system stutter

Ronn wrote on 10/27/2004, 7:08 AM
I have a few small clips in a 60i project. I draged a clip over another to create a cross fade between the two clips. When I play it back the image stutters a bit before and during the croosfade. This also happens if I use a velocity envelope, Only it is much worse. I'm using Vegas 5a.

Are there any windows XP services that Vegas needs that should be turned on? I have most off for resource reasons.
Is 512mb of ram enough memory to perform simple tasks as this? I have no issues with using event fx, which I would think uses more memory and processing power.

my system:
2gig pentium4 / 512mb Rambus/ C:drive windowsxp/ D:drive Vegas) E:drive audio for Sonar/
F:drive (windows swapfile) nothing else on that drive and on a different hard drive than C: windows XP and Vegas.
V:drive 160 gig sata. all media files for Vegas.

Any Ideas what could be causing this??

Comments

Ronn wrote on 10/27/2004, 7:12 AM
Why does it say ignore this user next to my name? whats up with that????
johnmeyer wrote on 10/27/2004, 7:59 AM
Why does it say ignore this user next to my name? whats up with that????

If someone decides they don't like you and don't want to see your messages, they can click on this and, theoretically, you disappear (but only for that person).

As to your problem, Vegas is designed to playback unaltered DV video in real time. However, once you add effects, your computer may not be able to render them in real time. However, Vegas still tries to playback the video, only it will drop frames in order to keep up. Hence the stutter.

You can improve the smoothness of playback by trading spatial resolution for fps. Just above the preview window in Vegas is a button that can be changed from Best to Good to Preview to Draft. In Best mode, even a simple transition can cause the playback to stutter (at least on my 2.8 GHz computer). I usually leave this set to Preview. You can also set your project properties to 1/2 resolution by setting the resolution to 360x240 (half of NTSC DV 720x480). Just remember to set it back when you're ready to render. This is the ultimate case of trading resolution for frames per second (fps), and you may not like the grainy look of your preview. The great thing about Vegas is that it at least gives you the choice of which is most important to you: spatial quality or temporal quality.
Ronn wrote on 10/27/2004, 1:00 PM
I'll try lowering the preview to draft and see what happens. Thanks for the help!