The problem is that I can't be rendering every time I want to check sync while I edit. I need to be able to edit and know that my audio is still in sync.

Rendering everytime would destroy my workflow...

thanks though

I think the rerendering suggestion was to make a new copy of the video for the project, not to rerender on the timeline every time. Use the 'File/Render as' function to do this.

It may be that, depending on the source of the video and how it was brought into Vegas, the video isn't happy to play on the timeline.

I have experienced this on occasion when video files created in other programs, but 'appearing' to be Vegas compatible, wouldn't play smoothly until I rerendered them and then replaced the original video in the project with the new rendered video.

I have never tried to figure out why as getting the project finished was the most important necessity and the rerender of the vision fixed the problem.

I hope this helps

Steve

cchoy: For critical sound-for-picture work like you are doing where there's 0% room for drift or other a/v lock error, use windows secondary display to feed the the "other monitor" (many display cards support component out along with DVI/DVD-D/VGA). With windows secondary display (as the preview device choice), a/v drift/sync issues are eliminated- your video should be 100% locked-in-perfect in relation to the to the audio no matter how complex or long the project is, no matter what the audio sample/bit rate is, project video framerate too is also not a problem. Using secondary display is also the go-to method for ADR (not sure if you are doing that).

Previewing with a Canopus or other DV converter is fine for color correcting and spot checking output, but 100% perfect a/v sync isn't guaranteed in anything other than a print-to-tape when using external video converters.

ForumAdmin--

thanks for the definitive answer! that was extremely helpful!

cory

I ask clients for (or render myself) a medium resolution Quicktime w/TC window burn and the off-line audio reference as well . This way there are three ways to conform sync.
A single 19GB file is big.. especailly for a single drive PC... even two drives and the added load on the CPU not to mention audio processing, plug-ins, ect. . Idealy, a three drive PC would help. And absolutly the secondary video playback display, which additionaly makes it a whole lot easier to work.

So I went out and got a VGA splitter for my projector, but now I am experiencing a new problem: Vegas doesn't seem to have the resources to play out a stable framerate with the secondary monitor at full screen. If I make the image half quality, I get a stable image, but a picture that is way too blurry to work with. Correct me if I am wrong, but Vegas is best at playing NTSC DV compressed AVI files. I take all images sent to me and convert to that format. So I tried the 19 GB file and the 4GB file. I couldn't get either picture while using my monitor as a secondary display to play with a stable framerate. There were skips and jumps all over the place That, and there are these weird lines that show up onscreen when there is a lot of movement. Are there some settings in Vegas that I should know about? Or, perhaps there are some monitor settings I could use?

Any help would be much appreciated.

I am using a 3 drive PC. Pentium 4 with 2 gigs of ram. XP pro. this should be fast enough, shouldn't it? Why does video preview, especially when I am not editing at all play back with so much instability?

GAH! why can't I just use Vegas in my studio already?

You should fill out your system specs.

Preview can depend on many things - CPU and video card performance.

For what it sounds like you are doing, you should seriously consider a at one of the Core 2 Duo boxes available. You wont be disappointed.

However, there are manythings that can affect frame rate playback.

You'd be better off asking in the Vegas Video forums about this issue.

Peter

"I went out and got a VGA splitter for my projector"

Your video projector is going to add additional delay into the video signal. My experience with them on systems that can compensate the processing delay of the video, ProTools HD with V10 video boxes for the AVID video, is that they typically add a frame of delay. Noticeably ProTools HD reverts to displaying video in a window on the PC when 'scrubbing' to keep the video signal frame accurate.

When I was doing the sound on my recent short feature I made sure the video was on a separate drive to all the audio which itself was spread over three drives.

The better the processor and system the more stable as well. I'm actually using a Mac Pro with dual 3GHz Dual core Zeon CPUs... Hence the greater stability. However if your vision isn't stable on your preview monitor then you must have issues with the AVI. Do you have "Ignore 3rd party CODECs" ticked in the Preferences? It should be by default but check it and make sure it is checked unless you specifically need it.

In addition make sure your drives are defragged regularly. When you render your video make it a 'plain vanilla' NTSC DV (or NTSC WidescreenDV) preset off the selection provided with Vegas.

Regards

Steve

1) just filled out my system specs
2) the vid guys don't understand what I'm trying to say, they keep on telling me things like "maybe you're sound has slipped instead of your video."

Buying a new computer is a very expensive option, and one that is not financially available to me in order to get Vegas to work properly...

