Sony: Will this be fixed, or not? (FirewireOut Performance)

kentwolf wrote on 7/10/2004, 11:43 PM
There have been a number of comments with respect to timeline playback performance on a firewire device (to an external monitor).

See this thread.

It's simply "not as good as it used to be"; 5.0a maybe was OK, definitely 4 was better at firewire out. 5.0b is not that good.

I even tried updating the firewire driver from Microsoft as per another post to no avail.

It (the playback) is not absolutely horrible, but there is a definite "jerkiness" to just about everything; even just a straight DV clip. If one is trying to get/see/determine precise timing/synch between items, it sure it hard with the jerkiness.

I have a pretty nice system and notice it. I am sure people with less powerful systems will definitely see the degradation in performance as compared to Vegas 4.0.

Is this even acknowledged as an issue by Sony?

Will it be fixed?

Few things are as irritating as it not even being *officially* acknowledged as an issue. If it was, I am sorry, but I have not seen it.

Comments

farss wrote on 7/11/2004, 1:51 AM
I'm with you, damned if I can get external preview at 25fps via firewire. I CAN get it at 25 fps if I play the clip say from the explorer but the same clip from the TL, no way. And no, I've not heard any 'official' recognitition that this is a problem. Only reason I'm a bit uppity about this, it'd make no sense having a decent studio monitor under these circumstances.
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:14 AM
Blimey Guys! You are soooo right! I hadn't understood what all the fuss was about before . .most of the technical stuff went over my head. But Hell's Teeth . It is true for this ASUS 3.2 ghtz 2gig ram P4 !

1 - Run from T/L .. Clip staggers .. enough now to concern me .. .

2 - Run from "All Media" Media Pool - it is beautiful! No stagerery stuff .. . as if I'm looking through the cammie as when I shot it .. this stggering is ever so slight .. but now I've become aware of it .. hmmmm..... :-(

As to my No.1, you know what Guys? I'd been thinking I have to put up with it. This is how things are supposed to be! I hadn't even contemplated for a better view of my work. Just to add, there aren't any FXs to this clip, just straight out as it was born!

Is this the same for Premie, FCP .. . other NLEs of Vegas level? - Hewy, farss, your bit about now using a proper monitor does seem to be spot-on though . .. if I aint "seeing" what I think I should be seeing, then . . . yeah .. undersetood . .

I'm listening very intently for the"other" shoe to drop here . . .

I'm still with Vegas 5.0a

Grazie
apit34356 wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:23 AM
Farss, does your Firewire have a Texas Instrument controller? I have noticed that TI controller works well, but other brands seem to have additional delays due to overhead relatived to driver / controller. Vegas 5 output is high cpu load, verse capture.

AJP
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:23 AM
I AM NOT WORTHY to use this software!
I just did an experiment .. .using my "simple" approach to stuff.

I'm watching the Preview numbers roll by and I can see the Display jumping about from 20 down to 19 then to 21 then to 20 . .what the . . .. is going on here .. I think. THERE is something playing fast and loose with the Display? What have I got UP that is varying my display .. ? I wouldn't be the Audio ? .. nah! The only thing I had UP as well that was altering was the Scopes! .. . AS SOON as I got rid of the scopes the Preview to Ext Mon was rock solid, the frame rate STAYS at 25 and the view out top my crumby monitor works just as well as straigth from the Media Pool. THAT IS WHY Media Pool plays ok .. It hasn't got to deal with the ever changing Scopes ! HAHAHAH . .thank you and good nite! . ..

. .. but I could be wrong ...

Grazie
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:47 AM
Ok . . Update . .Further experimentation.

Just tried bringing back scopes and placing in various postions on my work area .. kinda works . .BUT the big diference is to have the Preview to Ext Monitor playing, start with Draft>Preview>Good . . BUT have the pc Preview window on its BIG size - y'know, double click on the Previewing area to get it to go small then BIG! .. Use the BIG size and climb up through the View Qualities .. NOW I'ce got my Scopes and stuff back AND the EXT MON is holding at 25 . . It looks just as good to my eyes as the Media Pool previewing . ..

. .. is this what Kentwolf and farss been saying? If not I'm very sorry for wasting your time .. .

