Maybe see what tech support says about the studdering playback. Mines playing back fine.
Are you working with just one drive in the computer? Mine doesn't studder when playing back, right now it's normal speed clocked at 2.8Ghz (1gig ram). But my video & audio apps are on physical separate harddisks and not the system operating drive.

One thing that has made a difference on my machine for performance is I goto "New" to start a new project, then assign the project to a separate physical drives folder, I also assign the correct settings for HDV as the project settings.

Then I'll goto "File | Properties" and make sure everything is setup for HDV and point my temp folder to a separate physical harddisk, then I goto the audio tab and make sure the settings are for HDV such as 48khz stereo(the default is 44khz). Then I'll save the project.
So I have my project on one physical drive (which I capture to), then temp & rendering folders on another physical drive and also the operating system is on another physical drive. Since the machine is only 2.8Ghz having a few physical drives really helps out with HDV because HDV is very demanding on a system.

Not sure if I've come across the audio breaking up on capturing, I think so, I have to capture another tape to tell, I think it's my cam (not sure yet).

Oh yes - this darxxx Preview issue..

However - is it really right to blame it on Vegas?

YES - if Vegas is the culprit - but
NO - if Vegas actually is innocent..

I just made the simplest of tests. Previewed a sequence with several overlapping AVIs (MJPEG) plus some transitions plus some light FX...
To no surprise the sequence was not previewed with 25 FPS (we are in PAL-land here) but between 16 and 25 FPS.
Grrr - Blame on Vegas??

Well - then I previewed the same sequence again - and - SURPRISE - the FPS was now 20-25...

Well- well - then I previewed it again-again and from now on it was previewed at perfect 25.000 every time.

As Vegas of course runs through precisely the same pieces of code every time - then we can learn that the initial slow preview IS NOT to blame on Vegas - but on it's sourroundings...
I.e. Windows not delivering the video clips from the harddisks as fast as it should and Windows not having the proper Vegas codepages available in RAM memory etc.

Now having shown this, I made another test: Converted the video clips to VMW9, made the same transitions etc and tried to preview.
Well- well- well: now the preview rate was below 10 FPS.... Really bad... double Grrr..

A little research showed, that the VMW-codec on my machine was an old one utilizing only one processor...

As a third test I used the Neat video plugin to clean the sequence. The preview now was between 0,5 and 4 FPS...

Conclusion: There are so many things having significant influence on the preview that it ceartainly is not fair just to whine and say: Blame it all on Vegas!

PS: One future way is that as some plugins now can utilize the enormous rendering power in some graphic processors, we are probably all waiting for the smart Vegas developers and the Codec developers, and the plugin developers and... to change their code to use some graphic card acceleration...
Another not so far future way is that Intel brings the first 45 NM Quad processors on the market in the early winter.
45 NM Quad processors plus everything on SATA Flash drives surely will do wonders... if we do not just change to HD :-))

PPS: 4eyes has good points - another easy improvement is to set the priority of your editing version of Vegas to Above Normal and do not forget to change it to Below Normal when you start rendering.

With an AMD 4800+ x2 processor, 2 GB RAM, 2 SATA II hard drives, etc. I should think that Vegas would not stutter in playback.

I even have the task manager running to see what else what might in the way and no other task is consuming CPU cycles.

I can play the most demanding video games on this machine and they don't miss a lick. I doubt it's my machines horsepower or capabilities so please then, tell me how to figure out where the problem lies, else I can only think it is Vegas.

I do not agree with you ritsmer. Yes, you can make tests and verify that this or that external or internal thing had an influence on Vegas' preview performance. But the point is that NO OTHER NLE in that price range is that slow. Which means that the ARCHITECTURE of Vegas is the problem, not the quality of the code directly.

And so at the end, yes, it's a Vegas problem. And it's a major one, because it happens on the one thing most people will use all the time: preview.

ritsmer,
I'm also waiting for the quads.
Why do you say to set the priority lower for rendering? So you can perform other tasks on the computer at the sametime it's rendering?
Curious. I'm using P4's 2.8 - 3.2 HT's.

Stevec5375,
Could the source videos that your loading be the problem?
Are you working with DV video, or a different compressed video format.
What are your source videos?

I only work with HDV in m2t format, but I have also tried AVI and WMV in 720p format, and they were almost as slow too. I had to try a VGA video for Vegas to keep up. Anything more than that and it's going bananas.

I have used AnyDVD to rip some commercial DVDs to my hard drive. I am trying to pull excerpts from the .vob files out and put them together for my own, at home, experience.

Stevec,
I just duplicated on my computer similar results you are experiencing. The reason this was happening on my computer is because I loaded a compressed video file (mpeg2/vob) and my project properties didn't match the source videos properties.

When looking at the previewing window you will see 2 settings:
Project & Preview, when working with compressed video files in most programs you have to adjust the project properties to match the source video properties. These properties need to match the frame_size, fielding, aspect_ratio etc.
You can do this manually "File | Properties" (hotkey <alt+enter>)

An easy method in VMS to do this is using this method:
"File | New" (Assign a project folder & name) then "Next"
In the "Next" Screen check the box "Make my project settings match this media file", then browse to your VOB file (you will have to select *.* for "Files of type" and load the vob file (It's easier to just rename the vob to mpg). Select the video, click "Open | Next" Finish. Then goto "File | Properties" and type over the templates name to assign a custom name and save the template for future use.

