Hi Larry,

You mention that you have an AVCHD camera? - At this point, to my knowledge, no non-linear editor plays back AVCHD footage at full framerates - it has to do with the compression of the MPEG-4 video that AVCHD uses. 15-20 fps seems actually pretty good - you'll want to try different playback settings in your preview window as Ted suggested. Another idea would be to render out the files to an intermediary codec that Vegas can read better.

-cheno

Well, this is getting frustrating... I upgraded the video card in my pc to an HD 2600 xt with 512mb of ddr3 ram, upgraded the drivers for my sound card (I was getting errors on it when Vegas Pro 8a was loading), cleaned out all the nonsense and marginally necessary processes running on my pc, and nothing changed. The choppiness is still there to the degree that the software isn't usable. I'm not getting the choppy playback with Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate, nor with the software that came with the camera -- even playing full screen.

I did try ALL the settings for the preview window and still no dice. I wrote up a support question to Sony and am hoping that something comes of it. Really disappointing... Compared to Pinnacle, Vegas Pro 8a seemed like the real deal, but if it can't even play back clips that it claims to be able to handle, I'm not so sure. Something's amiss.

What else can I check in my pc? By the way, it is also choppy on my dual core 2.4ghz laptop with 2gb ram, so I'm bummed and troubled. I'm HOPING for a minor upgrade -- 8.0b?

Any suggestions?

Larry Becker

Several of us are having an issue with this. I have it on my main NLE but not on my laptop with 8a. I did not experience this issue with 6 or 7.

j razz

Do you have pixel format set for 8 bit or 32bit?


I do HDV and my playback is fine unless:

A) I load the timeline up with some heavy edits,
B) I have pixel format set for 32 bit.

I DID initially play with the 32 bit setting, but that was the first thing I changed back when I saw the problems.

I haven't even gotten to any significant editing -- how can you edit with choppy video preview? I'm trying to learn the program and it's hard to tell what you're working with and what you've ended up with. There must be some sort of conflict in some of our systems that is causing the issue. I WAS getting a series of error messages until I updated my audio driver, but they've gone away. I even changed the video card. My pc is a high-end Dell XPS with raid-0 drives -- pretty quick. I don't think that's the issue.

Any other suggestions? Some of your systems are working ok? I wonder what the differences are...

Larry Becker

Larry,
I have a similar systems as yours, which also have ATI AGP 512meg cards in them, X1650 512meg Pro AGP.
On your setup you should be able to play hd-mpeg2 high definition video easily with the hd2600xt pro and using PowerDvd7 Ultra or Gold. I'm not so sure about AVCHD video.

I HAVE NOT been able to playback AVCHD properly on a P4 2.8ghz, a P4-3.2Ghz, a P4-3.2Ghz overclocked 10%.

The only success I've had is buying a new computer that has an Intel Core 2 quad Q6600 processor, although you could probably get away with a Core2-dual processor. In the Q6600 computer I have the Vision Tek ATI HD2600XT Pro PCI-Express video card and it works really nice for playback.

I don't think Vegas use's your ATI 512meg card, it's an editor with selectable quality preview.
The ATI High Def cards use AVIVO for HighDefinition playback. Only programs that support AVIVO will use the HD accelleration on the ATI cards. Windvd 8/PowerDvd 7.

I think your computer is to slow for avchd at 8MBS or higher video bit rate. Create a proxy file, but I would simply load my avchd videos and immediately export them to hd-mpeg2 (1080i-60/50) upper field first, no de-interlacing. I can work with high defintion mpeg video on a 2.8 or 3.2 no real problem. The compression isn't as high as AVCHD. AVCHD requires a very fast processor along with hardware accelleration & the correct software to drive the hardware accelerated video card, these video cards also provide hardware de-interlacing for computer screen playback.

You can also play the hd-mpeg2 files effectively using the ATI HD2600XT Pro.
On a P4-2.8Ghz machine 1080@25MBS mpeg2 video runs about 18% processor usage.

Before buying your cam if you posted what high definition cam should you purchase for editing your videos and your computer specs the majority of replies would have been a tape based camcorder that records in the mpeg2 video format.
But your cam is pretty neat, just convert the h264 videos to HD mpeg2 or cineformHD for editing.

Even if I try to directly edit AVCHD video using a Q6600 processor it's obvious that the computer is working pretty hard. Even using a Q6600, it's very hard to directly edit in the avchd format. I convert mine to cineformHD first, then back to avchd or hd-mpeg2, depends on my target device.

