I tried to do a ram preview ofsome HD stuff (uncompressed tiffs). I only got about 1/3 of a second. :) You'll need a LOT more RAM for HD then DV for an equal length preview.

I have dual 2.4 xeons and 2 gigs of RAM.

I have 1 gig allocated to Vegas.

I can RAM preview this project with no issues in After Effects. Unfortunatly, AE is not an editor, so I need to use Vegas and thus need to RAM preview there too.

I'm looking for Sony feedback on this because I am 100% sure this is a bug.

To the HappyFriar,

Your statement is misguided. You sure do need a lot more RAM to render HD than DV for a given amount of time. That's a trivial statement.

The amount of the timeline that DOES get RAM rendered SHOULD play at 29.97. There will be less of it - but it should be perfect.

When you say it does not give you playback at 29.97 what if anything does it give you?

About 11 fps.

Maybe the problem is the amount of data that needs to be moved from RAM to the video card, probably it needs to be remapped as well. Still as you say if AE can do it why can't Vegas. I'm assuming that AE was doing exactly the same thing, not showing you a proxy or anything sneaky like that.
I'd suggest a formal tech support request with a few more details.

I just tried it a few ways, letting it loop rather than RAM preview.

Only Draft/Full got up to speed on my system, which is moderately fast but no speed demon. These were the "Full" settings only but since draft is half res anyway I'd guess the auto settings could play.

It also doesn't play at full speed in WMP for me. I wonder if anyone here can play it? I see that Taskman says my CPU is running as high as 25% while playing this file in WMP. I agree that it's probably a throughput issue. I bet AEFX is doing something funky here.

Rob Mack

You won't be able to play it in WMP because the IO is too demanding. We're taling about 255 megs for 3.2 seconds. That's why the RAM preview for HD is so crucial.

Farss,

Good idea. I just mailed tech support. I will post back when they reply - if they don't reply in the forum directly. I requested that they reply in the forum.

Okay then. I thought about this overnight and remembered a thread from the past about AEFX frame rates Vs Vegas. When AEFX sets a frame rate to 29.97 it's just that. When Vegas sets a frame rate to 29.970 it's really 29.97002997.

So I took your AVI file and re-rendered it to a new uncompressed file from Vegas. It now plays at near 29.97 on a 1 GHz PIII. From RAM Preview, of course.

I don't think you'll like hearing this. I don't know whether frame rate is really the problem but the file definitely plays much better if you rerender it in Vegas.

Rob Mack

Previews fine IF you rerender the file from vegas. I Rerendered as uncompressed, same size, same rate. Then ram previewed. Plays fine at good/full. This on a 2Hz/400MHz machine with 512MB RAM and a pretty plain GeForce4 dual head card.

Rob Mack

Thanks for working on it Rob. I can't duplicate your results though. Did you render it to HD? Or did you accidentally render to NTSC DV uncompressed?

I actually think I may have found another bug. I rendered to a new track and chose uncompressed and for frame size said "use project settings" and the product was a track that was longer than the original by a frame. The original was 3 seconds 7 frames, the "Render to new Track" was 3 seconds 8 frames. RAM previewing the new track gave me 11 fps again.

Either way, the RAM preview should do all the dirty work for you. In other words, you should be able to drop any frame rate on the timeline and hte RAM preview should 'render' it to the project settings.

The extra frame doesn't surprise me.

The new file I rendered is 1280x720, 29.97 f/s, uncompressed, 32bit, 344 MB
the original file was 1280x720, 29.97 f/s, uncompressed, 24bit, 255 MB

I just tried to render a file w/o alpha. It doesn't play as fast.

This on a 2 GHz/400MHz P4 with 512 MB RAM

Rob

after 5 loops it's playing at 29.97 on my machine in Best (auto)

P4 3.0, 400mhz, 512 RAM

are you expecting it to play 29.97 off the cuff?

Mike

No. This thread is about RAM preview.

Best Auto is of no use to me. I want to see it full sized. Otherwise I'd have just made a lower res project.

Most of the time, when you edit, you set everything to low quality for speed. But there comes a time when you want to preview at full glory. Vegas apparently cannot do that.

...don't have 5 yet, but on a dual 1.6ghz AMD machine with a gig of RAM -- RAM preview set to 600mb, with three instances of Vegas 4 open -- I get a fluid, 29.97fps Best (Auto) RAM preview generated in about two minutes.

Play from the timeline otherwise is very slow (1fps) and doesn't seem to catch up in Best (Auto) -- even when looped.

EDIT: incidentally, rendering out an uncompressed, 1280x720 29.97 .avi (256mb), and then bringing it back into Vegas has it doing a 29.97fps preview in Best (Auto) just fine after about 6 runs of a loop. So, others' advice about rendering from within Vegas are correct from where I sit, too...

- jim

I don't even think it's possible on your average computer to play back Full Res, Full frame rate uncompressed HD without some kind of hardware support. The file sizes are just too huge and can't transfer fast enough through your system to get a real preview. I think it's a bandwith issue, not a Vegas issue.

Vegas apparently cannot do that.

Does it just fine under really restrictive circumstances. Not with the AVI file you made in AEFX but with it's own AVI2 compliant uncompressed 32bit file it's happy as a clam on much slower systems than yours.

Just because it CAN play it back at full res from ram doesn't mean the problem is solved. Obviously you have to do the work in AEFX so you've got to find a way to make Vegas and AEFX cooperate or give up on one side of the process. Personally, I think it's fixable but maybe not if you're on a deadline.

Rob Mack

Playback from HDD, yes, you need more serious hardware. But it can play back from RAM just fine on even a modest system-as long as Vegas5 made the AVI file. It's possible that AEFX could also make a better file. For instance, Vegas5 liked it's 32bit file better than it's 24bit file. I'd be shooting for an AVI2 file with alpha from AEFX.

Rob Mack

"This thread is about RAM preview"....

Thats what I'm doing. RAM preview... You're not going to get a full 29.97 that I'm aware of while editing HD. BJ_M may chime in here as he edits HD in Vegas quite often. He may have some suggestions.

Are you trying to play it full screen on your computer monitor? I'm not sure what you mean by full glory. You're referring to Best (Full), right?

The HD-sized stuff that I've done I've never been able to play back full frame rate without a render first.

By they way, really nice looking graphic.

Mike

Okay then.

In AEFX 5.0 I've taken your file and made a new render as RGB+Alpha. I also set a custom frame rate of 29.97002997. I think the frame rate is just pissing in the wind-it looks like it rounds up to 29.97 (maybe just in the display though. The resulting file is 2 frames longer than the original!)

This file ram previews in Vegas without fault. Setting is good/full. Best is pointless for this test since there's no resizing nor track motion.

BTW, remember that Vegas does the RAM preview based on the preview window setting. We know that but thought it might bear reinforcing.

Rob Mack

The task is not impossible- my Boxx system (with a very fast SCSI drive setup) can play back this file at best/full straight from disk and can also play it back full framerate using RAM preview (with a filter applied to force RAM preview to kick in). On my basic Dell Opteron I cannot get full framerate under any condition.

Many people are already or are starting to get into HD at some level- it sounds obvious but is worth stating again: HD requires a very fast well tweaked system with a monster drive array at the heart of it. The typical nice DV rig simply will not cut it.