsc w 290....this really isn't a pro camera, and like I said, it plays perfect in vlc and quick time.
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 12:45 PM
I have just confiremed that it is HDV format that is being recorded. I have played with every single setting that is available, I have also tried downloading vegas pro instead of platinum to see if that makes any difference. I guess I will see on Adobe Prinier.
kairosmatt wrote on 5/30/2009, 12:49 PM
It looks like your camera is MPEG4, not HDV. I don't know why Vegas would have trouble with this though.
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 12:50 PM
I just tried rendering a short clip that was choppy in vegas but rendered just fine. So the problem really is Vegas....do anyone have any other ideas?
megabit wrote on 5/30/2009, 12:55 PM
Vegas is not a problem, if it rendered just fine :)

We use NLE to edit and render out, not to play back from the timeline.

Having said that, I agree the ability of playing back the timeline content (whatever formats and effects it contains) would make the workflow much nicer. But AVCHD has been notorious of not being easy to edit - not just in Vegas.

AMD TR 2990WX CPU | MSI X399 CARBON AC | 64GB RAM@XMP2933  | 2x RTX 2080Ti GPU | 4x 3TB WD Black RAID0 media drive | 3x 1TB NVMe RAID0 cache drive | SSD SATA system drive | AX1600i PSU | Decklink 12G Extreme | Samsung UHD reference monitor (calibrated)

liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 12:59 PM
Please what is NLE? And I an not using AVCHD...
kairosmatt wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:00 PM
I'm not sure this camera actually camptures AVCHD. It looks like its MPEG4 part 2, not part 10 which is what AVCHD is. I could be wrong though, this stuff gets really confusing!

kairosmatt
reberclark wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:04 PM
NLE=Non Linear Editor.

Try rendering your raw footage to AVI then reimporting to Vegas. When my final destination is SD DVD I have done this with my raw MTS high definition footage instead of going with a cineform intermediate. The file size is high, but the timeline playback is very smooth at best/full, and editing is a breeze.

Anyway it's something to try.
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:06 PM
Ok...just did a quick test and this worked...but man, THIS IS GOING TO SLOW ME DOWN! Sometimes I go shooting i get back with hours and hours of video? I can't imagine having to do this every time? I mean 3 hours of recording which i can do easily over the weekend is going to take me a full day to convert...maybe longer! That's actually quite depressing? Are there any other options? So vegas has a problem with mp4's? Is that where the problem is? That's shocking to be honest. I'm really surprized that the solution was about the equivalent of kicking my computer...? WTF?
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:34 PM
So it took me 7 min to render 2.5 min of mp4...Maybe it's just me, but if vegas truly can't handle mp4's ....well that's just sad isn't it? Oh and I must say too, that converting it to AVI just killed the high def...so what's the point then?
I just bought the camera, so I could take it back. But I really like being about to use 720p on a $300 camera.
ritsmer wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:37 PM
liqyid wrote: That's actually quite depressing? Are there any other options? So vegas has a problem with mp4's? Is that where the problem is? That's shocking to be honest. I'm really surprized that the solution was about the equivalent of kicking my computer...? WTF?

Before writing like this I am sure that you have checked just a few of the some 1.000+ posts here about previewing?

Also you have checked the Windows Task manager to see if it is a Vegas problem or a Windows problem or something else?

Also you know 100 percent which codec you use to decode your media - and if that codec is fast or slow as he......?

If you want somebody here to use their time to help you with a soloution - it would - just maybe - help to supply the GSpot data for your media? 720p is not a unique definition - as it can be packed in different ways.

Edit: also it would be nice to know which Vegas version you use... 4?... 7? 9...? x32? x64?
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:39 PM
maybe I'll start a new thread for this question, but I'm curious what formats vegas handles well...Vegas claims (especially vegas pro) to be able to work right up to full HD? Is anyone doing this? If so, what kind of computer are they using?
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:45 PM
Sorry if my post was a bit...ummm...agitated.....I have no problems previewing with normal quality video. And I have a powerful computer, so I assume I should be able to preview one track at a time without such choppiness...No? I mean, I realize the mp4 files are large, but I have the ram, so other than that why should there be any problems. When I check my task manager, My cpu is at 30%, and my ram at 1.8 out of 6. Is that what I should be looking at?
Also I don't know anything about codecs really. Is this something you can change, are they 3rd party? Where can i learn more about it? Thanks for your input.
ritsmer wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:49 PM
Pls see my former post.

I have been doing 720p for a year now. Preview even with some FX etc is dead on 29.970 FPS with the right setup.
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 1:52 PM
Hi
First of all, I do thank you for your time and appreciate it a lot. Ok...what is gspot data? I am using platinum ( there is no 64 bit version for platinum is there?) I have also downloaded pro. I am using vista home 64 bit, 6 gb ram, 7200 rpm drives, core 2 quad intel processor...does this help
ritsmer wrote on 5/30/2009, 2:01 PM
Ok.

Just google GSpot.

If you use a platinum version you have a Vegas Studio version- this forum is for the "Full" Vegas Pro... Admit: somewhat confusing.

But: if your version is new enough -you can try to search here for "Enable multi-core rendering for playback" -

Hope it helps.
liquid wrote on 5/30/2009, 2:11 PM
So i Enabled multi-core rendering for playback and it made everything worse. But also, my processor is at 31% while playing back a file, so would I even need to enable multi core? Anyway, I'm getting pretty confused to be honest. And think looking up gspot on good was a joke right...put it this way, you don't get any results back about computers.