v7: use cineform for better performance

dreamlx wrote on 11/3/2006, 3:07 PM
Until now, I was a big fan of Vegas 7 and all other Sony Mediasoftware products, but this experience with customer support made me really upset:

my original message to customer support:

Hi,

I have a very wired problem with V7 droping m2t files directly to timeline.

While editing, all works well. Now I save the project, and reopen it. There are some events replaced by red thumbnails on the timeline. If I play these regions, the output is black for these events. If now I delete one of the concerned event, save and reopen my project, the event after it (which was displayed correctly before) shows a red thumbnail on the timeline and so on.

I have 3 other machines used only for network rendering (I am using more than 3 machines for rendering as I have 2 Vegas 7 licenses). I tried opening the project on all these machines, and always the some problems. These machines have only a windows xp, vegas 7 and connecthd 3.22 installed.

In the meantime, I edit using native m2t files for preview speed. After that, I am using cineform to convert the m2t files, and I replace the m2t files on the timeline by the cineform files prior to rendering, as this is the only way to get rendering working.

Program versions:

Vegas: 7.0b
Cineform ConnectHD: 3.22
Windows: XP SP2 PRO

Machines:
Pentium IV 3.2 Ghz HT with 1Gbyte RAM,
Pentium IV 3.06 Ghz 64bit Non-HT with 512Mbyte RAM (running 32bit Windows XP),
Pentium IV 2.96 Ghz HT with 512Mbyte RAM
Pentium IV 2.6 Ghz HT with 512Mbyte RAM

The m2t files are PAL Cineframe 25 files captured from the HDR-FX1E.

I hope a solution for this can be found.

If you need more information, don't hesitate to contact me.

Apart of this problem, I have to tell that I am very pleased with Vegas 7. Really good work.

Thanks in advance
Bye,
David Arendt

one week later:

Customer support tells me to reinstall Vegas 7.0b. Since there is the same problem on 4 different machines that should already be tested, so I replied this to them.

a few days later:

Customer support suggest to use Cineform instead of native m2t editing for better editing performance. Apart from that no one really seems to be interested in looking into the issue. Seems to be simpler for them to avoid the issue.

Well I thought one of the main features of Vegas 7 was previewing m2t at realtime, and so on my system m2t previews are in realtime, Cineform previews only 12 fps. Cineform performance was faster on Vegas 6.

The main reason for me for buying Vegas 7 was native m2t editing.
So the question I ask to myself: Why have I bought 2 licenses for Vegas 7.

Well it seems that the only hope is that this problem will be fixed by accident in a future release.

Comments

Serena wrote on 11/3/2006, 4:34 PM
The red thumbnails indicate problems with the link to the clips, although normally this shows as black on the timeline with "media offline" message. First time I saw this was with a Cineform error (in Vegas 6) red which was fixed by CF. The Cineform data files are larger than the m2t files and the higher data rate (to play at full speed) may not be achieved if you're running clips from an external drive.
In terms of Vegas 7 and m2t, I'm nearly finished a 90 minute project edited in m2t and this hasn't (so far) presented problems. Apart from the fact I should have insisted on converting to CF intermediates. The producer said no colour corrections etc will be needed, but as expected (I'm rather fastidious) that wasn't correct. Even so I've been surprised how good is the final result with m2t right through post.
dreamlx wrote on 11/3/2006, 10:28 PM
Here it is definitely not a problem with the link to the clips. The project consists of 3 60mins m2t files. Other events from the same m2t files are displayed correctly on the timeline and also rendered correctly.
MH_Stevens wrote on 11/4/2006, 6:08 AM
As I and others have said in other posts, if you have Cineform (as I do) then v6 was faster than v7 editing HD, but, if you have read between the lines or closely followed what the more knowledgeable here have said an "improved" Cineform should be soon coming. To do any serious editing in ANY version of Vegas with raw m2t files needs more computing power than most of us can afford for now, but if you have the power, then for doing this in v7 is better than v6.
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dreamlx wrote on 11/4/2006, 7:07 AM
MH_Stevens: thanks for the information

Well some supplementary information:

I also do projects I need to archive for later editing. For archiving, keeping the original m2t is much more viable then using cineform avi files due to the storage requirements. Converting these m2ts back to cineform before reediting is time consuming. Therefore in these cases I prefer editing the m2t files directly even if it requires more processing power.

Also my intention was not to lead to a discussion whether to use cineform or not. I only wanted to show support that there is a problem with handling my m2t files. I know that I can use cineform (for which I own 4 licenses) to bypass this problem. I think more important would be to look at why this problem occurs. I am not wanting to have a fix immediately, but if the cause could be found, it could possibly be fixed in next release.

Also I find that the developers of Vegas do a very good work, so many thanks to them for their good work.

Also I love the whole community around Vegas, particulary these forums with some really knowledgable people.

Only for my support request, I had the opinion that my original post wasn't even read entirely and that there were simply copied predifined blocks of text as reply. But this is only a personal opinion.