external preview DOA and Vegas jerky - solution!

dmcmeans wrote on 1/24/2003, 10:23 PM
This may be obvious, but it took me a while to figure it out and I didn't see any ref. to it after a quick search.

I had just reinstalled my box, Win XP Home and wanted to try the external preview option. I had never done this before, and after reading about it in the forum, was anxious to check out one of the features that sets Vegas apart.

I went to Options / Preferences / Video Device and selected my 1394 card. Got the "This device supports recompression, Hot pluggable device, Device connected" message.

I turned on my camera connected to the firewire card. Then I pressed the Preview on external monitor button above the preview window.

Vegas began responding _very_ sluggishly. And there was no preview on the camera.

Long story short, Windows had configured my firewire card as a network connection. I disabled this connection and the sluggishness in Vegas went away and the preview worked!

Comments

Grazie wrote on 1/25/2003, 3:16 AM
DM - "Windows had configured my firewire card as a network connection" - I'm very interested in this. Where do I see this information being displayed. WInME here . . . sooo be gently!

Grazie
dmcmeans wrote on 1/25/2003, 11:27 AM
Grazie,

Bring up your Network Connections. I don't have WinME so I'm not sure exactly how you do this. But it's where you go to set up dial-up connections, etc.

Under XP, mine shows my modem dial-up connection, my ethernet LAN connection and a 1394 connection. Everything is enabled but the 1394. It may be that using the 1394 as a network connection is a feature only in XP. Don't know.

David
Grazie wrote on 1/25/2003, 11:30 AM
Kool - will go look - thanks

Grazie
Tyler.Durden wrote on 1/25/2003, 11:42 AM
Hi Grazie,

I'm running WinME. You can find system settings in the Windows Control Panel>Device Manager. I show 1394 network adapter, 1394 bus controller, 1394 SBP2 device, Storage Device 1394 Disk (my ADS & WD120)... all on the one built-in Sony FW port.

I have zero problem with playback, capture, etc. - even daisy-chaining the camera through the external drive.

Soooo, It may not always be the 1394 net connection that bogs things down.



HTH, MPH
Paul_Holmes wrote on 1/25/2003, 11:47 AM
Well, maybe for us XP users this is the solution. I always knew that XP set up the 1394 card as a network device -- never thought to disable it though. Well, I just did and as dmcmeans discovered, the jerkiness went away completely. This has been bothering me since I first started to work with Vegas and I just accepted it as the way things had to be. Hallelujah!
Grazie wrote on 1/25/2003, 12:07 PM
We live and learn - eh?

Grazie
Randy Brown wrote on 1/27/2003, 9:07 AM
I freaked with excitement when I read this post and then discovered that Win XP had indeed set up my 1394 card as a network device...unfortunately when I disabled it there was no difference...BUT, I wonder if I disabled it wrong? I first right-clicked and selected "disable" but nothing would happen so I selected "properties" and unchecked everything (Client for MS Networks, File and Print Sharing...,Internet Protocol). It now shows disabled but I'm wondering (hoping) I did something wrong???? It would be so cool to not have to explain to a client "well uhh, it won't be all jerky like that after rendering..."
TIA,
Randy
dmcmeans wrote on 1/27/2003, 10:26 AM
Randy,

I believe it actually took me two tries before the 1394 would "really" disable. Or maybe I was just impatient and it's something that doesn't occur immediately. I did the right-click thing, and I disabled it from the Properties dialog. Eventually I got it to display as Disabled in the Network Connections window.

I did NOT uncheck all the components because Windows said this would disable them for all network connections. I left them checked.

I'll try this out on my laptop tonight. Perhaps the sluggishness during external preview is related to the particular Firewire device?

David
Randy Brown wrote on 1/27/2003, 1:45 PM
Actually after jackin with it some more I did get it disabled without unchecking everything ...but unfortunately still just as jerky.
Randy
Cheesehole wrote on 1/27/2003, 5:20 PM
I guess you have to be careful about what you consider 'jerky'. it is normal for jerkiness to occur when effects are applied or Vegas is forced to render things for any other reason. but if you are playing straight DV clips, and your sure your source properties match your project properties, you should generally get smooth playback out the 1394 port. a hiccup every once in a while is normal, but that should be it.

