Extremely poor preview performance

f(x) Studios wrote on 12/15/2015, 1:22 AM

Hey all,

I recently rebuilt my computer on Windows 10, and am working on my first project in Movie Studio 12 64 bit since the upgrade.

Something is horribly wrong, however. The preview window lags like I have never seen it lag, regardless of any settings I have tried. My computer is a desktop with a 3.2GHz i5, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, and a GeForce GTX 660 SC.

The file I am working with is a transport stream from an AVCHD camera. I know these are not generally the easiest to work with, but I've been doing it for a few years now on multiple versions of Vegas/Movie Studio, and different hardware. It has never been an issue.

When I add this file (or any other .mts, m2ts, mpeg) to the project, Movie Studio becomes completely unusable. If I start playback of a file, it locks up. If I try to scan through a file, it locks up. If I try to pause playback of a file, it locks up. I don't have any goofy codec packs on this machine, nor did I before rebuilding it.

Just to be sure, I tried remuxing the file with Handbrake to .mp4. No change.

I also tried using Movie Studio itself to rerender the file as .mp4 (no change) and .wmv (no change).

I tried giving MS 8 GB of Dynamic Preview RAM, and no Preview RAM at all (which used to work pretty well for certain tasks) with no change. I've tried GPU acceleration on and off. No change.

Movie Studio is installed to the Crucial 256GB SSD that my operating system is on (with 50GB free). The file I'm working with is on a 2 TB 7200rpm SATA III 32MB cache HDD, and Movie Studio's temp folder is on a 1 TB 7200rpm SATA III 32MB cache HDD.

Performance of the preview window is the same (utter garbage) whether it is set to Draft (Quarter) or Best (Full) quality. It is rendering a 240x135 pixel postage stamp just as slowly as a 1920x1080 preview on a second monitor.

I have to be missing something; the settings and software are all the same as before, but performance is hopeless. The only thing that changed is the operating system, as far as I can tell. Is Movie Studio 12 64bit not really Windows 10 compatible? Please help, this is driving me crazy!

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/15/2015, 7:27 AM

This should definitely not be the case.

Movie Studio 12 and 13 should be able to edit 1920x1080 AVCHD M2TS effortlessly. It certainly does on my computer. (Have you tried changing the quality settings in your Preview window?)

Are your matching your Video Project Settings to your media?

Something is definitely wrong at your end. It's definitely not the program though. It's optimized for AVCHD video. (I assumed you've reinstalled the program since your upgrade to Windows 10?)

musicvid10 wrote on 12/15/2015, 8:42 AM

Have you upgraded your graphics drivers?
Have you tried with all GPU turned off in Vegas?

f(x) Studios wrote on 12/15/2015, 2:22 PM

As mentioned in the original post, I've tried preview quality as low as Draft (Quarter) without improvement. I have also tried with GPU Acceleration enabled and disabled.

Windows 10 is a fresh install (not an upgrade install) with a fresh install of Movie Studio 12 from disc, and patched to the latest build available from Sony.

Project settings are the same as media, everything is 1920x1080p60.

Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/15/2015, 7:53 PM

Something is definitely wrong, but I don't know what. (You do have Quicktime installed, right?)

Assuming that i5 of yours is a quad-core, your system should be to edit AVCHD video in Movie Studio without even working up a sweat.

f(x) Studios wrote on 12/15/2015, 8:08 PM

Yes, I have QuickTime installed, and the i5 is a Quad Core. Before the upgrade working with these sorts of files was effortless.

Looks like maybe it's time to try Movie Studio 13 and see what happens? :) Oh boy.

UKharrie wrote on 12/16/2015, 6:50 AM

From a position of ignorance this reads like yr new PC doesn't like the settings you were used to.
Whilst that's no help the raw fix is to go back, so you can get on with Editing.

FWIW I saw a YT tutorial that suggested the preview RAM setting should be small ( ie not as large as possible, which yd expect ), Can't say I know what mine is - but then I'm happy with Win7 (32b) and SMSv12suite.... until Win10 and my finances allow a step-change. ( That's when I shall have issues too, no doubt ).
((Nice PC spec BTW.))
Sorry to read this is still on-going. Win 10 seems to have mixed results. . . .

EDIT:_ Thanks Jillian . . . that was what I recalled... "...setting Dynamic Preview Ram to 200MB..." like you knew the figures.
Perhaps the buffer doesn't empty properly if it's bigger... ( then why not impose a limit? )..

Jillian wrote on 12/16/2015, 2:35 PM

You might try setting Dynamic Preview Ram to 200MB. In my experience, it needs a little bit, but not much.

Hope this helps.

Eagle Six wrote on 12/16/2015, 2:39 PM

I've read user running on Windows 10 and having the latest Quicktime Windows driver 7.7.8, have had vasrious problems. Removing version 7.7.8 and installed version 7.7.6 has fixed some of the problems.

Best Regards....George