I found out something interesting about the playback problems that plague Vegas in AVCHD.
Anybody can test this if they want. Start a project with three A/V tracks of AVCHD, select the three video tracks and create a multicam track. Then enable multicam editing to make Vegas play the three sources at the same time. If your system is fast enough to play the three at 29.97 in Preview Full then you should be able to see this with no problems. So set the preview to what I just said, then start playing. All three angles play at 29.97 fps smoothly. Now launch Task Manager and check the Performance tab. CPU usage hovers around 70% (this may vary according to different processors).
Now switch back to Vegas, which should still be playing at full fps, and press J, one or more times, it doesn't matter. Keep going back a few seconds in the timeline. Now press either K and then L, or just L. You'll see that after a second the footage lowers to around 8 fps and then goes up to 9. If you think that pressing K to stop and then L to resume will work, it won't. It goes back to play at 8 fps. And, while it's doing this, the CPU usage goes all the way up to 100%.
Now do this: move the mouse pointer to anywhere in the timeline above the ruler and click. You'll see that it starts playing at full fps again. Click again on different points of the timeline, always above the ruler, and you'll see that it's playing at full fps. Also you can see that the CPU usage went down to around 70% again.
If you want to try this with a single track, it works the same, except that it doesn't go down to 8 fps after using JKL, it goes down to around 20. CPU usage for a single track, in my case is around 20% and after using JKL it goes to around 70%.
This to me makes crystal clear that Vegas' AVCHD playback problems are not only a matter of how fast the CPU is, or enough RAM. This is a AMD Phenom II 1090T CPU, six cores at 3.6 Ghz each (it's supposed to be 3.2 but if Core Boost is disabled in the BIOS, it unleashes all six cores to 3.6) and 16 GB of DDR3 10666 (or 1333 Mhz if you prefer) RAM. If you check the benchmarks for this processor you'll see that depending on the benchmark, the only desktop processors faster than this are the two Intel Extreme editions that sell for over $1000. RAM preview is set to 0 now, but the same thing happened on whatever number it was set to.
Clearly, the problem with Vegas is not a matter of having a fast enough computer. It helps, to some degree, but if you can play your AVCHD footage at full fps from the start, the computer IS fast enough for AVCHD playback. As I always said, it's not the computer, it's Vegas. Obviously when you can play three tracks of AVCHD at full fps, but as soon as you start using JKL it goes down to 8 fps, it doesn't matter if you have a NASA supercomputer, because this tells me that it's not a matter of CPU cycles and efficiency, or not enough RAM, there's something else that's broken there, and it's what SCS has to fix immediately.
Anybody can test this if they want. Start a project with three A/V tracks of AVCHD, select the three video tracks and create a multicam track. Then enable multicam editing to make Vegas play the three sources at the same time. If your system is fast enough to play the three at 29.97 in Preview Full then you should be able to see this with no problems. So set the preview to what I just said, then start playing. All three angles play at 29.97 fps smoothly. Now launch Task Manager and check the Performance tab. CPU usage hovers around 70% (this may vary according to different processors).
Now switch back to Vegas, which should still be playing at full fps, and press J, one or more times, it doesn't matter. Keep going back a few seconds in the timeline. Now press either K and then L, or just L. You'll see that after a second the footage lowers to around 8 fps and then goes up to 9. If you think that pressing K to stop and then L to resume will work, it won't. It goes back to play at 8 fps. And, while it's doing this, the CPU usage goes all the way up to 100%.
Now do this: move the mouse pointer to anywhere in the timeline above the ruler and click. You'll see that it starts playing at full fps again. Click again on different points of the timeline, always above the ruler, and you'll see that it's playing at full fps. Also you can see that the CPU usage went down to around 70% again.
If you want to try this with a single track, it works the same, except that it doesn't go down to 8 fps after using JKL, it goes down to around 20. CPU usage for a single track, in my case is around 20% and after using JKL it goes to around 70%.
This to me makes crystal clear that Vegas' AVCHD playback problems are not only a matter of how fast the CPU is, or enough RAM. This is a AMD Phenom II 1090T CPU, six cores at 3.6 Ghz each (it's supposed to be 3.2 but if Core Boost is disabled in the BIOS, it unleashes all six cores to 3.6) and 16 GB of DDR3 10666 (or 1333 Mhz if you prefer) RAM. If you check the benchmarks for this processor you'll see that depending on the benchmark, the only desktop processors faster than this are the two Intel Extreme editions that sell for over $1000. RAM preview is set to 0 now, but the same thing happened on whatever number it was set to.
Clearly, the problem with Vegas is not a matter of having a fast enough computer. It helps, to some degree, but if you can play your AVCHD footage at full fps from the start, the computer IS fast enough for AVCHD playback. As I always said, it's not the computer, it's Vegas. Obviously when you can play three tracks of AVCHD at full fps, but as soon as you start using JKL it goes down to 8 fps, it doesn't matter if you have a NASA supercomputer, because this tells me that it's not a matter of CPU cycles and efficiency, or not enough RAM, there's something else that's broken there, and it's what SCS has to fix immediately.