I always disabled that network connection right away so I can't give any feedback. nice post though! we always appreciate things like that.
Randy Brown wrote on 1/27/2003, 5:39 PM
Thanks Cheesehole...yes you're right, it's not bad unless I have some effects happening. Right now I'm mathching up transitions to music and of course it's impossible unless I selectively pre-render every time. I'm running a 1.73 ghz amd athlon with 512 mb ddr; do you think a 2.4 P4 with 1024 ddr would help much?
Thanks again Cheesehole,
Randy
Paul_Holmes wrote on 1/27/2003, 8:05 PM
About matching transistions to music. I've always found I can do that kind of thing by playing in a small window, draft or preview (depends on complexity of effects), with "Display at Project Size" unchecked. I'm using an Athlon 1800. Occasionally I have to render a transition to make sure it looks exactly as I want, but for flow, or timing, I rarely find rendering is necessary.
Cheesehole wrote on 1/27/2003, 9:52 PM
>>>I'm running a 1.73 ghz amd athlon with 512 mb ddr; do you think a 2.4 P4 with 1024 ddr would help much?

I wouldn't worry about the RAM but it's so cheap you might as well load up. it won't make Vegas run faster though unless you are using a whole lot of high resolution (1600x1200) images in your slide show.

for near-realtime transitions (no jerkiness) using DV source you need about 2GHz or Athalon 2000. I'm not sure what you need for images, it depends on the resolution. the best solution is to work out your timing using a half size preview window (not 1394), as was suggested. switch to the 1394 preview when you need to do your color/contrast adjustments. then you don't need to worry about performance.

your computer is fast. if I were you I'd wait a while before upgrading. (I'm still running happily on a dual 1GHz :)
Randy Brown wrote on 1/28/2003, 9:20 AM
Hey thanks guys...that does make a big difference; even with velocity envelopes, lens flare and track motion, it's smooth enough now that I can tell where to place the clips to match the music.
Thanks again,
Randy
dmcmeans wrote on 1/28/2003, 1:47 PM
Well, to complicate the issue, my laptop running XP has the 1394 configured as a network connection and the external preview worked fine.

Just the clarify, I am previewing only prerendered material.

The behavior I experienced was that Vegas, not the preview, was jerky/sluggish (and there was no output to the camera) during external preview when the firewire port was configured as a network connection. Disabling the network connection fixed the problem for my desktop machine.

Obviously there's more variables here than just the 1394 being used as a network connection.

David
Chienworks wrote on 1/28/2003, 2:01 PM
The 1394 port is capable of 400Mbps. DV only needs about 30Mbps. There's lots of bandwidth left over. Even if the port is configured for networking, that function of it will be idle unless you actually have another 1394 network device connected to it sending/receiving data. Even then, it's unlikely that the network connection will sustain over 370Mbps and prevent video data from flowing through at full speed.
Grazie wrote on 1/28/2003, 5:15 PM
Hmmmm . . . Chienworks, I'm starting to smell another whiff of the fan blowing here - BIOS interrrupt maybe? Hey I may be well out of order here. How would we test this? 1394? Jerky dv flow? Get the picture? . . . or not - as the case may be.

Grazie
Victor wrote on 1/29/2003, 4:37 AM
Hello,

who can explain me the simple thing: why I have jerky external preview over OHCI 1394 card when I click "pause" free of transitions DV clip on the VV3 timeline?

PIII 800, 256RAM, 7200, XP

It was OK with Win2K and the same hardware.
FuTz wrote on 1/29/2003, 7:12 AM
Victor, I've been using Win2K forever since I got VV3 and I too experience this "intermittnent problem"...
I'm still dreaming of the day I'll get a rock-steady/solid-rock external preview...
And I'm not talking about the number of posts that have been discussed about this topic.
I guess if we all used the same hardware and OS it could be fixed more easily...
Recently, I gave up... for a while.