horrible preview lag, starts shortly after vegas loads project

glen-s wrote on 9/22/2016, 11:02 AM

I am using Vegas Pro 13 build 310. Hardware is i7 6800 6 core processor, 16GB RAM, a AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 video card, 1TB 7200 rpm HDD and 500GB SSD

I was getting some video lag with my old system when editing videos from a Phantom 4 (1080p 60 fps 59,887 kbps) but it was something that seemed to clear up a bit after a few minutes of loading the project. It still lagged a bit but I could work with it. My old system was a 2009 Dell i7 2.7 Ghz with 12 GB RAM and a cheap 1GB Nvidia Geforce card. I could not play the raw Phantom 4 files on it at all in any program like VLC, WMP, Quicktime etc without serious lag so I blamed the old hardware.

I just took delivery of a new system, with i7 6800 6 core processor, 16GB RAM, and a AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 video card. It came with a 1TB 7200 rpm Toshiba HDD so I added a 500GB Samsung SSD, reformatted the HDD and installed the OS (Windows 10 Home premium) on the SSD.

I did some Gopro 1080-60p files and preview seemed to be fine, but when I load Phantom 4 files there is no way I can get rid of the lag it seems, even in the draft settings it's horrible. Last night I spent about an hour googling this, and did every recommended setting, set memory for preview to 0, disabled resampling etc. and nothing worked. The only thing that did was pre rendering, which is pointless to me because once it's gone through the long pre rendering stage any editing at all puts you back at square one.

I even tried copying the working files to the SSD, it made no difference at all.

This morning I just loaded the project I was working on, and noticed the video preview window was smooth as silk, even at the Best setting, so I thought maybe I just needed a reboot. Then after checking a couple of emails etc, I went back to work on my project and it's back to lagging so bad I can't edit with it. This is also only a 2 minute clip I have in the timeline.

It has to be some setting in Vegas, why would it work smooth as silk as soon as its opened then immediatly go back to horrible lag? I thought with this screaming fast new system and 8GB AMD card the lag would be a thing of the past, not worse.

Any suggestions what else I can try to fix this?

thanks in advance.

Comments

set wrote on 9/22/2016, 11:14 AM

Perhaps you can try create proxy on your GoPro & Phantom 4 media files?

Right click on your media in Project Media tab, then 'Create Video Proxy'.

The preview might become a bit 'bad', but you should have smooth playback by now. When I work with DJI Osmo's footage, this Video Proxy workflow helps. The final render will use original source media, not proxy one.

Hope helps.

rs170a wrote on 9/22/2016, 11:20 AM

I notice that you're using build 310 while the last Sony build was 453.

To download that version and not the Majix version, check out Nick Hope's post in the following thread for instructions to get it.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/how-to-download-vegas-pro-13-0-build-453-last-sony-version-pre-magix-etc--103229/

Mike

NickHope wrote on 9/22/2016, 12:01 PM

As a little background, GoPro files used to play smoothly in VP11. Then in VP12 and early versions of VP13 the playback was generally terrible, and some of us overwrote the codec with the VP11 version to make it better. I discovered that footage from the DJI Zenmuse X3 camera on my OSMO suffered the same problem and could be fixed in the same way, and that should have the same encoding characteristics as your DJI drone footage. Then finally in build 453 it got fixed. The story is in this thread . Direct link to that version is https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/link?id=9256.1 This doesn't quite fit your story, as you say your GoPro footage previews OK. Anyway, please let us know if build 453 fixes it.

glen-s wrote on 9/22/2016, 12:27 PM

Thanks for the replies - now that you mention it I think I do recollect replacing the codec with the V11 codec - I will check into how I did that and also consider upgrading to the latest build.

As an aside, I just tried out Davinci Resolve, works pretty slick and renders very fast, but nowhere near the number of rendering options that Vegas has.

update: I replaced the mc_dec_avc.dll codec with an old version I found online, that hugely improved the preview window and also explains why it was working better on my old system. I loaded a 1 minute clip, with the preview set on Good-Auto it was silky smooth for about 1/2 the clip then switched itself to Preview-Auto but kept it's smoothness but lower quality. The second time I tried it it stayed on the good quality the entire clip, so the software is doing something in the background to keep the preview smooth.

Thanks again for reminding me of that!

NickHope wrote on 9/22/2016, 11:37 PM

I think you'd still be better off updating to build 453 than overwriting the codec. There have been 4 updates since 310, with lots of fixes, and I *think* GoPro/DJI preview performance with 453 is as good as it is with the codec from V11. Also the V13 453 codec may support other formats better than the V11 one as it handles much more than just GoPro/DJI footage. See all those fixes in the release notes are at http://dspcdn.sonycreativesoftware.com/releasenotes/vegaspro13.0.453_readme_enu.htm