Use preview full or at least preview half. Preview auto is the same as preview quarter.

All:

I was just curious about performance others are experiencing from a hardware perspective.

Nick:

MP4, total bitrate 45049kbps, 1080p, 23.97...p from a GoPro Hero 3+ Black (and soon the Hero 6).

3POINT:

First up cool name (my Dad and my son have the same first name). I am very aware of the preview options and typically operate at preview auto. I know full does full resolution. My machine has unacceptable frame rates at anything over quarter view. Which is honestly fine for the most part on a single monitor system... the preview window does not need to be higher res until I go out to a second monitor at full size. Are you experiencing no frame rate drops on your rig ("Hardware:i7 4770, 16GB, GTX650ti, 1920x1200 display") at Preview Full?

All:

I am just trying to get a feel for what others are experiencing at different hardware levels.

On my old system ( i7 980 x, AMD R9 290, 24GB RAM) I get full quality & frame rate playback of Hero 3+ 1080 p/24 footage. I am using vegas 14; vegas 15 DID have a problem with gopro footage - maybe that is now fixed?

3POINT:

First up cool name (my Dad and my son have the same first name). I am very aware of the preview options and typically operate at preview auto. I know full does full resolution. My machine has unacceptable frame rates at anything over quarter view. Which is honestly fine for the most part on a single monitor system... the preview window does not need to be higher res until I go out to a second monitor at full size. Are you experiencing no frame rate drops on your rig ("Hardware:i7 4770, 16GB, GTX650ti, 1920x1200 display") at Preview Full?

All:

I am just trying to get a feel for what others are experiencing at different hardware levels.

Did you name your son "3POINT", what an honor...just kidding...Theo(dor) has indeed become a rare name.

I use at the moment 4k25p and 2k7p48 footage in a 1080p24 timeline with some track fx and with preview full. I discover only a few frame drops at some transitions or with text animation on an overlay track. You can set the preview also that it automatically switches to preview half when frame drops occur.

I think that Vegas has some problems with the footage from your Gopro Heroes. Maybe creating proxies from those files (proxies will be 720p24) will solve your problem.

MP4, total bitrate 45049kbps, 1080p, 23.97...p from a GoPro Hero 3+ Black (and soon the Hero 6).

Some GoPro footage gets a huge lift in performance by disabling the so4compoundplug codec, which is new in VP15. Not sure if that applies to HERO3 though. It applies to my HERO5 footage. Give it a try if you haven't already.

Kinvermark:

Thanks for the input. I looked up your processor and it's a 6 core @3.3ghz. Mine is 4 core at 2.7ghz. I'm betting both the speed and 2 extra cores help... more so the cores.

3POINT:

We made the name even more confusing... we use the old dutch pronunciation (sounds like T-A-O). Your processor is opperating in the range that I'm looking to upgrade to, but you have a GPU and I don't currently plan on adding one to my rig. But it's encouraging to see that you are having good results. I am trying to avoid proxies to keep the workflow down.

Nick Hope:

Did not know that... I'll give it a try. Gopro issues were the reason that I upgraded last year from Vegas Pro10 to Vegas Pro14 (and just recently to 15). That was due to rendering issues that 10 had with Gopro footage. VP14 solved that rendering problem... Both 14 & 15 seem to choke on gopro footage (sans proxies). I'll let you know what the codec diabling does.

All:

Thanks again for your input.

3POINT:

We made the name even more confusing... we use the old dutch pronunciation (sounds like T-A-O). Your processor is opperating in the range that I'm looking to upgrade to, but you have a GPU and I don't currently plan on adding one to my rig. But it's encouraging to see that you are having good results. I am trying to avoid proxies to keep the workflow down.

Indeed, as I'm a dutchmen, the "h" is not pronounced, it sounds like TAO, The place were I'm actual from, it sounds like THEY. Do you have dutch roots?

The GPU I have, is badly supported by Vegas, it speeds up the preview a bit, but crashes Vegas while rendering. Therefore I switched GPU support off. First try Nick Hope's solution.

3POINT:

We made the name even more confusing... we use the old dutch pronunciation (sounds like T-A-O). Your processor is opperating in the range that I'm looking to upgrade to, but you have a GPU and I don't currently plan on adding one to my rig. But it's encouraging to see that you are having good results. I am trying to avoid proxies to keep the workflow down.

Indeed, as I'm a dutchmen, the "h" is not pronounced, it sounds like TAO, The place were I'm actual from, it sounds like THEY. Do you have dutch roots?