Grazie
farss wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:50 AM
And why it maybe easily overlooked by some.
Firstly no, not aTi chip that I know of, ports are on the MoBo but Everything else works 100% fine. I have M-Audio Firewire 410, External Drive and ADVC-300 on three separate firewire ports and it all hangs together just fine, no capture porblems, no audio glitches.

BUT, I run two monitors out of NVidia card. So for a laugh I went to single monitor with a tiny preview window. External preview will now run at 25 fps without raising a sweat!
I can enlarge the internal preview window to get 720x576x32 and still have 25fps.
So the problem would seem only to occur when you run dual monitors. And this might explain why SPOT keeps saying it works fine, he runs Matrox Parhelias which are subtly different I think.
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:52 AM
SO did I help? . .

I too run 2 monitors with NVidia . . .

Grazie
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:55 AM
farss .. all this stuff IS on to 2 monitors . . .

Grazie
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 3:03 AM
farss .. now try slipping the Scopes in and under the Preview window. Watch what happens to your frame rates and the EXT MON .. . interesting eh? . . It also depends on WHERE the Scopes are put too! . . . I can have the Scopes reeeeallly huge and the 25 stays rock solid .. I can have Preview small and the Scopes small too .. and I can get the frame rate wander all over the place .. weird science .. I don't understand .. .but I've got a fix .. sometimes a little knowledge is not sooo dangerous after all .. .

Grazie
farss wrote on 7/11/2004, 3:06 AM
That's the clue, change the video setup to only single monitor and problem disappears, same in Vegas 4 or 5 from what I can see.
But here's the vital bit. Running with only one monitor configured when I go to external preview it no longer says "FRAME RECOMPRESSED". That's VERY interesting.
Nothing needs to be recompressed yet Vegas has decided it does hence performance will slow down no end. I can add a simple FX to the bus like Brightness and still get around the same frame rate so it's not like I'm short on horspower, it's just for some odd reason with two monitors Vegas thinks no matter what the frame needs recompressing.
Now I've asked about this before and the thread just withered. At least I'm not feeling so lonely out here in the colonies.
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 3:17 AM
. .er . .farss,"change the video setup to only single monitor " so what do I do with the other monitor .. sell it?!? . . You've lost me ..

I like the hint about not needing to recompress. Do you think for one moment that Vegas thinks it has to recompress that which is ON the actual monitor screen? There is something happening - that is there is "screen movement" - therefore I need to recompress it .. is this it?

Grazie
farss wrote on 7/11/2004, 3:44 AM
Grazie,
I'm not suggesting selling the monitor for a moment. I'm making that point so the boffins realise what setup you need to create the problem. As far as I know Vegas shouldn't see the difference between one or two monitors, all thats happening is the desktop is now much larger, thats the reason many people run with that configuration, to have all the windows at a useable size.
What's making me nervous about all this I'm looking to buy two LCD monitors and maybe a studio monitor. Just to run the LCDs I need a $1000 video card (same as the one to run the new 30" Mac LCDs) and quite a bit more for a studio monitor. Now all of these grand plans are going to be a bit dumb if I cannot show a client what the rendered video looks like without switching display modes.
This is not good stuff, from what I'm seeing this problem has been there for a long time, there must be a large part of the user base running the same configuration as well and yet although this issue sort of bobs up every once in a while no one it seems has ever acknowledeged it as being an issue.
Now OK, maybe it's just a quirk of the NVidia chips, maybe we're using the wrong video driver, maybe it's a bug in Vegas. Either way there's got be a lot of us suffering in silence out there.
epirb wrote on 7/11/2004, 6:03 AM
Farss , you probablyy saw my post about this too a while back.
but just FYI I'm using a ATI Radean 9600 card. DVI out to a 17"widescreen Lcd and vga out to a 19" crt.
I'm gonna try switching off my second monitor in the Ati control panel and give it a go,I'll see if it gets the same results.
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 6:17 AM
farss, can I rephrase your sentence to ," suffering in ignorance out there" . . yeah? I didn't realise it OR rather I wasn't advanced enough to think that things should be better . ..

