preview on ext. mon. makes previews freze/ black

Mindmatter wrote on 8/13/2015, 2:49 PM

Hi all,
I guess I now definitely need help with my preview issues.
preview has always been sluggish and stuttering in my projects as soon as there's some small text cropping or generated media involved, let alone applying FX.
I've always read about Vegas' preview issues what I could find and applied the recommended tweaks, even changed to a R290 card - it just doesn't seem to improve , in spite of my new and really fast PC with 32g RAM .
So , in a desperate attempt to make things better, I updated the radeon driver. Well, I guess I shouldn't have. V13 went totally weird, preview jumping all over the place, blue screens during the install etc.
OK, driver wipe, complete driver uninstalls etc etc, new install attempt without the Catalyst CC, which had seeemed to mess up things even more. Things seem to have gone back to normal, ( bad preview normal, that is ), but now, when I select preview on external monitor, both the preview window in V13 and the ext. monitors go black, or sometimes the ext. monitor image just freezes, until I stop playback, and then they both display the current frame.
Could there be a problem running my monitor on the R29's HDMI output? Should I try and go back to my GTX570? I'm really considering every possible issue right now.
My current driver is 15.200.1062.1004.
Old Smoke, you seem to run the R290 without a glitch, what are your drivers?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 8/13/2015, 7:26 PM

At this point I would suggest you are in pigsty of possible problems.

1) GPU functionality is not proven across the board, be very careful in that zone
2) Where you have your video card and all other slots with respect to the mainboard buss is a potential minefield
3) Not getting rid of video card drivers before executing system changes, thus building up a mix of incompatible software/hardware will sink you totally.
4) Preview from codec as well as timeline settings in VegasPro are another gotcha

Start over with a simple build.

OldSmoke wrote on 8/13/2015, 11:06 PM

Try 14.4, that always worked for me. I tried the latest and need to go back to 14.4 or 14.7.

Mindmatter wrote on 8/14/2015, 2:31 AM

Thanks videoITguy and Oldsmoke. Right now I don't have the time for a complete rebuild from scratch. i've now used display driver uninstall freeware and installed the AMD 14.4 driver - same problem, preview goes black when using external monitor.
I might just try and put my GTX570 in there.

Mindmatter wrote on 8/14/2015, 4:54 AM

OK it seems solved...
Here's what I did:
First, it was getting weird. I uninstalled and physically removed the R9 290, totally clean driver wipe etc, put the GTX570 in, latest driver...and the black freeze preview is still there!
reinstalled V13 - same thing.
but a Vegas problem. Unistalled V13 build 453 again and reinstalled build 444. Same issue.
Now get this - V12 runs just fine! No issue whatsoever.
Another uninstall - totally clean with registry edits and all Sony folders deleted.
Reinstall of V13 build 444 and preview now works again!

On a sidenote - I see absolutely no change in timeline performance between the 2 cards, the GTX570 even seems a little faster on the timeline.
I'm wondering if I should put the R290 back in, or try running both.
Any ideas?
thanks!

wwaag wrote on 8/14/2015, 10:19 AM

"On a sidenote - I see absolutely no change in timeline performance between the 2 cards, the GTX570 even seems a little faster on the timeline.
I'm wondering if I should put the R290 back in, or try running both.
Any ideas?"

The real value of the GPU in your video card is effects processing. If your timeline doesn't have any or a lot of effects, you won't see much of a difference. Suggest that you run the Sony VP11 benchmark with both systems and compare. That will give you a much better idea of which card is better in your system. Having an Nvidia and AMD card in the same system doesn't sound like a good idea to me, although I've never tried it. Since you have an Intel processor, you might try adding your HD Graphics as a second display adapter. It works well for me, although it's highly dependent on your motherboard support. If it works, it does have the advantage of enabling quick-sync renders from Vegas.

wwaag

Mindmatter wrote on 8/14/2015, 10:51 AM

Thanks wwaaq.
i've now installed both, and after a couple of restarts, win7 recognized and handled both cards, and it now seems to work just fine.
I had googled quite a lot about installing two different makes at the same time, but apparently win7 now supports that without a problem, whereas Vista required two cards of the exact same brand and driver.
I've so far tried different monitor and GPU routings, each monitor now has its own card, and running the preview over an external monitor now does feel slightly smoother, just like the overal timeline behaviour, but not as much as I had thought. I had actually believed that V13 would distribute its GPU load over the 2 cards, especially when previewing over a different card/monitor. It seems I have more experimenting and knowledge gathering to do.

ddm wrote on 8/14/2015, 12:35 PM

>>> Since you have an Intel processor, you might try adding your HD Graphics as a second display adapter.

I was using my Nvidia 570 and my Intel on board for my second monitor and I thought all was working fine, Vegas worked fine, not until I did a benchmark did I discover that I was getting NO GPU performance gains even though all looked like GPU was on for my 570. It was not. Once I switched to the 570 only, then I got the GPU performance gains that I should have had. Others here have had success with both, but my particular combination definitely di not offer any performance gains. The old sony benchmark is helpful because it has some dramatic differences in playback with and without gpu. Not all footage benefits from gpu, some more than others, so many times it seems hard to tell if and how much the gpu is working. In my case, with the sony benchmark, I went from 4 to 5 fps preview to 30. But, if I'm doing a video that is just moves on stills, I get zero preview difference with or without gpu, but at least I know that my gpu is working as good as it can, and it's set up properly, which is something.