Dynamic RAM Preview

kimandfil wrote on 7/19/2007, 6:18 AM
When I do a Shift-B to preview a segment of my project, the preview only does a small portion. I'm using Movie Studio Platinum 7.

I'm trying to preview maybe 10-12 sec. When I hit Shift-B, it starts building the preview, but then after a couple of seconds it starts playing what little bit it has finished in those couple of seconds and keeps looping through that. The blue bar above the track that controls the looping area is also made smaller to only cover the couple of seconds that have finished. Originally I have the blue looping bar set to the entire region that I want to preview.

What am I doing wrong ? How can I get it to build a preview for the entire region of interest rather than just the small 2 sec region ?

Would appreciate any help. Thanks !

Comments

rustier wrote on 7/19/2007, 6:50 AM
perhaps I am missing something, but if you left click on your timeline (not directly on you clip or you may drag the clip - click above the time indicators) and drag it to the right you will create an "envelope" which if you hit play will play just that section at normal speed. I am sure ram preview has some usefulness - but I am not sure what (I think you may need to set up a preview device for it to work for you- but I could be wrong). My envelope displays the upper corners as yellow (not blue), but I guess this may just be a windows default color. Another option you may consider if you want to look at a particulat spot is using the scrub button. If you look in the vicinity of the lower left side of your timeline you will see a box with the word 'rate' in it. Inside you will see a figure similar to a see saw. If you left click on the "bunch of arrows" above the "pivot" and slide it back and forth you will 'scrub' back and forth as fast or slow as you like. This can be helpful if you are looking to make precise changes.

have fun with it

p.s. keep in mind that preview may not be 100% accurate depending on the source and what you did with it. I have been fooled more than once - especially when dealing with mpeg.
kimandfil wrote on 7/19/2007, 7:16 AM
rustier - thanks for your reply.

I can definitely just play the segment of video and that works fine. I have several FX in this portion and as it plays, the video is not real smooth. Each time it plays through, the quality and "smoothness" get better.

My understanding is that it will continue to improve with each loop through. I was using the RAM preview (Shift-B) to build the preview all at once, rather than build it by repeatedly playing the clip.

It's tough to evaluate if the FX are what I want when the video is not real "smooth".

Thanks again for your help !
ritsmer wrote on 7/19/2007, 7:28 AM
The Dynamic preview requires some RAM.
You can define how much VMS may use in Options +Preferences+ Video.
If you give VMS less than required for the wanted seconds of preview then VMS just stops building the pewview and plays whatever it has built.
An amount of 250-400 MB is what many users define.
Less that 250 MB seems (according to this forum) to slow down the normal preview.
Repeatedly previewing the same piece of timeline improves the previewing quality - i.e. 10-15 Fps the first time becomes 25 Fps the third or fourth time.
If you want to preview longer periods then you may prerender to file.
OhMyGosh wrote on 7/19/2007, 7:36 AM
Hi kimandfil,
Maybe a silly question, but how much RAM does your machine have, and how much of that is dedicated to 'Dynamic RAM Preview'? If you don't have enough, VMS will only build and show a portion of the segment that it has enough resources for. You can check, and change these setting under 'preferences' then go to the 'video' tab. Let us know if this helps. Cin
OhMyGosh wrote on 7/19/2007, 8:00 AM
Sorry ritsmer,
Must have been writing, whiles you were busy posting :O Cin
kimandfil wrote on 7/19/2007, 8:03 AM
Thanks ritsmer, Thanks OhMyGosh

You guys might have the answer to why it's only building the preview for a portion of the video. I'm ashamed to say that I'm not sure how much RAM is allocated to this. My system has 2GB RAM. I'll check how much RAM is allocated to this and hopefully that helps.

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate your help !
Chienworks wrote on 7/19/2007, 3:20 PM
As Ritsmer mentioned, go to Options / Preferences / Video. The amount of RAM allocated for dynamic RAM previews is show there and you can change it there as well.
kimandfil wrote on 7/20/2007, 4:38 AM
The amount of RAM allocated to preview was set at 128MB. I increased this to 800MB and the preview went through great. I had a long chain of FX and when just playing the video normally, it was tough to see exactly how things were going to look.

Doing the dynamic preview takes a minute or so to "build" all the FXs together, but it really helps see how things are going to look.

Thanks again everyone for your help !