If you give it "all available" of the 8GB you have, what's left for the Vegas program? What's left for Windows?

But setting that aside, if you give Vegas 1 or 2 GB of your 8 it should prerender a fair little stretch of timeline.

One thing I noticed while trying this out with 10e was that it only prerenders the region you have selected. If nothing is selected then nothing gets prerendered. If the region is far away from your cursor, vegas seems to jump there and render. I don't remember if that's normal behavior.

For comparison, if I set my preview RAM to 1024 MB then that gets me a little over 11 seconds at best full in a 1024x780x24p project.

Rob Mack

Rob Franks, read Randy's specs. According to those, he's using win7 64bit. From that can we assume he's using Vegas 64bit too?

Clarity is all.

In another thread here, is a request that SONY come across with a "standard" or some kind of nominal best package. We've been here before. Sometimes, when I get to this point in my upgrading path, I feel I'm punching in the dark but get some illumination from those who've extended patience to me.

Grazie

Randy Brown- ( Hey- I have a good friend in Charlotte named Randy Brown.

Here's the scoop on this. Yes, you need to be in 64bit version to use that extra ram for Dynamic preview.

In 2D mode you won't need that much but in 3D with MVC files and other stuff going on allocating 2-3Gb of dynamic ram will help get you a longer length of the timeline rendering.

So, after you allocate the ram, you select a portion of your timeline you wish to view in ram. prerendered. It will take some time to render and load.
Use Shift B to activate the playback. If you selected more timeline than your ram capacity the selection will automatically shrink. Hit shift B to prerender the selection to ram and your render will play. My complaint has been the playback in Dynamic ram has been erratic sometimes, often at fast motion. I noticed some issue was fixed with this in 10e but I haven't tested DR in v10e yet.

What dynamic ram does is load the selection into ram and Shift B to prerender it so you can play all the transitions back like a finished rendered single video clip. It works except for the erratic speed as I have used it often.


Edit update- I just had to check and the prerender into dynamic ram bug fix is great in 10e. It played back at normal speed.

Also, please note that the Dynamic ram is called that for a reason. once you prerender (shift B) of the timeline selection it will play for you as often as you want until you select something else to play. at that moment the prerender to ram is lost. It's just a temporary way to quickly check something out.

And we still need to hear if Randy has 64bit Vegas or not.

Grazie

Thanks very much guys....sorry it took so long but after I finally got the window closed I closed the project, decided to defrag one of the hard drives (at 28%) and decided I'd take an early happy hour : )

@ Rob Franks....I'm running the 64 bit version and I'm viewing on a 24" external monitor with the preview set to preview/full. I am selecting just under 2 minutes of the timeline with nothing more than cuts and dissolves (no effects, CC, etc).

Rob Mack: But setting that aside, if you give Vegas 1 or 2 GB of your 8 it should prerender a fair little stretch of timeline

What would you consider a fair little stretch; as much as a minute or two?
Don: In 2D mode you won't need that much but in 3D with ....

I saw reference to this in another post and that's another question I have...where are these settings. I'm not shooting 3D yet so I,m guessing I should be using 2D mode?

Thanks again everyone,
Randy

It takes fairly simple maths to calculate how much RAM you would need for 2 mins HD preview, Randy :)

So, even with 64bit version of Vegas, you shouldn't count on that long...

Piotr

It takes fairly simple maths to calculate how much RAM you would need for 2 mins HD preview, Randy :)

Math wadn't my most bestest subject, but what is that calculation? I would think say 4 GB could render (or even smart render) 2 minutes of HDV (with project properties set to same) with nothing but cuts and dissolves with no problems.
I just tried it and it rendered 16 seconds of it...my math can't be off that far can it?
I'm trying to do a dynamic preview because I get dropped frames whenever I hit a 1 second dissolve...is there a better way to see what it will look like?
Thanks Piotr,
Randy

Yep: Selectively prerender video or SHIFT+M (Check the manual)

I used to always use selectively prerender because Vegas would save those prerenders on closing the project. Since moving to HDV though it not only won't save them but appears to not do diddly squat...still dropped frames on a dissolve with no effects and/or color correction...please tell me I'm wrong!!!!
EDIT: I just tried it again to make sure I wasn't just talking out my ass and it just sat there...then I realized I had dynamic preview set to zero so I moved it to 2048 MB and it went through the process looking like it was working but made no difference and left no indication on the timeline where it had rendered like it used to with SD.
My question is why? Why won't VP10 prerender a file and store it in a designated folder?
It doesn't have to be this way but how do you guys preview anything longer than a few seconds (especially with fx and CC)?

Randy,

I gave an example of my "fair little bit" at the end of my post but I think you just didn't believe it. I said I got a little over 11 seconds for 1024 MB of RAM in a 720-24p project.

Here's the thing you're probably not visualizing about RAM prerenders...they're uncompressed. Remember that every frame you see in the preview window is uncompressed. Vegas reads your compressed footage and decompresses it into RAM so you can see the image. A highly compressed frame of AVCHD is exactly the same as a frame of uncompressed video when it hits RAM and the preview window.

This is what the "Decompressor" part of a CODEC does.

So, RAM preview is a quick way to look at a crossfade or transition but it's not useful to look at a 2 minute stretch of video. For that you want to prerender that stretch of timeline to disk.

