Video Preview really choppy

Mina wrote on 11/20/2007, 10:44 AM

I'm still fairly new to SVM 8 but love it. Only issue i have is the video preview ..it shows the clips as very choppy and sometimes the video has to catch up to the audio. The indicator on the timeline moves at a normal rate, but the preview sometimes shows as still and the bottom where it shows the frame # it will show as "455..."(for example) and until that frame comes up clear. I've tried looking on different sites as to what the problem may be but I can't find anything that makes sense. I had the program on my laptop with far much less ram etc etc, without too much problem but now that I have it on a much better computer, i can't seem to get it to preview properly. I have a Pent 4, 1g RAM (if that makes sense to anyone). Can it be a video card upgrade?? Please help...
Thanks!!

Comments

Terry Esslinger wrote on 11/20/2007, 11:30 AM

Two things come to mind.
1. What setting is your preview window at. Best setting would probably be preview-auto. At higher settings a lot of computers start to gag.

2. Under the video tab in Preferences set the Dynamic Ram Preview setting at 0. This will keep you from doing Ram renders but will allow other things -such as preview- to run smoother as it frees up ram.

Eugenia wrote on 11/20/2007, 12:40 PM

Also make sure your File / Project-Settings is using the right size/frame rate for the source footage. If it's not, then Vegas will be slow.

Mina wrote on 11/22/2007, 10:31 AM

Thanks,
I tried setting the Dynamic setting to 0 but not much difference. And the preview setting is already at Preview - Auto. I've even tried it at Draft but not much change. My CPU usage always spikes to 100%!!! whenever I view it and when I attempt to render a specific looped region it can take up to 3 hours! It's only about 5 minute section of video so I'm thinking that this whole video will take 30 hours!!! Is this normal? I'm still trying to get used to the different rendering options, but I've tried .mpg and .avi but I'm not sure which is best. I know, I know, I have a lot of questions, but I'm usually pretty good at figuring things out on my own...heh...I've taught myself this program without so much as ever even touching up a digital pic before!! Just these peskiy technical details ..

Paul Mead wrote on 11/23/2007, 10:43 AM

Have you applied any effects to the clips that have a slow preview?

Mina wrote on 11/23/2007, 1:18 PM

Hi.
There are no effects other than fade in/out on the clips, just some effects (transitions etc) on the text/titles that's it. It's a pretty basic video. Some music but only with the text/title. It's an instuctional video for my takewon do school. That seems to preview very clear by the way. Only the actual video clips themselves are choppy. Any reason why the CPU would skyrocket to 100%?

MSmart wrote on 11/24/2007, 5:42 PM

How did you capture it to the hard drive? What format is the video? MPEG or AVI?

Mina wrote on 11/25/2007, 7:18 AM

It's from my JVC HDD camera as mpeg2. Sometimes, if i shut down my computer and only start the SVM then the preview is a bit better...guess i don't give my pc time to use up all the cpu usage...not sure.
i'm positive i'm missing something since sometimes the preview is bareable and sometimes it's a disaster to edit anything!