When you insert your vob/mpg file into the timeline it should play better. Made a hugh difference on my computer for playback.
Reason programs don't load vob's is because vob's are containers. Within the vob file can be sub-titles (other languages) and closed captions, and a vob can contain more than 1 video file (can have many small ones). You might as well just rename your vob's to mpg I think.
Normally I use "Preview - Auto", after making the above changes "Preview-Auto" & "Best-Full" looked great, even playsback smoothly on my 2nd monitor wihen I activate it.
My source video was a homemade dvd and not the same as your vob.
Give this a try because at first I had the same problem. My project was setup for HDV video and I was inserting mpeg2 standard def files.
Eugenia, I would try the same except replace the words VOB (in the above post) with .m2t or file|new and just use the HDV template. The HDV template matches the HV20 cam, 1440x1080 etc
But if you set your project properties to the VMS HDV template it should be correct.

4eyes,

Thank you so much. This seems to have made all the difference in the world. Now my preview window doesn't stutter anymore.

I suppose it shows that I'm a newbie at this. <blush>

Problem solved here. But it's not what you suggested. I had already made sure that my projects were correctly setup, and so your suggestion didn't help. The problem was the internal swap that Vegas was using (also called "dynamic RAM", or "pagefile").

By default, Vegas on my machine would use ONLY 255 MBs of RAM for swap, while there was 800 MBs free and available (and that, with Vegas & Firefox loaded). So, I changed that number to 400 MBs (under Settings/Video/DynamicRAM setting), restarted VMS, and voila! No more slowness while previewing. If you have lots of RAM to spare, the best number seems to be 512 MBs to preview HDV properly without stuttering (do that if you have 1.5 GBs of RAM, or more).

Ok, so I guess I am up for purchasing the update too as this was my last outstanding issue. As you can see, I can be reasonable when things work properly. I expect Sony to update v8.0a though to fix the normalizing bug and maybe add a more clever way of how to detect RAM for use in their internal swap file.

Very interesting Eugenia. I thought I'd check my dynamic RAM setting, and it is at 256MB, but VMS 8 won't let me change it -- says 256 MB is the max available. Well, I have 2GB on this machine and other apps know about it.

I am on Vista -- wonder if that is part of the problem. Which Windows are you running?

Also, mine is VMS 8.0a (purchased via download) -- same version as yours?

Anyway, I am just curious -- so far I have not had problems previewing, including full-screen previews on my second monitor. However, I am not doing HDV work...

The problems is with HDV, yes. I am using XP Pro, and the trial version of VMS 8.0a.
Check how much RAM you have free (use Windows' taskmanager) and try to free-up some RAM (a "clean" Vista shouldn't require more than 512 MBs of RAM to boot up). VMS itself needs from 200 MBs to 600 MBs depending on the size of the project loaded, so all the rest should be free to be used for the VMS swap file.

4eyes

Right: setting the program priority of a renderjob to Below Normal lets VMSP render happily in the background for hours while you can edit or do other work in the foreground without noticing any delay at all.

Vista's Task Manager says "Physical Memory: 44%" which of the 2GB should leave 1GB or more still free. Yet VMS 8.0a says "256 Max", and will not let me enter a larger number.

Now, here's the weird thing: VMS 7.0a, on this same system, says I can go up to 896MB for the dynamic RAM preview. Remember, 7.0 was before they made it Vista compatible (but I installed it anyway, and have been using it almost daily).

Seems like another bug in 8.0, probably Vista-related. Odd that 7.0 works here, and that it works for you on XP.

I think they need better beta testers. Seriously. This is silly.

I see the same problem on my system too. I have VMS 8 on Vista with 2 GB of RAM and yet I see a max amount of 255 megs for dynamic RAM.

I would call Sony tech support and report this bug, along with the other new VMS8 bug, the "normalizing" one, and ask for an updated version soon.

I am running WinXP Pro and have 2GB total RAM. The 8.0a trial only shows that 1GB is available for RAM cache. I have it at 512MB and it seems to work fine.

I'm wondering if anyone has called Sony on this preview ram issue? I can confirm the same issue is occuring for me however I have not noticed a lag in performance like others have mentioned. I'm running an e4300, 4gb ram, vista32 with sata ii raid0. I am happy with the performance of the playback when compared to previous versions of VMS. 6 and 7 were so bad with native m2t that I had to switch to Ulead for a few family movies. I'm happy to be back with Vegas.

Paul

I'm wondering if anyone has called Sony on this preview ram issue? I can confirm the same issue is occuring for me
Try this in Version 8 Platinum: Using the Help File:

HELP | Contents & Index
Index Tab -> Type in "Troubleshooting" -> DoubleClick on "Troubleshooting"
Click on "Why can't I play back my project at the full project frame rate?
Read your 3 choices:
Click on "Build Dynamic RAM Preview commands to increase the frame rate for playback"
Set up your cache
From the Options menu, choose Preferences and select the Video tab.
Enter a value in the Dynamic RAM preview (max) box to set the amount of RAM that you want to dedicate to video previews.

The maximum size of the RAM cache is displayed to the right of the control. You must leave at least 64 megabytes available for Vegas Movie Studio software (more if you are creating complex projects). If you reserve excessive amounts of RAM for your RAM cache, performance may decrease.
When someone purchases VMS the program doesn't know if one is working with dv/hdv/mpeg or whatever.
Not to mention having multiple instances of the program running (are you aware you can run multiple instances of VMS?)

I certainly don't consider this a bug, it's a users option. If you were working with DV or frame accurate cineformhd the default setting works fine. Also depends on your computer, video card and all.

BTW- The normalize feature works on my computer, no problem.

This thread should be renamed to "Misery Loves Company"

> BTW- The normalize feature works on my computer, no problem.

Which file types did you try it on? Never mind, I don't even need to know, because I know you didn't try all of them. I discovered today that files in certain encodings exhibit the problem -- every time. Whereas VMS 7.0 does it correctly. Gee, imagine that. Do you think we should look in the help file for it?

> This thread should be renamed to "Misery Loves Company"

I couldn't agree more.