The GPU I have, is badly supported by Vegas, it speeds up the preview a bit, but crashes Vegas while rendering. Therefore I switched GPU support off. First try Nick Hope's solution.

Yep... my Dad was born in Hoogezand-Sappemeer. Mine Opa/Oma immigrated to the USA in the 1950's.

That's in the northern-east part of the Netherlands. I'm from the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, a little town called Vaals. This town is situated near the three border crossing, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and holds the highest mountaintop of the Netherlands (just 321m above sealevel, haha). This three border crossing inspired me to my nickname "3POINT". I immigrated to Germany 9 years ago but I still have my job in the Netherlands, so I cross that border twice a day.

Your last name is also typical Dutch.

(Sorry for being off-topic)

Did not know that... I'll give it a try. Gopro issues were the reason that I upgraded last year from Vegas Pro10 to Vegas Pro14 (and just recently to 15). That was due to rendering issues that 10 had with Gopro footage. VP14 solved that rendering problem... Both 14 & 15 seem to choke on gopro footage (sans proxies). I'll let you know what the codec diabling does.

The newly-released VP15 build 261 disables the so4compoundplug codec for some formats by default. My HERO5 format is one of them, so your HERO3 format may too. I'd be interested to know.

Not with me, but that is maybe due because I never had this problem with my GPPro 5 2,7K files and so not listed on a blacklist? Is (1) a new option?

Yes. I'll try and work out what's changed and then update the so4compoundplug thread.

@Cornico Well this is curious. Your 2.7k 50p GoPro footage still gets decoded by so4compoundplug but my 2.7k 59.94 GoPro footage now is apparently on the new "blacklist" in build 261 and gets decoded by compoundplug by default.

The MediaInfo report is significantly different. It's not just a different frame rate. Yours is on the left. Mine is on the right.

Mine is a GoPro HERO5 Black and I think this was shot with firmware 2.0. What's yours?

I'll go try some 50p and see what happens, then update to the latest firmware 2.60 and see what happens...

UPDATE: So I did some testing with both 2.7k 50p & 60p in firmware 2.51 and 2.60. I also tried ProTune on and off. In all cases the MediaInfo is generally similar to that screenshot, and the footage gets decoded by compoundplug.dll.

I've heard people talking about matching GPU with CPU, with the idea that with your normal work flow & encoding options you utalise the most cpu you can because there are no slowdowns waiting on GPU processing. As an example when I use intel GPU for video processing everything slow downs because gpu is slower but also cpu only runs at 45% because it's being served frames to encode more slowly.

When I change to nvidia card the gpu processing is obviously faster so then the CPU utalisation increases to 80% due to cpu being served frames to render at a higher speed. I guess the idea is that you're wasting your money on a really expensive cpu if your GPU can't keep up so they should be matched. With vegas and it's low utilisation of Nvidia GPU it can be more difficult to max out the cpu in comparision to other video editors

@Nick GoPro5 Black version HD 5.02.02.60.00 and my settings are most 2,7K, 50p, FOV Lineair, Stabil on, Low Light on, etc.

Same camera and, I guess, the same firmware. So that's pretty baffling that the MediaInfo of our footage is so different, and they behave so differently in Vegas. Perhaps some detail in the settings makes a big difference in the format. My footage is "wide", not "linear", but I'm not inclined to chase this one further.

Did not know that... I'll give it a try. Gopro issues were the reason that I upgraded last year from Vegas Pro10 to Vegas Pro14 (and just recently to 15). That was due to rendering issues that 10 had with Gopro footage. VP14 solved that rendering problem... Both 14 & 15 seem to choke on gopro footage (sans proxies). I'll let you know what the codec diabling does.

The newly-released VP15 build 261 disables the so4compoundplug codec for some formats by default. My HERO5 format is one of them, so your HERO3 format may too. I'd be interested to know.

I just checked and found that the "so4..." was enabled. I disabled it. I went from an acceptable frame rate at a max preview resolution of 480 up to 960 now. That was a big step in the right direction. I think I am still going to do a processor upgrade. Another improvement is that if I enable view transform to something like "ACES RRT (sRGB)" it no longer chokes on the preview at 480 (previously I had to go down to the lowest draft setting to see an acceptable frame rate, but you cannot really edit in that). Preview half (960) still throttles down to around 10fps with the view transform on, but 480 is an improvement. I think my current machine is still going to get a processor upgrade until next year when a new machine is likely to happen. Thanks Nick.