@Musicvid, thanks, yes I know about this thread, which is more about optimizing your system when your hardware is struggling. But in this instance, its different.

For fun, I tried the 'so4compound.dll'-disable trick, but with identical results, only a little more CPU load (up to 55%).

Also, Vegas RAM utilization seem to max out at 1.218 MB ..--?? seriously? seems a little 1980 to me..

 ..--?? seriously? seems a little 1980 to me..

Well, one or more of the filters you invoked "may" be single threaded or just plain topheavy, just saying. Neither of those came in Vegas, so maybe you are barking up the wrong tree.

But your flashback is about two decades too early, as well.

Testing this with *VP native* filters (exclusively):

[Brightness and Contrast] > [Broadcast Colours] > [Color Corrector] > [Film Effects] > [LUTFilter] gives me the same results, dropped frames (avg: 22fps), lip sync absolutely broken

CPU load avg = 75%, GFX (1060 & 630) around 7%. VP using the same ~1300MB RAM. This only demponstrates that VP doesn't utilize GFX resources very well for playback. (intel UHD graphics 630 is OpenCL 2.1!)

Disabling those 5 plugins during playback doesn't reduce my number of active Processes (202) or Threads (~2480) as seen in Task Manager/Performance.

Other ideas?

What you could try is to

a) Change the ram allocated to the ram preview. Sometimes that changes the preview

b) reduce the preview to preview/half

c) work with the internal preview only, but not witht he seconday preview

d) disable the waveform Monitor if that is open

a) I think the choice of RAM allocated for 'Dynamic RAM Preview' is only this..and does not affect 'normal' timeline preview.. I've made changes up to '15,000' and there's no change of behaviour. /edit: funnily, VP still only uses 1,300MB officially...if you trust system monitoring

b) that shouldn't be necessary. it's not the system that is the bottleneck. i believe it's the software coding.

c) have tried that, but it makes no difference (both monitors are mounted on independent GPUs). Even with secondary display Off, the same thing happens.

d) again, the system performance is not lacking, I don't need to 'free up resources'; double-check: waveform disabled, lip sync is still not working as it should. same.

Other than the suggestions offered in the FAQ, no.

Some people shoot themselves in the foot by overclocking and big drive arrays.

a) I think the choice of RAM allocated for 'Dynamic RAM Preview' is only this..and does not affect 'normal' timeline preview.. I've made changes up to '15,000' and there's no change of behaviour. /edit: funnily, VP still only uses 1,300MB officially...if you trust system monitoring

There are Systems like mine, where the ram allocation has a clear Impact to the preview behaviour. I tend to test  that in small increments like 0, 16, 50, 100, 150, 200, 500, 1000, 2000. If that does not Change anything on your System, then you have tried at least.

b) that shouldn't be necessary. it's not the system that is the bottleneck. i believe it's the software coding.

The question should be what helps your Performance - but not what "should not be necessary". You allocate two filters that take a lot of ressources, even if Filmconvert runs here on my System for UHD footage and another GPU with full fps (but I do not know what Ignite takes in Terms of Performance).

c) have tried that, but it makes no difference (both monitors are mounted on independent GPUs). Even with secondary display Off, the same thing happens.

I do not see that behaviour - since I have also two GPUs and one Decklink 12 in my system. At least it makes a difference here with my footage.

d) again, the system performance is not lacking, I don't need to 'free up resources'; double-check: waveform disabled, lip sync is still not working as it should. same.

The waveform Display takes some Performance. So it is a good idea to Close it down if it is not required.

You have asked for suggetions. There is no guarantee that they help. But the Points that I have posted you are Points that work for my 8core high end system. But could also be that you suffer by the existing so4 Decoder what could be more dominant then the typical methods that we see for improving Playback Performance.

@Musicvid, This system is not overclocked, this is dynamic, out-of-the-box. And fast, yes. Overclocking I shall try when the baseline performance is clear. There's also no RAID drives..Only a fast M.2 system drive, as you can see from the image. So, for the first time, it looks like there's a faster system than the software can handle huh

@Wolfgang S. :

1. Why can I not successfully commit VP to utilize more system RAM? It seems to max out at 1,300 MB..

2. What would help my Performance would be Code written to utilize available system resources. There's a bottleneck somewhere in VP and how it deals with plugins is my feeling, but that's a guess. Either way, a system that does drop frames shouldn't loose lip-sync by half a second. I find this Buggy.

3. What do you see if you take a screenshot of Task Manager / Performance? Whats your replay framerate under 'full load'? Do you stay lipsync at 20fps?

4. Waveform was closed, as I said. So4xxx was disabled as a test also. as I said.

Just built my new machine with plenty of guts for video editing: Z370/ Coffee Lake i5 Hexacore unlocked, M.2 system drive, 1060/6GB, 16GB fast RAM,...

When I check the system performance during playback, I cannot see any bottlenecks: CPU <50% always, GTX1060 <25%, Intel UHD630 <35%, only 4.4GB/16 of RAM used for the whole system..all disks at virtually nothing..; Win10, latest drivers...So, wouldn't think it's a hardware issue.

Just as a matter of interest, What is that maximum GPU percentage you see being used with a GPU intensive filter/stacked filters when encoding with a 1060?

Disabling those 5 plugins during playback doesn't reduce my number of active Processes (202) or Threads (~2480) as seen in Task Manager/Performance.

Just wonder, are there any changes in preview's framerate when you are disabling filters?

Could you advice, what is your Vegas setting "Keep bypassed FX running"?

@Former user, by 'encoding' you mean rendering for final output? or just playback?

@fifonik, yes, of course, when I disable filters, framerate drops back to 25, as it should, and everything is honkeydoorey. Have to check on 'keep bypassed FX running..'

What costs a lot of Performance is Hitfilm Vibrance. Filmconvert alone would run nice here. When I run an XAVC-S testfile with both filters, I have to go back with the preview to quater - and my nvidia quadro 4 GB K4200 is utilized during Playback to 50% and my R9 390X with 8GB is utilized by 10% only. The high utilization of the K4200 derives from the Vibrance filter. Seems to be a lot of graphical calculations that are required here. And core utilization is about 30% only.

The bottleneck seems to be how good the GPUs can be utilized. The best what you can do in Vegas is to reduce preview to preview/halfe or preview/quater. With a 29,97 HD testfile I am back to 29,97 fps with preview/quater or about 28 fps with preview/half.

@Wolfgang S., do you run VP with the K4200 or R9? this should perhaps make a real-life difference (the K4200 being equivalent to a GTX670 is somewhat an older GFX chip with OpenCL1.2 only). How much system RAM does your VP use [Are you using AMD CPU..?]?

I wanted to find out how well my system is performing, hence the 'high load' on Full settings. This should be achievable if the bottlenecks in the software are found & addressed.

Dropping Frames is fine too, but not loosing lip-sync. Then all bets are off.

..investigating..

/add: FYI, [using Filmconvert and Ignite Vibrance] Performance Monitor says CPU average is ~27%, Intel630GPU 36%, nVidia1060 27%. Frame Rate = ~20 where it should be 25.

GPU acceleration in Vegas is set to the R9 390X here, but Hitfilm seems to use the K4200 (there are no settings in the Hitfilm Filter to adjust that).