Performance Issues with Vegas Pro 8

Cliff Etzel wrote on 4/21/2008, 5:44 PM

I'm editing a voice recital I shot on Sunday and I'm having severe performance issues just editing the clips on the timeline. I haven't even applied any FX events yet - only cutting the performance up on the timeline.

My specs - just upgraded to AMD 5000+ AM2 Black Edition OC'd to 3.0Ghz, 4GB Corsair XMS Dual Channel RAM, OS on C drive, Vegas on D Partition and project files on a seperate 2x160GB 7200 RPM RAID0.

I captured the footage with HDVSplit, capturing the whole take in one session and I'm cutting the clips into sections accordingly. I'm MAYBE getting 5 fps in preview 1/4 mode. My RAM preview settings are set at 2048MB (via the ram p mod posted a while back). This is like molasses on a cold day. Even editing in preview mode is sluggish at best. I seem to remember others saying they were getting better performance using Vegas 7 due to similar issues with editing HDV.

Also - I captured the tape since there were no scene splits - is this where Gearshift would come into play? The original m2t file is over 8GB in size - I tried getting Gearshift to use the individual clips on the timeline to render out YUV based AVI's to edit instead of the native m2t file, but so far I can't get it to work. Maybe I'm trying to get it to do something it can't do.

Any suggestions?

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
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Cliff Etzel wrote on 4/23/2008, 9:04 AM

What are the impressions of users who work with Cineform? Should I look at Aspect or Neo? I just received my new laptop yesterday and am going to be using this more out in the field while traveling and editing footage. I'd like a solid and efficient way of editing content as close to real time on the timeline as I can get.

With the recent announcement of AVCUpshift, I'm now considering the notion of replacing my tape based cameras and finally looking at using something like the CX7 -should I be looking at or is tape still a solid technology for the foreseeable future? The horror stories I've heard of editing AVCHD has kept me away from that technology but there seems to be a fair amount of buzz surrounding it's use in higher end cameras and with the VASST app announcement, I'm wondering if this is the "poor mans" way to work with HDV in a quicker fashion.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

johnmeyer wrote on 4/23/2008, 9:37 AM

What are the impressions of users who work with Cineform? If you have the disk space for the intermediates, and enough horsepower so that you can capture directly to the intermediate (rather than capturing m2t and then converting), then I see absolutely zero downside to using Cineform. You get faster timeline performance, better quality should you do multiple renders, and apparently it "holds up" (Spot's words) better with certain complex fX (I haven't actually experienced this, but I don't doubt that it's true).

Cliff Etzel wrote on 4/23/2008, 10:05 AM

Well, considering my current work requires little in the way of fx's (I do straight cuts and dissolves, color correction and basic text graphics for 99% of my post work), sounds like I don't need Cineform.

Why would someone want to run multiple renders? Maybe the kind of content I shoot doesn't require rendering out til the end - but I am curious.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

rs170a wrote on 4/23/2008, 11:01 AM

Why would someone want to run multiple renders?

I work for a community college and often get requests from students for a DVD of their project as well as a WMV (for PowerPoint) and an mp4 (for YouTube).

Mike

Cliff Etzel wrote on 4/23/2008, 12:05 PM

Mike - if I understand what you are saying, each time someone needs to render out to multiple formats, that would degrade the content on the timeline if it were rendered to multiple formats???

That doesn't make any sense to me.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

rs170a wrote on 4/23/2008, 12:43 PM

Cliff, no, it won't degrade the content.
It's quite possible I misunderstood your "multiple renders" question.
I was saying that I use the multiple (or should I say batch) render feature a lot.

Mike

johnmeyer wrote on 4/23/2008, 12:55 PM

Quite a few people have posted here over the years about doing multiple renders. Prior to nested VEG files, this was quite common because certain complex renders can take hours for just a few seconds of video. So, they would render that portion and then take the result and put it back on the timeline. Then, the subsequently might change the speed of that clip, or do something else to it. Even if it was going back out to the same format (i.e., not being rendered to DVD, but instead back out to m2t or DV AVI or Cineform AVI), there was obviously going to be some additional quality loss. We get spoiled with Sony's DV AVI codec because, when starting with DV, you can render dozens of times (people have done this test) and not be able to tell the original from the 20th generation. However, with other codecs, the video rapidly breaks down, and the quality suffers significantly.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 4/23/2008, 4:35 PM

So if I understand this correctly, nested .veg files more or less nullifies needing to do multiple render's if you're staying in Vegas - correct???

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
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