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AVCHD timeline playback slow in Vegas Pro 8.0b
I have a fairly powerful machine by today standards without being extreme:
2.40 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB of DDR2 RAM (800 Mhz)
Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard
eVGA Nvidia 7950 GT graphics card with 256 MB of RAM
2 Western Digital Caviar SE with 16 MB of Cache (Video editing files are in the dedicated drive)I’m running Vista Home Premium with SP1 (bought it with SP1 included and installed it from scratch). I checked that there are no unnecessary services running and the system is clean of malware, spyware and all that, I scan it often and make sure that it’s clean.
However, when I load AVCHD files from my Canon HF100 in Vegas Pro 8 and play them from the timeline they play slow, depending on the action going on they might play at 7 fps and then maybe go up to 15 to finally stabilize at around 11, but it can go down again to even 5 fps. This is while having quality set to Preview (Full), and changing to Draft (Full) doesn’t really make a difference. Setting any quality to (Half) will actually make it worse, I suppose because Vegas has to downscale on the fly.
This only happens when playing back from the timeline, if I choose the source file in either the Project Media or the Explorer tabs, they play at 29.97.
I checked my project settings, and everything matches the source files: 1920×1080, 29.97, upper field, pixel ratio square and color depth 8 bit.
My source files are 17 Mbps, but I tried older AVCHD files from a Panasonic SD5 I had, which were 13 Mbps, and the same happens.
Obviously there are no filters or any pan/crop applied to the events I’m playing.
I’m just wondering if it’s that Vegas is slow for timeline playback, or if maybe I have something else installed in my system that is interfering with Vegas and making it play video so slow. Does anybody know if Vegas has its own internal codec engine for timeline playback, or if it relies on systemwide codecs for that?
I would think that with a dual core processor and 4 GB of DDR2 RAM my computer would be capable of handling AVCHD pretty well, so I think the problem might be somewhere else, but I hope somebody more knowledgeable can enlighten me.
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5 Replies
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I have the same problem with .MTS files from the Canon HG10. V8 sometimes even chokes and quits, I complained before here but did not get any feedback. Sony should listen and do something about AVCHD.
The meantime I found a partial solution in UPSHIFT (website below). It converts MTS to m2t that works better on V8.
https://www.vasst.com/product.aspx?id=bf3e2d5a-7c2e-4969-a8dd-7cee2cefba30 -
That’s not really a solution, unless your final delivery format is HDV. I wouldn’t recompress all my footage to HDV format to then recompress it again to DVD format. It’s too time consuming, but even worse, takes a toll on quality, always my main concern. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
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You must bear in mind that AVCHD is a very tight HiDef codec. It’s not Sony who has to “listen and do something”. To work with this codec you need a faster and more powerful rig.
I bought the Canon HF10 which captures to AVCHD format. 17MB per second at highest quality.
My rig is a Quad core 2.5 with 3GB DDR3-1066 ram. When editing in Vegas all 4 processors hover around 70%.
My concern is, if I capture in High Definition 1920 but my final output is PAL(720×576) which will need to be compressed using MPEG2 to DVD disc, I get a crappy MPG.
I did a AVI render last night using the YUV option in the AVI settings and got a brilliantly sharp movie. It was 32Gig. Now I’m going to try DVDA 4.5 to see the quality and will let you know.
Cheers Craig
Peace Talks Hamper War in Middle East
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My dual core AMD 4400 worked hard but struggled on AVCHD files, but improved makedly when I started using Cineform as a transcode/capture utility. It took a little more hard drive space but the smoothness of playback was worth it. The difference is less noticable on my quad core Q6600 machine until I start to stack up the tracks. Then Cineform again shows itself to be worth the purchase.
GB-)
“Better, Faster, Cheaper … Pick Two!”
Gary R. Brown, SCVE
Video Systems Engineer
Portsmouth Public Schools
Portsmouth, Virginia
23704-2135 -
Gary, did you ever get mts to run smooth, just started with avchd, have vegas 9 and it is slow, have a pretty good ststem, looking for answers
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