"I would like to know how many of you out there knew about this and didn't tell me."

Long time badly kept secret. I'm surprised you didn't know!

There are lots of settings in there you can make use of. I like to reset my default track height to about 90 or 100... the default is 64 which is too small for my liking. If you have 8 gig of ram or better you can also increase the default dynamic ram max.

One word of advice though... do a disk image before you go wild with playing around with the settings. If you happen to hit the wrong one you can do some serious damage!

I am assuming that SCS has been delving into the non-MS-VFW realm, and this is a test bed for enabling video core processors to handle some of the preview.

I would think that by V9 we should see lots of support for either DirectX GPU enabling, or most likely(hopefully), using MS Media Foundation to skip DirectX completely?

fldave- it would appear based on the comment above you that this was there for some time - so I'm not so sure that I'd be making any assumptions like that, but heck - at this point, i don't need em- I'm running full flipping framerate.

And this isn't in V64 where I'll have more ram avail.

I have to say that I'm pretty pleased to now see my preview using all the cores - I don't mess with the ram settings etc... but multicore preview is what I've been wanting for some time. and I know the reset to default settings incase it really screws things up in Vegas.

I can run VM light rays at 70-75% quality and get 15-17 fps playback with a curves filter on before it. NEVER would have dreamed of that w/o this.

*SD - footage that I'm referring to

Dave

"fldave- it would appear based on the comment above you that this was there for some time - "

I've been using the multi core playback switch since version 7a that I can remember... don't know if it was there in 6 though.

I have to ask: Why isn't this option made available in an obvious way? Will it damage my PC? Will it mess with my s/w?

Dave, you really should be asking the same of Madison? Why ask it here? As yet I don't understand your approach? Surely if you wanted a definitive response you'd be asking Madison?

Grazie

Grazie - I ask here, because I know what madison says (last time I showed it to a guy at the NAB show floor - he said "Don't do that!" - that was in reference to upping max ram preview.

now there's no harm beyond you can actually cause windows to drop to its knees if you consume too much RAM :).

For this, I'm guessing that it's not stable, nor well tested enough to really use permanently, I could contact them and ask, and I'd bet that the same situation would come up, just a "don't do that"

So the reason for asking is 3 fold,

1) other people have obviously been using it here and have a heap more experience with it, than those at sony are likely willing to share because they probably haven't tested with it enough to know, or there may be some things that cause it to reduce framerates, and some that cause it to improve and they don't want to implement something across the board that may cause an increase in the requests for support.

2) Others may have been looking for a way to do this for a long time and not known about it, and I've made a thread that is going to be searchable for a long time to come incase they look for it.

3) If there are specific things that those who have used it know can cause stability issues, they can then post them here, and this can become a resource not only for me, but anyone else who chooses to use this internal feature.

Dave

I will note for those that may not know that it seems that at best when working with HDV in an SD Project, you get worse playback of unchanged footage (besides the resizing that's being done) at BEST but better playback at good and below with the multithread render for preview enabled (this is with scaling the preview to fit, and setting the preview quality at full not auto).

Also a note of another thing I could never do before:

With multithread enabled and preview qual at preview-full, I can also pull off 25-29.97 fps with two streams of HDV going and one set to 50% opacity by way of pulling down the clip opacity while I type this in FireFox.

Dave

" I ask here, because I know what madison says " No you don't. That was about increasing RAM, not this enabling option. How is this the same?

"(last time I showed it to a guy at the NAB show floor - he said "Don't do that!" - that was in reference to upping max ram preview." David, again this was about RAM usage - not multicore?

"now there's no harm beyond you can actually cause windows to drop to its knees if you consume too much RAM :)." We are talking multicore here? So how do you know? Let Madison come out with this.

"For this, I'm guessing that it's not stable, nor well tested enough to really use permanently, " Your initial premise is not on-beam so I can't agree with your conclusion. As you say, you are guessing.

"I could contact them and ask, " - Yes, yes you should!!

" . . and I'd bet that the same situation would come up, just a "don't do that" " Maybe, but maybe not. Give them the chance to investigate it though?

"1) other people have obviously been using it here and have a heap more experience with it, than those at sony are likely willing to share because they probably haven't tested with it enough to know, " Oh really???

" . . or there may be some things that cause it to reduce framerates, and some that cause it to improve and they don't want to implement something across the board that may cause an increase in the requests for support." OK, but THEN we would know wouldn't we?

"2) Others may have been looking for a way to do this for a long time and not known about it, and I've made a thread that is going to be searchable for a long time to come incase they look for it." Indeed. And others will respond.

"3) If there are specific things that those who have used it know can cause stability issues, they can then post them here, and this can become a resource not only for me, but anyone else who chooses to use this internal feature." Indeed, again.

I would like to hear just how Madison is utilizing & allowing Vegas to make use of more and more powerful PCs - and here, with the multicore options, this IS one of those options.

Grazie

Why is this hidden?
Numerous reports of projects previewing OK and crashing on rendering. One suggested fix, reduce render cores to 1.
Having a project crash while rendering is one thing, having it do so while previewing with the potential to loose work is quite another.

