Play back to monitor transitions jittery

INOV8Tech wrote on 6/19/2003, 3:24 PM
Hey I'm new to the vegas world and I'm really excited about it. I have what I thought was a pretty powerful computer. Supermicro P4DC6+ with dual 2.4Ghz Xeon CPUs and 1 Gig of RDRAM. I have a 460 Gig RTRX Medea raid for video. After reading some of the manual and learning some of the basics I had created a simple project with cross fades. I hooked up my Sony Mini DV walkman so that I could could get external monitor support. I had no difficulty following the manual instructions and getting the video to play on my monitor. However, I was surprised to discover that a simple cross fade wasn't real time. I played from the time line and got a jittery cross fade. I'll try a render but I was hopping that Vegas had more real time capability. Perhaps I have a setting wrong. Also is it possible to have the video play on the external monitor and the preview monitor?

Any help appreciated.

Paul

Comments

way2slo wrote on 6/19/2003, 3:34 PM
what did you set on the external preview quality? good? best? try setting the preview draft auto. it should play smoother.
INOV8Tech wrote on 6/19/2003, 3:43 PM
From what I'm learning Vegas isn't real time. I guess I'll have to render. But I still like the software. It's solid and the user interface is the vest I've seen.

Paul
BillyBoy wrote on 6/19/2003, 5:03 PM
Like with anything else you need to strip away marketing hype. So called "real time" can mean different things. I suppose you could say 'real time' means real time rendering in that a 20 minute video renders in 20 minutes. Step up to the plate and hand over anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 or more for your "real time" hardware card.

In the context its used in Vegas land, "real time" means you get to see the effect of what you change on the timeline in 'real time', meaning transitions, applications of FX filters, etc. don't have to be rendered before you see the result.

Because of limitations mostly due to current CPU speeds what you see on an external monitor can sometimes be "jittery" if the processor can't keep up. Something has to give, and its dropped frames. It only effects the preview, not the render when you do it. You can decrease the jitters by getting a faster CPU and/or turning down preview quality. I personally just don't see why some seem to get bent out of shape viewing a PREVIEW. If its a little bummy, so what?

<begin blunt mode>
Its really a matter of TRUSTING yourself and Vegas. Once you get to a certain point you pretty much know what the final result is going to look like. If you need to see every minute of your preview in real time, then sorry, you're not much of a videographer or you simply don't trust the application or trust much in your own abilities. That is blunt, but deep down (not talking about anyone in particular) you also know its true.
<end blunt mode>

My father was a life long baseball nut and long time White Sox fan even though he came from the North side (Cub land). He loved to watch Hoyt Wilhelm a knucklerballer drive batters nuts. Hoyt was past his prime age wise, was overweight, baulding, didn't look anything like a baseball player is suppose to look yet he got the job done. He didn't worry how he looked, or how long it took his pitches to reach the batter... ITS THE FINAL RESULT. Wilhelm finished his career with 1,070 game appearances, a all-time major league record, he had a low ERA and one of the better strikeout to walk ratios. In other words don't sweat the details, just do it.


Wondering wrote on 6/20/2003, 3:34 AM
Hi, All

Since jittery is the topic here, thought I squeeze in another for pondering.

Anyone out there has been getting jittery images for the slow motion?
It ain't suppose to be that way BUT somehow I'm getting it.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

Regards
BillyBoy wrote on 6/20/2003, 6:36 AM
Resample. Right click on event on timeline.
INOV8Tech wrote on 6/20/2003, 4:13 PM
Speed is of the essence young BillyBoy:

To be blunt.:) Time is money. Clients love to see the editing process in real time and as usual they want their project done yesterday. That's why I forked over that $$ for my Video Taoster and I don't regret it one bit. It rocks!! I mainly purchased Vegas plus DVD for the DVD side of things. Again I'm very impressed with Vegas and I see a bright future for it. [End bragging session.]

It would seem that I have some settings wrong in Vegas. I took the simple project that I have and rendered it out. Then I brought it back intop the timline as aa rendered .avi and played it from the timeline. It still played jittery. Perhaps you have some setting suggestions that I might check.

Also, I assume that Vegas can render a project to a preview file like Premiere can. This way you can view the finished product for the timeline and afterviewing render it out as a movie. Well, back to the manual.

Paul
Wondering wrote on 6/22/2003, 9:22 PM
It's still a no go, meanwhile tried just about everything; reduce interlace flicker, upper lower field, forced resample, disable resample, progressive, disable interleave, ...erh anything else.

Looks to me like my system somehow 'screws up' COS I've seen DSE done it w/o any problem from a P3 LAPTOP....

Anyway, just forget about slow mo & move on...

Thanks again BillyBoy.

filmy wrote on 6/23/2003, 12:01 AM
A few things I have noticed that may help -

1> the lower the preview settings the 'faster' the preview will be. But obviously if you want to see full res effects previews you will be stuck with the jitters

2> If the preferences, under 'Video Device' have "recompress edited frames" checked you may get 'better' firewire preview or you may get better computer monitor preview. I personally leave it unchecked.

3> If you want to see the 'best' real-time preview you can use the 'Build Dynamic Ram Preview' option. But when using this option it is limited to how much RAM you have and how much RAM you set aside for the preview, works the same way as the 'preview to RAM' option in Premiere.

4> If push comes to shove I simply choose a small selection and do a PTT on it. Yeah it is not real-time by any means but it gives you a full output to firewire of that part and if you like it and never change it that section stays put. Bad part is that if you change anything that little PTT rendered section goes away...at least in the VV timeline's memory. It still hangs out on the hard drive so in theory you could copy it somewhere and save it - link it as media. But FWIW if you are going to do that you may as well just 'render to new track', 'selectivly prerender video' or just render it. You can always set the quality of the render to 'Draft' in the Project Properties settings to save time for a preview.

5> overall jittery timeline playback, effects excluded, is covered on other forums here. Could be many things - playing back from firewire drive? Fragmentation? netowrk connection? Online use at the same time? Do a search and see if one of the other threads has any help with the issue(s).