Is smooth playing important for an edit program?

j-v wrote on 8/28/2022, 4:15 PM

I read a lot of discussions and complaints about Vegas is not playing a file smooth. For me that is not so important with the options of prerendering and Dynamic RAM preview that can show pieces of the project as if it was rendered to the intended destination format already.
Players are for playing and editors are for making and rendering.
Why is it for people that uses an edit program so important that previewing files must go as smooth as possible?

Comments

DMT3 wrote on 8/28/2022, 7:13 PM

Since I do mostly personal work, I can deal with some video not playing perfectly. But when I was a professional editor, I would have a room full of clients and they wanted to see what the product looked like. Some people who have not edited as a career, can't visualize a dissolve, or video playing smoothly. But even for personal work, I don't like the video stuttering or skipping frames. I can deal with it in effx but not just playing normally.

Reyfox wrote on 8/31/2022, 6:26 AM

I think because almost all the other editors, including consumer editors, do play back the timeline smoothly. Sure, add fx or something, that can change the timeline playback, but still there are consumer editors that will still do it after timeline rendering. Toss in Resolve, or Vegas "sister" app, Video Pro X and other semi to pro editors, and you can see the reason why. If they do it, why can't Vegas.

And as @DMT3 mentioned, if you have a client watching and making suggestions.

Me? I would love to have it in Vegas, but I can get by until they do.

RogerS wrote on 9/1/2022, 10:29 AM

Being able to decode a variety of formats without proxy files was a strength of Vegas a decade ago. It was a breath of fresh air to be able to just drop AVC onto the timeline and start editing while I waited hours for Final Cut to ingest and create optimized media for my files from the day's shoot.

Vegas has fallen behind with increasingly popular acquisition formats like HEVC.

Beyond decoding, I don't have an issue with needing to create a ram preview for a transition or the like- I don't expect all Fx to work in real time.