VMS 7 can't keep up

stevec5375 wrote on 5/3/2007, 6:31 PM
I ripped a DVD to my hard drive to pull out some video for my home use. So I'm reading in VOB files.

When I play back the video, the preview window can't keep up. This is especially noticable when the cursor hits the right edge of the screen and the screen scrolls.

I have a AMD 4800+ dual core processor running at 2400. I also have two 320GB SATA II drives in a RAID 1 array.

I can't imagine a workhorse like this not being able to keep up.

My CPU is only 50% utilized while this is happening. I have no weird software loaded either.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/4/2007, 10:43 AM
If you have Vegas Movie Studio 8 installed then you definitely have some very weird software loaded on your computer! You might wanna check your version number a little more carefully. ;)

I suspect you probably have a bad network driver or poor antivirus software installed. Granted, .VOB files aren't the ideal media to use with Vegas, but your system ought to play better than that. Try disabling the network or AV software and see if that improves the situation.
stevec5375 wrote on 5/4/2007, 2:19 PM
Oops. I had just finished reading the press release about version 8 so I got a little carried away with the version number. Actually, I have version 7.
ritsmer wrote on 5/5/2007, 1:09 AM
Probably you have tried this - but if not: You can tune the preview by decreasing the size of the preview window and quality of the preview - i.e. normally I use the setting half size (which for me is 680x384) and the setting Preview or Good for quality - but if I want to check if the stills change according to the music then I use a smaller size and Draft quality while checking this.
And as Chienworks says: your problem could very well be in a driver or some cpu-consuming hardware as you may not see the cpu-usage for this in the task manager.
stevec5375 wrote on 5/5/2007, 5:54 AM
I am a software developer so I am pretty familar with Windoze and all of its issues.

I have had the task manager open while playing back video in VMS 7. The CPU is only consuming 50% of the processing power. There are no other tasks consuming anything. Unfortunately services, drivers, do not show up here.

Does anyone know of a good tool for better monitoring of the PC's processes?

Here's my computer's stats:
AMD 4800+ x2 @ 2400
2 GB Corsair RAM (made especially for my ASUS motherboard)
2 320 GB Seagate SATA II hard drives in a RAID 1 array

I can't believe this screaming machine can't handle playback without the preview window stuttering. There has to be something going on.

I going to try this on my P4 3Ghz laptop today and see what happens.
Chienworks wrote on 5/5/2007, 6:37 AM
I agree, something has to be going on. I got near flawless playback of .VOB files in Vegas when i upgraded to a 2.6GBhzCeleron. I had very useful playback of them on an 866MHz P3. Obviously something else is occupying your processor.
stevec5375 wrote on 5/5/2007, 7:20 AM
I doubt my processor is being occupied by anything. I am running the AMD Cool 'n Quiet driver which throttles the CPU back when it is not needed. There is a GUI which allows you to monitor this.

I have the GUI open when I am loading and running VMS. When processor speed is called for, the Cool 'n Quiet shows my processor running a full speed.

I moved one of the VOB files to an external firewire drive I have attached. It seemed to help the problem.

I wish there was a better way to debug this without having to resort to trial and error.