monitoring

masmedia wrote on 6/9/2006, 6:09 AM
Hello,

Is there a way to monitor video in "actual" real time while editing? Actual, as in, how it will actually look, not all chunky when unrendered. I find if I need to see how something will play, I must make the preview screen very small which helps but its still not they way it is when rendered.

Is it possible to render a section at a time and play that right out of the timeline to see how it will be?

I just have a secondary pc monitor now, if I get a proper video monitor, will this help?

Thanks!

mas

Comments

epirb wrote on 6/9/2006, 6:15 AM
this depends on a few things.
first of all what kind of project and media are you using regular DV ?
Does your machine have a lot of memory?
what is your preview window set at?
do you have a lot of effects added to the clips?
if you set it at "preview auto" youcan either do a ram render(under tools or shift+b)for small portions, this depends on how much memory you have.
Or selective prerender renders the region you have selected(shift+m or under tools)

Grazie wrote on 6/9/2006, 6:51 AM


Well, as per normal I'm soooo prepared to be knocked down by a bucket of Mackerel by my chums here - BUT - everything, outside a pure/virgin captured clip HAS to be prepared for Previewing, rendered or not. Building a RAM preview is another type if render - yeah? I'm skating on thin ice here . . .

No matter what platform you are editing on, you do anything to any event/clip/audio or what-have-you that piece has to have some form of maths applied to it. It just matters HOW much maths and WHAT it is being applied to, in terms of useful previewing, that counts.

Some NLE's have clever "smart" rendering, some have in the background rendering, some utilize cards and gizmos to get to that magical frame rate. And others have a requirement to render out the transition? Who'd have thought that?? What Vegas does is mix it in with the RAM that is being used by Vegas and out pops either FR or something less.

But be assured that other NLEs still do have to render - you might not see it happen, but it IS going on. PLUS you might ALSO see it happen when you apply FXs and so on.

Good lickerty-split Previewing has been my quest.

Grazie
johnmeyer wrote on 6/9/2006, 7:30 AM
Is there a way to monitor video in "actual" real time while editing? Actual, as in, how it will actually look, not all chunky when unrendered.

Everything you see is always going to be an approximation, to some degree, of what the video will look like on the final viewing device. Your monitor does not look at all like your TV screen (different colors, different interlacing, different resolution, etc). The frame rate can be different, depending on your source material (e.g., if you start with 24p, but view on 29.97 NTSC). And more.

If you truly want the closest approximation as to what a given clip will look like, then you need to pre-render it (either to the timeline, or to disk), and then view it on an external monitor, using the external TV monitor feature in Vegas.

For cuts-only, you should be able to view real-time, full resolution, on an external TV screen, without any need to render.
masmedia wrote on 6/9/2006, 7:59 PM
thanks all... a few answers to your questions:
I'm currently doing a rather simple project with slow dissolves and slowed down clips. I have some bad shots (jerky here and there) and would just like to see them before rendering everything.

I'm at 512RAM, which Vegas says that's good for HD, and I'm in SD. I was always going to go to 1GB RAM but never did, but probably should.

Preview is in Auto Best.

Not many effects... just slow dissolves and slow downs, oh, and a white soft boarder around the video.

Looks like the selective prerender is what I'm looking for so I can render in sections: I also work in Avid, and that's basically what I do there.

And, yes, I agree, there is no such thing as "actual" as in final, but an approximation, and Vegas "aprroximates" pretty well.

Any other tips welcome!

Thanks everybody!

mas
masmedia wrote on 6/9/2006, 8:13 PM
...actually, it's preview in player in tools that does it! I just select a section and hit that, let it render and windows media player shows me a real crisp, clean version.
Thanks for the tips!
johnmeyer wrote on 6/9/2006, 9:11 PM
Preview is in Auto Best.

I would recommend setting this down at least to Good, and maybe to Preview. For most things, you won't notice much degradation in spatial quality, but the frame rate will shoot way up. The lowest level, Draft, is pretty ugly.

I do almost all of my editing at Preview quality. If I have a really critical section where I need to see detail, then I'll bump up the preview quality. Note that when doing RAM preview, the preview quality will make a huge difference in how quickly the section will render, and how long a section you can render with a given RAM preview size (settable in Preferences).