Preview stutter

Video rookie wrote on 9/30/2007, 2:03 PM
OK, I know I'm doing something wrong. When I preview even a small video clip it stutters in the small playback window (set to auto, or any of the other options). I had been using Vegas 6, which recently had started stuttering. I figured I had messed up a setting in version 6, so I uninstalled completely when I upgraded to Version 8. I'm using Vegas Pro 8 on a computer with following settings.

Default install
AMD X-2 4400
3 GB memory
Quadro FX3400 video card (hardware acceleration 100%)

Let me know what to try, or what additional info I need to provide. The clips are HDV (Sony A1U) downgraded from the camera to DV during transfer. I'm a novice user, so I'm 99% sure that user error is causing my problems.

Thanks,
Vic

Comments

FightingIllini1977 wrote on 9/30/2007, 5:11 PM
I have posted multiple complaints on this forum about the slow frame rate of the preview and nobody has been able to help me. I'm now starting to see others post this issue on the forum so I'm starting to think it's not just me. Some people will talk up how good the preview window is over Vegas 7 but I just don't see it.

The only thing I can think of is these individuals that have good preview have a quad core CPU instead of a single or dual core.

I can tell you this much, I have a very powerful PC and I"m having playback issues. The only weak spot in my setup is non-raid HDD and only a 6600 overclocked dual core.

On my current project, I'm getting playback quality of 7 to 8 frames per second (FPS) with the audio turned off and about 1 to 2 frames with the audio running. My project just contains pictures and mpg audio files to go with the slide show and transitions inbetween each.

The recommendations I've been given are as follows (none helped me):

1) Reduce pictures to small size because Vegas can't handle large pictures
2) Change dynamic Ram preview max to 1024 MB under perferences
3) Turn off scale video to fit preview window by right clicking near preview window.

I hope some others can chime in to give some additional help as I need it too.
FightingIllini1977 wrote on 9/30/2007, 5:24 PM
One other suggestion someone gave me which does help a lot is to selectively pre-render your video. By selecting a portion of the video and pre-rendering it, I can view how the transitions are looking.

This is the only way I'm able to get through my editing. Now that I think of it, I wonder if this is Vista specific. Are you using Vista or XP?
jrazz wrote on 9/30/2007, 6:00 PM
What fx have you applied to the track if any? fx will slow down playback and encoding.

Check your sliders to make sure your track opacity is at 100%

If you are capturing your footage to your C: drive, you might want to try changing the drive you put your footage on to some other drive.

Video card does not matter unless you are using magic bullet software.

Check your background processes and see what is running. Turn off the unnecessary processes. Also, you can stop most programs from starting up and running by going to Start-Run- (type) msconfig (hit enter) go to the last tab and uncheck all options (windows will recheck the things that must happen at startup). Restart, click okay on the message that comes up saying something about selective start up and see if that helps any.

j razz
wolfbass wrote on 10/1/2007, 7:12 AM
here's one that took me a while to cotton on to.

I often record onto Vegas from the SPDIF input of a MiniDisc player, via the SPDIF input on my Delta1010 light card.

If the minidisc player is later off, and I don't change the audio device to something other than the Delta 1010 - very slow playback!

Something to think about maybe!

Andy
CClub wrote on 10/1/2007, 8:30 AM
I had similar questions in the recent posting "Poor Preview Speed." There are many great recommendations there that helped somewhat, but my problem was also audio related. Try muting all audio tracks, then 1 by 1 unmuting them. When I did this, I found that if I just kept one specific audio track unmuted, my preview speed cranked back up to full 23.976 fps. Don't know why.

Also, if I'm using multi-track, it obviously drastically lowers the preview speed. If you're doing this, what you can do is if you have Excalibur, you can pre-render the multitrack window into one track and you get full preview speed again.
Video rookie wrote on 10/2/2007, 1:02 PM
I've not applied any fx to the clips, I am using the C: drive, so I'll try a different drive and some of the other suggestions. I'm trying just a single, short 30 second downgraded clip, which is why I expect it is a setting problem. I won't be able to play with it till the weekend, so if anyone else has a suggestion to add to the list, I'll run thru it to see what helps, and what does not.

Thanks for you suggestions.
Vic
LifeEvolves wrote on 10/4/2007, 12:05 PM
I can edit .mt2 on any one of my three systems - P4 desktop, core2duo lappy and a quad core- just fine in preview mode. When I've had stuttering, I will lower the project preference settings while I edit and bring them back up for the final render. Also - lower your dynamic ram settings - say to maybe 64mb and you should see a step up in performance.