choppy / skipping playback preview

gregd2790 wrote on 12/15/2008, 12:47 PM
Looking for some setup tips. I have a dual quad core 3ghz (8 processors), 8gb of memory, and an Nvidia Quatro FX 3500 card (which I believe has 512mb of memory and is capable of 51GB per sec of graphics bandwith. I am running Vista Businexx 64 bit OS and Vegas 8.1 (64 bit version). I have a Raid 5 with 2.5 TB.
I experience choppy and skipping video, primarily around transitions, when I do a preview playback while editing. If I go back and play the section again it will either play fine or skip/chop differently. It's really frustrating in trying to see if the edits I've made are precise.
I've tried making the preview draft mode, played around with the memory allocation dedicated to video in Vegas Options.....
Anybody have any ideas?

Comments

DeeBee wrote on 3/5/2009, 10:39 AM
Being an old post I'm not sure if you got a solution to this. I have had the sam problem over time and have noticed a direct correlatiom to the amout of skipping and the amount of free space on my video drive.

I archived a lot of files that I wasn't using, freeing up space, and the choppy/skipping that was happening even without transitions went away.
musicvid10 wrote on 3/5/2009, 11:30 AM
Prerender the transitions and effects.
SCS PBC wrote on 3/5/2009, 11:54 AM
This article has some additional suggestions.
musicvid10 wrote on 3/5/2009, 12:05 PM
Thanks for the link. I remember reading that article some time ago and will keep it handy as a reference.
marcel-vossen wrote on 3/5/2009, 12:14 PM
You seem to have an even more powerful superb system than I have, and I just posted my latest discovery that my CPU is almost asleep during rendering and video previewing and all other components are also not even doing any effort.

My bet is that the software just doesnt know how to use the resources it has got on our systems. It's pretty funny to read these hints about having to prerender or downrender to another format , when you notice that your CPU is using 20% of its capacity....I bet the solution lies in the programming ...these are systems with power that even NASA could only dream of a few years ago...
musicvid10 wrote on 3/5/2009, 12:25 PM
Transitions and effects, etc., should be recompressed at some point in order to play back during preview. I doubt many systems could render complex transitions and effects fast enough "on-the-fly" to keep up with full frame, full rate preview, esp. with HD.

Haven't had a chance to try this on any of NASA's systems, sorry to say ;?)
Katau wrote on 3/5/2009, 12:55 PM
I've just started to include the Neo-Scene (www.cineform.com) into my production process and it helps to gain better utilization from the system resources. Essentially, it takes an AVCHD and converts it into an AVI. Then you can assemble the AVI files in Vegas. It does more than just that, but that's the jist of it.