Frame rate and CPU question

LarsHD wrote on 5/22/2009, 8:19 AM
QUESTION 1:

(Pro 8)

- I set up a project 1920x1080, 30 fps prog.
- I drop a color test bar on the time line
- I drop a ramp test on the time line
- I set it up for a 3 second dissolve between the two

Results:

I play it back in Preview / Half (= preview size of 960x540) and it plays back at 30 fps. Good!

I now set it for Best / Half. During the dissolve the frame rate goes down to 13 fps and then back to 30 fps after the dissolve.

QUESTION: In Taks Manager I see the CPU is going up to around 29 % during the dissolve and then down to 2-3% again.

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a) Why should I see a reduction in 50% frame rate while 75% of my CPU appears beeing *unused* ?
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b) What processor / motherboard should I have in order to see 30 fps frame rate during the dissolve in best / half?



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(Please note that here I'm speaking about something that does *not* involve any hard disk streaming at all... Just the built in still testbars...)

best
Lars


FRUSTRATING:

It is somewhat frustrating to see that playing this exact sequence back in for instance 9.0 64 bit version in Vista 64 it runs at 30 fps during the dissolve. Perfect! Then it has problems with stutter during streaming instead...

It seems like some things work best in 8.0c in WIndows XP 32 bit. SOme thing works best in 64 bit 9.0 in Vista 64.

It would be very nice with a Vegas Pro that worked optimally in Vista 64 bit and had support for Cineform and Cinescore.. Wouldn't this be the most logical thing as well...?


My system:
=================
Asus P5KR mobo
8 GB ram
QuadCore 6600 CPU
XP32


Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 5/22/2009, 8:39 AM
I just RAM prerender the transition to see it at full frame rate.
LarsHD wrote on 5/22/2009, 8:52 AM
Or perhaps just *imagine* what it would look like without a drop in frame rate..?

The reason I made my post music vid was to hear from fellow users if other system configurations would increase the frame rate, communicating the issue and hopefully see Sony addressing this issue so that next update would play smoothly.

As it does play smoothly in Vista 64 and Pro9 64, but there instead I get new/other problems I just thought communicting this was a good thing.

Lars
johnmeyer wrote on 5/22/2009, 10:39 AM
I just re-created your scenario and obtained the same results using Vegas 8.0c (on my PC, it dropped from 30 to 18).

I then opened the hidden preferences (hold the shift key and then select options, and you'll find the "Internal" tab). Type "core" in the "show only ..." box at the bottom, and you'll see a preference that enables multi-core rendering for playback. Type "TRUE" in the value field.

Try your test again, and I think you'll be a happy camper. On my PC, not only did I get 30 fps in Best-Half, I got the 30 fps in Best-Full, displaying at 1920x1080x32. I even dropped a color corrector fX on the color bars and messed them up "real good," and still got 30 fps during the transition. Thinking I was on a roll, I added a page peel transition, and at that ponit the fun was over. I got only 2-3 fps at 1920x1080x32. However, when I went back to the preview-half resolution (960x540x32), I was back up at 30 fps.

This doesn't help as much when playing back video from the disk, but it makes a huge difference for this sort of thing.

musicvid10 wrote on 5/22/2009, 10:47 AM
I too, hope this will be addressed, and I'm sure those with faster systems will be happy to share their experience, especially i7 owners.

I am stuck with a slower system (won't be upgrading any time soon), and since Sony is apparently a long time out on re-engineering from VFW to DirectShow and Hardware Acceleration, I will have to be content with the one option they have provided, which is prerendering the transitions.

My apology if my response sounded flip.
LarsHD wrote on 5/23/2009, 1:05 AM
Thanks for your reply John. Interesting with the TRUE/FALSE setting there. I'm getting similar results:

Project 1920x1080 at 30 fps
Preview half
CORE = FALSE

When running a project with a series of still photos and pan/crop for slow zooms and dissolves I see framerate is around 12-17 fps and during the dissolves 10-12 fps.

When setting core to TRUE I see the fram rate going down to 3-5 fps... What does this actually mean here? Does it mean that when Vegas is allowed to make full use of my QuadCore6600 it produces worse results...? Hmmm.. strange.

When playing my Cineform 1920x1080 30 fps video footage it runs at 30 fps regardless TRUE or FALSE.

A little promising perhaps:
When running the same project in Pro 9, the Cineform plays back lousy of course, but that's a confirmed issue and next update will hopefull work fine with Cineform.

But in Pro 9 I ran the sequence where there were dissolves between stills and each still had pan/crop involved and in Preview/half that ran at 30 fps. Except for one still that had lots of motion in by Pan/crop. So there was a *big* difference between 8 and 9 here.

Again, we seem to find little windows of happiness here and there ;) Imagine how nice it would be if these were all collected in one single version of Vegas...

When I run the same 8.0c project with dissolves of pan/crop stills, in 8.0c but on the VIsta 64 platform, it runs at 18-25 fps instead of the 12-17 fps. And this is on the exact same mahine. Same hardware, same CPU etc.

Turning to Pro 9 in Vista 64, the dissolves are played back 30 fps beautifully. BUT... most of the transitions are followed by a short stutter / hickup like a 2-3 frame freeze...

Seems like if all performance bugs are identified and taken care of by the Sony developers next version could be really great!

Best and thanks for helping my running my little test here...
Lars