I appreciate the help... but perhaps I'm just expecting too much from the current version of Vegas? When is the plan for the next big update? spring?

I don't believe that you are expecting too much. Audio to Video sync has not been an issue that has been reported that I am aware of.

There are many situations related to hardware that can come into play here. I really don't know where I can tell you to start to trouble shoot the problem.

Peter

I am reporting the issue right now: Vegas doesn't stay in perfect sync. A secondary monitor is NOT working. There are glitches. I suspect it may be my graphics card, but I'm not sure. Are there any relatively inexpensive graphics cards that you know for certain work well with Vegas?

Thanks!

--Cory

I have tried to reproduce what I believe you are seeing, but have not been able to.

I will have to defer all video related issues/problems to the video gurus. This is just not my area of expertise.

Peter

nVidia 7300GT shouldn't be expensive and mine is happily handling two 24" DELL LCDs.
It should be sub $100 in the USA.

Steve

I have a Radeon 7000 series, it has a video out which is sent that to a NTSC monitor.

"1) just filled out my system specs"

Cory

I still can't see your specs are you sure you completed them?

Steve

Thanks for the heads up-- I just made my system specs public.

Thanks for the continuing support, am still looking into different possible causes of the problem/solutions.

--Cory

I'm still having a ton of sync issues.
Perhaps I can send one of you guys my project, and you can run it on your system and see if you're having the same problem? Anyone with a large FTP site? (20 GB required).

Could it have to do with the picture size? The pic I'm working with is 16BG... would splitting it into smaller files help?

--Cory

Is that an 80minute single video file at 16Gb or 16GB worth of video files?

I recently edited a wedding video with four cameras and the service went for just over an hour meaning I was editing from four 13Gb files at the same time, using Ultimate S2 and I didn't have any major sync issues.

Yes occasionally thing would lose sync but if I stopped playback and started again everything would be fine. But that was occasional, not regular and not everytime I was working on the edit and I mixed the audio in 5.1

It shouldn't be causing major problems unless you have drive fragmentation or your drive is not performing quickly enough.
Is the video stored on internal or external drives, what type of interface PATA or SATA or USB or firewire, are you rendering previews to the same drive? What brand of motherboard are you using?

Do you have any driver issues on the PC, items in the Device Manager that aren't installed and showing up as a yellow question mark?

Disable all TSR's (system tray items) that you don't need and make sure you don't have any other apps open.

Mind you I was editing on a P4 3.2GHz until last July and didn't have the problems you are experiencing with Vegas4, 5, 6 or now 7. I'd regulary have another app running, even email without any dramas.

Don't much like video off external USB2 drives though as the data rate isn't consistent.

More questions than answers but I just haven't had these problems even when I was on an AMD 1.4GHz CPU.

Steve

i just went out and bought an nVidia card (7600 256 mb of ram). It sort of worked, but now whenever I change my volume automation, the picture would stutter horribly. So I returned the card and got an 6600 OC 512 mb of ram nVidia, but it is also giving me problems... (not even with the dual screen, just running vegas itself)

anyone know about optimizing vid settings?

I'm using secondary display but there is still jitter. I need to do ADR and foley.. i just went out and bought a new graphics card. it helped in that the picture was stable when just playing, but it was not stable when recording and playing video at the same time....

Cory
How was the vision imported into Vegas? Was it captured from tape directly using the VidCap function or was the video supplied on disk and generated by another editing program.

The jitter you speak of doesn't sound like hardware, except possibly bus/hard drive related, but a codec compatibility problem with the original video file.

I have experienced that in the past even when the file 'appeared' to be completely Vegas compatible. My answer was to rerender the file, using the File/Render as... function to a new video file using an appropriate AVI preset in Vegas. I then replace the vision in my project with the new file.

I can't explain what the problem was but this process fixed it. The problem NEVER happens when video was captured off tape in Vegas though.

Oh and in the category of 'teaching you to suck eggs',sorry ;-) are your project Options set to the same format as the video?

Dumb question I know but if it isn't you'll experience these exact problems as Vegas does a 'realtime' convert of the video. I even had similar problems with it doing realtime convert of a couple of short pieces of MP3 audio in a project until I converted it to 48KHz wav when I was back using a P4 system, not a problem with two dual Zeons though.

Seeing that you are concentrating on audio post for film I'd recommend that you keep everything in your project at the correct settings for the project as setup in Options and, if in doubt, rerender it to make sure it is.

regards
Steve