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viewing MP4 h264 is slow in Vegas 10e
I am trying to edit a h264 video clip in Vegas 10e to synchronize the video with an external audio track I took on a portable audio recorder.
The problem is that the playback is incredibly choppy and slow. I can play the H264 file fine on Media Player; it’s just slow in Vegas.
My video source is from an android phone, it’s in 1080 format (MP4 h264) with AAC audio.
I use an older Core2Duo 1.3ghz with 2 gb of ram, but playback is fine in media player so I don’t think that’s the problem.
Does anyone know what might work better?
Should I change the source video to another less cpu intensive format? Which formats can retain the source file resolution? I tried avidemux and saw a few formats like DV, huffyuv, etc but I don’t think they retain the original resolution.
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1 Reply
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[Jonathan Lee] “The problem is that the playback is incredibly choppy and slow. I can play the H264 file fine on Media Player; it’s just slow in Vegas.
“Your PC is well below spec for smooth playback of AVC/H.264 HD video using the CPU only. Any chance you have help from your GPU on playback? If you’re playing back in Windows Media Player, you either have Windows 7 or some 3rd party add-on… Microsoft supplies the Windows 7 H.264 CODEC, which uses the DXVA 2.0 system to accelerate video playback.
Either way, it’s simply way more complex to play back video for editing than just for viewing. Editing H.264 on my laptop (Core2 Duo at 2.4GHz with 4GB memory) is too slow for regular use. Of course, that’s a five-year-old laptop…
The usual solution is exactly as you suggest, an “intermediate” format. Using Vegas built-in formats, try a high definition Sony MXF output — that’s very high bitrate MPEG-2, which will take up more space, but is much, much easier to decode than the H.264format. The first (not only) consideration in preserving quality is preserving resolution; assuming high definition H.264 sources, DV will be 1/6th the resolution.
-Dave
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