Preview Window Settings

overyonder wrote on 8/29/2008, 4:48 PM
OK, so we all want the best frame-rate for our preview as we work. But I am finding something odd re the preview quality settings in V8. Which is this:
I have a clip to which I add a Sony sharpen effect. Frame-rate drops from 29 to 14. That's in the Best/Full setting. I change it to Good, same frame-rate. I change it to Preview - same frame-rate. I change it to Draft and zing - it goes to 29.fps. Of course, Draft is too ugly to look at.

So this is quite a stumper to me. I tried other FX, I played with the Ram settings, I played with the multi-thread settings, I made sure properties were set to lower field first.

I'm using DV .avi files, nothing special.
I have a P4 3.0gh with 3gb ram. CPU usage is about 65% with the effect on, about 35% with it off.

What is anyone else's experience with these settings?

Thanks
--
John


Comments

ritsmer wrote on 8/30/2008, 12:50 AM
Several of the FX, transitions, Neat video etc. are so CPU consuming that you will never (never = 2 to 3 years) get a 25 or 30 Fps steady real time preview.
I have a Mac Pro with 2 x quad Harpertown Xeons - and still the effects are too much for the CPUs meaning occasional stuttering in the preview - even if the Task Manager says that 6-7 CPUs are working on it.

However, for the first 3/4 of the editing process (putting the video together, working with- or adding sound and music, syncronizing the clips to the music, narration etc. etc.) you might not really need the full Bells and Whistles from Neat, sharpening etc., so maybe wait and add this in the last part of the editing.

All my jobs are eventually rendered to wmv - but this codec is s_l_o_w - so for "previewing in player" I render with an mpg codec which (on my machine) renders faster than the video speed.

This said I always wonder that the VMS preview does not utilize a larger part of the available CPU resources - meaning that it does not even use 50% CPU on my machine and have submitted a question to Support about it.
Grazie wrote on 8/30/2008, 2:01 AM
John, about 10 months back my power supply on my edit machine failed. No biggie. But I then and there decided to upgrade the innards of the pc to a QUADie.

Haven't looked back.

John, I had the almost same PC as yours. It was ok and I even convinced myself that for SD work this was fine. The newer QUADs were for those doing HD - but not me. Well, I have to tell you, this machine crunches through the maths like nothing else. Yes its CPU is slower than my single 3ghz, but having the quad setup, amazing!

And here's the REAL thing: Because the QUAD is doing calcs real fast I now use Shift+M (prerender) all the time. If I can't access more build RAM renders, then SHIFT+M. I just did a test, I have SpiceMaster+ NeatVideo over a transition. Straight previewing? Nah, ugly . .. But, SHIFT+M! It takes about the same time as BUILD RAM Preview, but this ways I can go a lot further.

Consider a QUAD upgrade. My power supply going down? Best thing that happened to me!!!

Grazie