I'm trying to determine why Vegas has such a hard time getting to play back AVCHD footage on a machine that is powerful enough so that other NLEs can play it without any problems at full rate. One thing that has occurred to me is that Vegas' problem could be that it doesn't buffer the stream enough.
When I start playing a timeline with AVCHD footage it normally starts playing at full rate, but eventually it starts stuttering badly, going down to less than 10 fps sometimes. Sometimes it picks up, but normally it stays like that until I stop it and resume playing. After doing that, sometimes it starts playing again at full rate, but sometimes it keeps stuttering. I've tried setting the RAM Preview to 0, which I noticed it helps when editing SD DV video, but it doesn't help at all with AVCHD. Plus, given the poor playback of the footage, many times I need to do a RAM preview to be able to preview even a simple cut, because it will not go from one event to the next smoothly.
Now, Vegas has a lot of great features which is why I keep putting up with its poor performance, but lately many of my edits are done in Neo Booster, because even if in some regards is inferior to Vegas, it gives me stutter-free playback of AVCHD footage even after applying color correction and most of the filters that come with it, and also gives me secondary monitor preview with real interlaced video (or at least de-interlaced by the TV set but with the same fluid motion that I get connecting the camera through HDMI to the TV set) as opposed to Vegas' poor quality secondary monitor preview that merges the two fields together at the same time. Not to mention that it comes with a very decent h.264 encoder, as opposed to the one in Vegas which is barely OK.
But still, I do like Vegas and I would like to find out if there is some setting in the internal preferences that might help provide a stutter-free playback of AVCHD. I opened such preferences and I typed in "buffer", after which several parameters showed, but I have no idea what most of them are. I can try playing with them after I capture the screen with the original values in case I screw up, but I thought that if many of us do the same thing, somebody might get to the solution. If you would like to try, please post your results in this thread. I'm starting to get hit by a migraine so I'm out for the night, but I will try some more things in the next few days and post back if I find anything of value.
When I start playing a timeline with AVCHD footage it normally starts playing at full rate, but eventually it starts stuttering badly, going down to less than 10 fps sometimes. Sometimes it picks up, but normally it stays like that until I stop it and resume playing. After doing that, sometimes it starts playing again at full rate, but sometimes it keeps stuttering. I've tried setting the RAM Preview to 0, which I noticed it helps when editing SD DV video, but it doesn't help at all with AVCHD. Plus, given the poor playback of the footage, many times I need to do a RAM preview to be able to preview even a simple cut, because it will not go from one event to the next smoothly.
Now, Vegas has a lot of great features which is why I keep putting up with its poor performance, but lately many of my edits are done in Neo Booster, because even if in some regards is inferior to Vegas, it gives me stutter-free playback of AVCHD footage even after applying color correction and most of the filters that come with it, and also gives me secondary monitor preview with real interlaced video (or at least de-interlaced by the TV set but with the same fluid motion that I get connecting the camera through HDMI to the TV set) as opposed to Vegas' poor quality secondary monitor preview that merges the two fields together at the same time. Not to mention that it comes with a very decent h.264 encoder, as opposed to the one in Vegas which is barely OK.
But still, I do like Vegas and I would like to find out if there is some setting in the internal preferences that might help provide a stutter-free playback of AVCHD. I opened such preferences and I typed in "buffer", after which several parameters showed, but I have no idea what most of them are. I can try playing with them after I capture the screen with the original values in case I screw up, but I thought that if many of us do the same thing, somebody might get to the solution. If you would like to try, please post your results in this thread. I'm starting to get hit by a migraine so I'm out for the night, but I will try some more things in the next few days and post back if I find anything of value.