Rob Mack

Sorry Rob, I guess I overlooked your comparison.
Okay so when you say For that you want to prerender that stretch of timeline to disk. do you mean using the "selective prerender" under tools or do you mean actually rendering out to a file. If you mean the former, it doesn't seem to be doing anything except looking like it's working but there is no difference in the playback. If you mean the latter, what template would you use if your final destination is BluRay?
Thanks so much for your patience,
Randy

Randy- for Dynamic Ram use please refer to the help index for:

Dynamic RAM Previews (Shift + B)

It will give you the step by step and plenty of accurate references to what it can do for you. This feature works quite well in Vegas 10e

If you want to save out a permanent section of the time line prerendered to your hard drive use the (Shift + M) keys.

I use both depending on my needs. Most of the time to test a transition or a key frame sequence, I'll just do the Dynamic ram (shift B) of the selection. But if I am thinking I am complete with a sequence on the timeline and want to take a break, I can prerender this segment and then later when I do the final render having a bunch of prerenders saves final render time. It will grab more hard drive space for your project, the main disadvantage. If you have to go back and make changes, the prerender will then be a waste of time. Experience will be what it takes to know if you will have advantage in doing a prerender.

Many people posting here would be much better served learning to use the help section in Vegas as it often is a complete how to guide with excellent explanations.

I can prerender this segment and then later when I do the final render having a bunch of prerenders saves final render time. It will grab more hard drive space for your project, the main disadvantage. If you have to go back and make changes, the prerender will then be a waste of time. Experience will be what it takes to know if you will have advantage in doing a prerender.
Apparently I'm not explaining my issue well as I had done this for years before switching to HDV footage. As I recall though I would have grey bars above the selection that prerendered and yes when I opened the project back up indeed they would still be there and I wouldn't have to rerender that section...I loved it!!!
However now it is obviously not working in this way (for me anyway) because it makes no difference in the playback ( and there are no grey bars FWIW).
As a test I made a custom template of 4:3 aspect ratio and then changed the width to 100....no difference on playback although it chugs away like it's doing something.

Many people posting here would be much better served learning to use the help section in Vegas as it often is a complete how to guide with excellent explanations.
I'm not one of those people that don't RTFM Don

EDIT: I went to the designated folder for selective prerenders and there's nothing current in it. I just searched help but can't find where to select this folder (prefs shows the correct temp folder I have on a separate drive but I can't find where to tell Vegas where to store the selective prerenders so I can make sure it knows where it's located).
Does anyone know offhand?

I use the dynamic preview all the time. Lately I'm doing a lot of very short movie preshow adds (15, 30 or 45 seconds). These are short projects with a lot of compositing. I only have a Core2Duo laptop so the dynamic preview is an absolute Godsend.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you have to restart Vegas in order for different dynamic ram memory allocations to have an effect. I doubt you were doing anything when you were changing the buffer size in order to close a project.

I find that working with lots of long GOP compressed clips will bring Vegas to a crawl, including causing it to close incredibly slowly. You can get around this with mpeg2 clips by smart-rendering into larger sections (I use .mxf in order to avoid re-data-compressing the audio).

With AVCHD, I would either use a non-long-GOP intermediate like Cineform, or use .mxf mpeg2 but render into longer sections with markers instead of separate individual clips.

This avoids having Vegas buffer all the beginnings of clips to the nearest iframe, which causes incredible slowdowns, including taking a long time for Vegas to quit a project.

@ Don:
"In 2D mode you won't need that much but in 3D with MVC files and other stuff going on allocating 2-3Gb of dynamic ram will help get you a longer length of the timeline rendering. "

Just for info... Vegas 32 bit will indeed allow up to 3078Mb of dynamic ram. You simply need to go into internal settings and raise the bar to that level (from 1024).

No problem Randy. I assume you overlooked it because you were thinking a dynamic RAM preview ought to be a lot longer. It wouldn't have made sense.

do you mean using the "selective prerender" ...?
Yes. That *does* render out to a file (actually, a series of files) but maybe that's nitpicking. The point of doing it is so that you can smoothly play longer sections of your program. If that's not working then something's wrong and we can stop talking about Dynamic RAM previews and focus just on Selective Prerenders.

If it's working properly you'd know it. I'm doing a selective prerender right this moment to MXF and it behaves exactly as you remember it. This is in 10e. If it's NOT working then either it's a bug or something odd with your setup. I vote for bug. You say you have HDV on the timeline?

There are plenty of other people here who are better able to tell you what render template to use for BluRay. I don't know.

Rob

Well after reading the latest 2 or 3 posts it seems the issue is solved. I just opened a project and did a selective render and it worked...YAY!!!
I reopened the project and the section is still rendered (even shows the black bars)...woo-hoo...thanks very much for your patience my friends!
Okay if I could just ask a couple more questions:
1) the prerenders are still not going to the folder I had designated a few months ago...can anyone tell me where this setting is...I found the temp folder no problem but can't seem to find where to designate the prerender folder setting.
2) regarding workflow....but I'll start another thread at another time so you guys can catch your breath : )
Thanks again guys,
Randy

The prerender location is set on a per-project basis so you can find it by going to File|Properties - it's towards the bottom of the Video tab in the Project Properties window.

Mark
.

Randy,

I feel like a two-year old wading into an adult conversation in terms of mostly following this thread, but I do have a decent grasp of what dynamic preview can and can't do -- though I'm also still on v.8c. What popped out at me was... why do a it at full preview at all?

That's like mathematically reducing your render length in a major way - at the very least doubling your pixel real estate to be rendered (and due to my not having the encyclopedic under-the-hood knowledge of others here, it may be far more than doubling). I always do it in preview half, at the most. And I did just learn something here... window size of preview matters too. Hadn't thought of that.

That said maybe you're looking for a specific detail in the dynamic pre-render and/or shooting for a different output platform than I (I only do stuff that in Net-bound, no DVDs or broadcast quality, etc.).

Thanks Mark, I could have sworn it was a global thing