Not that I'm saying people shouldn't try changing this hidden parameter, just remember you did change it. The full impact of what you've changed might not be found for a long time.

Bob.

Quite! - Grazie

" I ask here, because I know what madison says " No you don't. That was about increasing RAM, not this enabling option. How is this the same?

Forgive my lack of clarity, it was not said in comment to my adjusting the RAM, it's the opening of the internal preferences tab that was opposed

I'm actually quite certain that I know why it hasn't been implemented, and I'm sure that I could be wrong, but instability - that's what I'd put my money on.

farss is right - usually when there is a problem they suggest going down to one core. I'm betting that a lot of that has to do with memory, but some times it's clearly not - I discovered and reported a bug with the way PNG's were handled and reducing to 1 core fixed that, but I'm quite sure that it wasn't a memory problem there.

Anyway - I'm by no means saying that this is what everyone should do, but awareness of the option is certainly a good thing I think, as long as you are aware that you take your system into your hands when you do it. Now the likelyhood of it destroying a computer is probably slim to none, but the likelyhood of it freaking out mid work because a of a multi-core issue... certainly a bigger probability, and as such Farss' comments about remembering that you made the change is a VERY good thing to take to heart.

Let me also be clear here that I'm NOT attacking SCS for not telling us, I'm well aware that these kinds of things are not public because of potential problems. I'm just asking the question I asked for the reasons I stated.

Dave

Best Full - 2 SD streams - both pan cropped, and keyframed to change pan/crop - 50% opacity on the top clip, full frame rate playback at multicore enabled preview render and 8fps with it disabled.

Dave

OK ..

1] I would like a clear Madison/Vegas option - as per the RAM option - to ENABLE a number of CPUs - if I want to.

2] When you - Dave - enable CPUs what readings in Task Manager do you get? Do you see the CPUs graph being fully or MORE utilization going on? Now THAT would be interesting.

Grazie

1 - I'll see what they say

2 - for some things yes, for others no - the reason being (me guessing) that some things can't be threaded out. but if I'm taxing the system to the point where I drop below full framerate, anywhere from 75-100% usually in the 98-100%, but sometimes not.

Dave

Dave,

Thanx a zillion for bringing up the subject!!! This should be a sticky. I have been fiddling around with the internal settings but have missed this one completely.

I have always had realtime preview (highest quality) on AVCDH material on the timeline, due to my very fast rig. I therefore never needed any proxies or conversion of formats to run smoothly.

However, during crossfades and other processing from two overlapping source clips, the throughput dropped from full framerate to about 6..10 f/s. With this option set to "true" I'm back att full framerate even during crossfades.

THIS IS SO GREAT!!! So far I have not noticed ANY problems enabling this mode. I'm running on a Quadcore QX9650 @ 3,8GHz and Vista Premium 64 bit and Vegas Pro. Wonder why SCS opted to set it off as default?

Still avaiting for a cure for the 4-core render issue when rendering AVCDH to HD... but that's another (sad) story...

Christian

Perhaps someone attending NAB next week can corner one of the programmers and ask what this setting does exactly. It seems pretty self-explanatory, but maybe it's not. I have the setting enabled on my quad-core and have noticed no adverse effects.

I changed the value to TRUE on my dual quad core HPx8600 workstation and can't tell any difference in my preview power. It is responding the same. Question: It is not possible to change the default to TRUE on enable multi-core rendering for playback? I can only change the VALUE setting but I can't see any increased performance. For example when playing back 720x480 dv 25bps mxf with color correction, masking, sharpen, text fx, transparency, transitionfx and audio fx my preview chugs down to a little over 1 frame per second. It reacts the same with either setting.

And how much of your CPU power is used then?

Marco

Erikd,

It might depend on if fx you use are quad-core compatible (multithreadable ;) or not. That goes both for audio and video.... This is, however, just a wild guess... At least with AVCDH material on the timeline I see a remarkable difference in performance in Vegas 8.0c. Never tried this on 8.1, or with SD material that is already realtime even with panning and cropping and color correction.

However, even with this setting at TRUE - the utilization of the 4 CPU cores is never higher than 50%, even if the preview starts to stutter with too many effects added. Feeding multiple CPU's with data is not a very easy task...

Johns suggestion is not a bad one. Any volunteers that want's to corner a SCS SW-guy at NAB yet???

Christian

Marco, I watched all 8 processors during playback with both settings and they react identically. Typically running only 1-2% with a peak of 4%.

Christian, good question about the FX. I must confess ignorance but all FX are Sony only that are delivered with Vegas. I don't know how to check to find the answer to your question for that matter. Thanks.

The playback fps gain from enabling multi-core for playback really depends on the task/effect in use.

As an example of an FX that really benefits, I can point to Levels; with multi-core playback I can still get the full 25 fps in Best/Full (with the option disabled, it slows down to some half of that).

But use something like Unsharp Mask, and the playback will crawl at some 5-7 fps.

Difficult to say whether this is only a question of a given FX's good optimization (or lack thereof), or simply the amount of CPU work it requires. I'm tending to think it's the former, basing on the CPU load indication...