Video editing lag...

enobus1971 wrote on 1/31/2007, 9:42 AM

Hi all:

I'm having some problems with lag time while I'm working with video editing using Vegas Movie Studio & DVD Ver. 7. What's the best route to tweak my video cards for better performance? Can I overclock both of my video cards? What I have installed is a 256 MB Geforce FX 5200 and a 128 MB Geforce4 MX 4000. Thanks for any and all help!

My system also includes the following... Pentium (R) 4 CPU 2.80 GHz, ASUSTek P4P800 with i865P/PE/G/i848P Chipset, OCZ DDR-SDRAM 512 MBytes x2 + 512 MBytes Nanya DDR-SDRAM - Total 1536 MBytes DDR-SDRAM, 160GB Int Seagate Barracuda hard drive, 160GB Ext Seagate Barracuda hard drive (internal enclosed), 256 MB Geforce FX 5200 and 128 MB Geforce4 MX 4000, Dual monitors, Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum w/5.1 surround Logitech Z-640 speakers.

Thanks for any and all help.

David Chandler

Comments

ScottW wrote on 1/31/2007, 11:19 AM

Please be more specific about the problem you are having? VMS does not take advantage of the GPU on your video card for things like rendering, so overclocking or upgrading the card is not going to do much for you.

--Scott

enobus1971 wrote on 2/1/2007, 6:03 AM

Okay, let me explain. When I'm editing, I'm editing more than one video track. I have the preview screen running and the visual is very choppy and at points it looks as if the video isn't synced with the audio. I did a rendering of a portion of the file and once everything was rendered, it looked fine and the video was synced perfectly with the audio. I do have a dual-card system (not a single card with dual monitor connections) and I'm wondering if that might have something to do with it.

Thanks for any help you might have.

--David

ScottW wrote on 2/1/2007, 2:03 PM

Playback speed when editing can vary depending on whether you have effects applied, reduced opacity, etc. First check to make sure your playback window is set at Preview/Auto - that requires the least amount of CPU for providing the display.

I can't imagine why 2 vid cards would create issues.

--Scott

Peter Frostad wrote on 2/7/2007, 8:59 PM

Choppy preview is often simply a horsepower issue; especially if you are editing mpeg2's or similarly compressed formats. If you first convert your files to AVI's your system will have less to do during the preview process and you will experience less choppy previews. (In one of the threads someone characterized AVI's as the 'bread and butter' of VMS. I would agree with that.)

enobus1971 wrote on 2/12/2007, 10:10 AM

I don't know if I find these answers acceptable or not. I mean this is software that does video editing, no? So why should there be problems with previewing my video segments while I'm in the process of editing? I used to use Vegas 3.0 and there wasn't nearly as much lag time as what I have with this current version (which is supposed to be better since it's an updated version and really the only thing that makes it better is that it has more effects). Maybe I should shop around a little more for a better NLE package. I hear Avid is a good choice.

IanG wrote on 2/13/2007, 1:48 AM

What isn't acceptable? You're applying who knows what effects to the video and they're being applied in real-time - there has to be a limit to what your system can do, and it sounds like you've reached it. If you're not doing much, but still not getting satisfactory performance, then there may be a genuine problem. Can you be more specific about what you're doing - what format video are you editing, what effects you're using etc?

Ian G.

StubbornSwiss wrote on 2/13/2007, 7:35 AM

"I don't know if I find these answers acceptable or not.......Maybe I should shop around a little more for a better NLE package. I hear Avid is a good choice."

Maybe you should!

enobus1971 wrote on 2/13/2007, 8:06 AM

I believe that I remedied the problem I was having. The lag that I was having was making it hard to preview video in the preview window. What I did was refer to some of the settings I had on a previous version of Vegas (ver 3.0). I looked under the Option - Preferences pane -> clicked on the Video tab and where it says Dynamic RAM preview, the number was set to 128. Apparently, that's too high. I set it at what my Vegas Video 3.0 setting was which was 16. It works so much better now and I get a better preview. There still are some jumps here and there but they're few and far between.

MSmart wrote on 2/13/2007, 7:50 PM

doing a "dynamic ram preview" search turned up this dynamic ram preview thread.

fwiw, my VMSP7 dynamic ram is set to 128 and I haven't noticed any problems (editing SD) with 1GB RAM and a 4095MB pagefile.

added, what video card driver are you at? I'm at 91.47 on my GeForce FX5200 w/ 128MB. Update your driver at nvidia.com

Videoguys' Windows XP Tips & Tricks for NLE