4eyes,

Well.... I had a feeling I was getting in on the bleeding edge of HD, but I thought I could make it work -- especially since the requirements that Sony lists for the software are within both my systems' abilities: 1 ghz processor (2.8 for HDV), 1 gb RAM... My desktop system is a 3.4ghz w 2gb ram and raid 0 sata drives, and my laptop is a dual core 7200 processor with 2gb ram. Grrrrrrr....

What you say about the video card being of no real use for the task is also disapointing. I have the AGP version of your VisionTek card and I think there is a bus bottleneck there anyway. Again, since my card says HD in its name, I had hoped....

I took a shot at rendering 2 minutes of video clips to 1080i 60 hdmpeg2 and the results were choppy as well. I may not be doing it correctly.

How do you create a "proxy file"? I had read a little about that - is that what Vasst Gearshift 1.7 is for? Is that the best way to do it?

Thanks!

Larry

Larry,
Well.... I had a feeling I was getting in on the bleeding edge of HD, but I thought I could make it workI worked with HDV for quite awhile on a 2.8 & 3.2 before getting a Q6600. This is how I worked with avchd before buying a Q6600 pc, even at that even now if I want to edit the avchd video I still convert them into a more editable format.
First, make sure your "Project Properties" are set to the template HDV 1440x1080i, uff, no de-interlace, 8 bit editing & quality = BEST. Audio tab 48khz Stereo/5.1.
Then "Render As" and convert them to HDV 1440x1080i, UFF, PAR 1.3333. The default HDV 1080i template works nice. HDV files are approx 200Megs per minute.
You could also convert them to cineformhd for editing, then convert them back to hd-mpeg2 or avchd again (after complex editing), the cineformhd at best quality is about 1gig per minute of video.

Your Project Properties should equal your source videos properties. So after converting these videos to HDV make sure your project properties equal HDV. Maybe this is the cause of the studdering for preview. You will not get a perfect quality preview from all editors using HDV mpeg2 but you should be able to display the proper framerate. Your computer specs are high enough for mpeg2.

Using the HD2600XT card test out PowerDVD7 for playback. PowerDVD7 uses the hardware acceleration on the HD2600XT. It doesn't matter how fast your processor is, to playback HighDef on a computer you need some type of hardware acceleration for proper playback.
I can easily playback mpeg2 @ 25MBS on my 2.8 using an ATI X1650 Pro but not avchd video. To playback avchd video I would copy the files to other media and play them back on a PS3.

I'd also like to note that my HD2600XT works better under XP than Vista when connecting a HDTV up as it's secondary monitor. 1280x720 works with Vista but 1080i gives me tearing on the screen. XP plays the same videos at 1080i will no problems.

Larry, just as a matter of interest, what is playback like with standard definition DV files? You should be able to use the "Best" preview setting and still run at the original frame rate. If not, then something else is up.

Yes Larry, Gearshift is the best way to create and swap out proxies.

Laurence has had good results with MJPEG proxies. That might be your best solution.

I have a Q6600 XP x64 machine with 4Gb ram. In 8.0a I get 25fps playback ("full best") most of the time (working with 50i HDV m2t files) but occasionally it dips to about 20fps for a while for no apparent reason. I hate working with anything but a full frame rate preview when I edit.

I tried a SD clip, which Vegas shows as 720x480x21 29.970 fps interlaced, with 48000 hz 5.1 surround (stereo downmix), Dolby AC-3. Vegas handled it just fine. Preview at Best quality was perfect.

This is EVEN with Adobe Pagemaker 7 (printing something), Outlook and IE all running.

I wonder if my new video card got involved in processing the mpeg file. It was REALLY quick bringing it into the pc with the Sony Motion Picture Browser software. It actually looks pretty good, too. Hadn't shot anything in SD on this camera before. Playing back on a 37" 1080p LCD.

I will try the settings that 4eyes suggested shortly to see if I can make something work -- otherwise I think I'm looking at the proxy software. Is it a pain to use? Does it take long to make the proxy files? Is the quality decent enough to make quality edits, or am I trading chopiness for some other problem?

Larry

You'd be trading processor load for disc space and throughput. HDV, DV, AVC, are all quite small so just about any single hard drive can handle playback. HDV and AVC require a lot more CPU power to decode them so processor power is a big factor.

Transcoding to Cineform makes the media much bigger but the CPU load should be much lower. With a striped RAID 0 array the media should be no problem, although inexpensive RAID controllers add their own CPU load, and nvidia onboard RAID doesn't really perform all that well, from what I've read.

The Vegas timeline seems to have it's own overhead. People have been reporting that media will play just fine from the trimmer but won't play as well from the timeline.

Rob Mack