Grazie
farss wrote on 7/11/2004, 7:14 AM
Grazie,
you got me thinking so I had another play with it. I usually run with the Histogram on, yeah I'm an engineer OK, anyway if I turn em off, lovely 25 fps external preview and no more "Frame Recompressed" in red.
So maybe what's happening is actually the frames are being decompressed so the scopes can access the data and that's what's causing the problem. If I'm right, yish, how come no ones mentioned that as the answer to many of the complaints about poor preview performance. Thinking about it generating any form of scope out of a running DV stream would need a bit of CPU muscle so fair enough but.....

Might also explain why they've resisted trying to run scopes on capture, it'd be a cuase of major dropped frame problems.
rextilleon wrote on 7/11/2004, 8:39 AM
Interesting---as for Sony not addressing this issue---well they addressed in the manual for earlier versions ( I dont know about 5.0) There is a a discussion of firewire output to external monitor and they pretty much say that it is dependent on processor speeds particularly on fx, transitions etc.
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 9:35 AM
Look, farss, I did a few silly experiments with Scopes on/off and sure enough the 25fps could be stabilized. BUT I got to a postion where the Scopes COULD be on and BIG too! . . . Go figure that one?!?

There must be a link between the graphics maths and the pumping of the signal out to firwire that makes the 25fps drop and vary. I don't know enough to think beyond this. Maybe someone can make a stab at the need for more mem on the graphics card . .or a better setup . .

As I say, I've got 2gb RAM and a ASUS 3.2 P4 . .

Grazie
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/11/2004, 9:37 AM
Yup. Scopes will kill preview because of how the information is sampled at full rez in the background.
FWIW Farss, I run Parhelia, Millenium 650, and G 550 vid cards in the various machines. No difference related to Vegas how they all work or output, except that I use the Millenium for triple head output sometimes when working on 2 projects or copy/pasting a lot.
kentwolf wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:29 PM
With regard to my original post, I am running a single monitor, no scopes, histograms, no video FX, transitions, no nothing extra.

In fact, I am running the exact same hardware that worked just fine with Vegas 4.0.

Bottom line: Vegas 4.0 did firewire out better than Vegas 5.0.
Grazie wrote on 7/11/2004, 2:33 PM
kentwolf, I'm sorry . . none of this is helping you . . . I just got the "bit" between my teeth and .. well the rest you know . .

Regards,

Grazie
kentwolf wrote on 7/11/2004, 3:05 PM
>>...I'm sorry . . none of this is helping you...

Hey, no problem!

Always interesting reading... :)
rmack350 wrote on 7/11/2004, 5:14 PM
Here are some things I've observed about playback. Maybe some of it will lead to a good idea.

-On my Matrox G450, Quicktime can only play back on the default (primary) monitor.
-I think some cards and drivers can only display a video overlay on the primary display.
-Vegas bases the output to an external monitor on the state of the preview monitor. If you have the preview set to "auto" and have it physically sized down, Vegas must first recompress and then blow up the image when it outputs it over 1394. Vegas "should" switch to "Full" on external playback-after all, you can't see it on the internal playback anyway.
-Vegas plays back much better if the preview is set to "Full". It shouldn't need to recompress straight footage.
-Vegas may have to do more processing if the preview is set to "Best". "Good" is usually good enough.


Rob Mack
DavidPJ wrote on 8/12/2004, 1:45 PM
Just wondering if anyone has solved the jerky external monitor preview problem.

I run V5b and have just begun to consider adding an external monitor. I have a single CRT monitor. I've been previewing on my Canon Elura's LCD and playing back from the timeline or media pool. About every 2-3 seconds the video will pause for an instant. I have a looped playback region and the frame rate stays between 24-26fps. DMA is enabled on the drive.

I tried setting the preview window to any of the full settings with the same results. Video has no special effects with minor motion. Transitions causes "Frames Recompressed" on the PC monitor preview window while frame rate drops as low as 10fps.

At first I attributed this to my lowly P3 512MB PC, but now I'm seeing other people with much high performance PCs have the problem too. Somewhere I read someone else having this problem with previewing with a Canon miniDV. Maybe it's the camera?

I was planning on buying a small external TV/monitor for color correction and safe area but now I'm unsure. I suppose I could still use it bit it sure is annoying watching video this way.

Thanks for any update or solutions to this problem.