Can’t previwe in Sony vegas pro 9

[John Rofrano]

Could it be that as you work on the project and add FX you are asking Vegas to do more and more work to just to see what the frame looks like? This is more than likely what’s happening and your PC isn’t powerful enough to play the video back with all the FX you have added.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Seranya Myor]

Maybe. The project does have many effects, but I’ve used them like that on other projects before and it worked. So what can I do if my laptop is not powerful enough to work with SV? There has to be a solution, this is a pretty good laptop, I didn’t expect it to be so weak with softwares like Sony Vegas.

[John Rofrano]

[Seranya Myor] “this is a pretty good laptop, I didn’t expect it to be so weak with softwares like Sony Vegas.”

That has a lot to do with the source footage that you are editing. What is the source? From what camera? (what format does it use?)

Also, What make/modle is the laptop? (what CPU, memory, etc.)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Seranya Myor]

I am not editing footage I captured myself, just clips downloaded from the net. Most of them are in wmv.

That… I don’t know exactly. I’m not very familiar with these computer terms… if you could explain in more detail then I can tell you. The brand is Toshiba and do you mean the whole memory of the laptop? That’s 250 GB.

[John Rofrano]

[Seranya Myor] “I am not editing footage I captured myself, just clips downloaded from the net. Most of them are in wmv.”

WMV is one of the worst formats you could be editing. That could very well be part of your problem. I would render the WMV files to DV AVI in Vegas and edit the AVI files instead.

[Seranya Myor] “The brand is Toshiba and do you mean the whole memory of the laptop”

If you can tell me the model number I can look up anything that I need to know.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Seranya Myor]

I used to work with avi files all the time, in other softwares, but I actually had to convert most of my clips to wmv just for them to work in Sony Vegas. For some reason avi files don’t work with my SV. I don’t know why though, it’s supposed to accept it from what I read.

Hmm where can I find that number? Is it the one on the back of the laptop?

[John Rofrano]

[Seranya Myor] “I used to work with avi files all the time, in other softwares, but I actually had to convert most of my clips to wmv just for them to work in Sony Vegas.”

What you have to understand is that “AVI file” is meaningless. Video is compressed using a codec (Compresssor/Decompressor) and it’s the codec inside the AVI file that determines if Vegas can read it or not. I’m going to guess that the AVI files you used had the DivX or Xvid codec inside which is one that Vegas doesn’t like. However, there are lots of other codecs to choose from and MJPEG is a good one to use.

I would download Avidemux and convert your WMV files to MJPEG using the following options and see if that fixes your problem:

[Seranya Myor] “Hmm where can I find that number? Is it the one on the back of the laptop?”

You made the statement:

” There has to be a solution, this is a pretty good laptop, I didn’t expect it to be so weak with softwares like Sony Vegas.”

What did you base that on? You don’t know the CPU or memory or hard drive size or even the model number of your laptop. What makes you think it’s “pretty good”?

BTW, the model number is usually on the bottom.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Seranya Myor]

Ok, I get it. I didn’t know that, thanks for telling me! I converted them and now it works! I can’t believe that was the whole problem! This format takes up a bit more space than others though… would other formats besides wmv work on SV as well, without having to convert every single clip I have on my computer?

lol I based that on what other people that work with computers all the time told me, I didn’t just wake up one day thinking “Hmm this must be a pretty good laptop” 🙂 I don’t have any technical knowledge about computers so I just trusted what they said. I found the number now, but I guess you don’t need it any more… Thanks again! I am so glad this is finally fixed!!

[John Rofrano]

[Seranya Myor] ” would other formats besides wmv work on SV as well, without having to convert every single clip I have on my computer?”

The short answer is… no. The long answer is, you want to edit using a codec that keeps every frame separate and whole. This makes editing easier but takes up more disc space. Formats that take less disc space use compression that doesn’t keep every frame. It keeps just what changes from frame to frame relative to a whole frame earlier in the video. This causes Vegas to have to reconstruct a single frame from the delta of several frames and this takes time and slows things down. So your options are small video that edits slowly or large video that edits fast. Like most things in life, there are trade-offs to be made.

[Seranya Myor] “lol I based that on what other people that work with computers all the time told me, I didn’t just wake up one day thinking “Hmm this must be a pretty good laptop” :)”

lol… That’s what I thought and that’s OK. The questions is: “pretty good” for what purpose? What might be pretty good for surfing the web, talking on Skype, and writing emails, might not be pretty good for video editing. I bought my daughter a laptop which was really good for use at school because it was small and had a webcam and could do everything… until she got into video editing and then it crawled trying to edit video. So “pretty good” is relative to what you want to do with it. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Seranya Myor]

Ok… that’s fine. I have enough space for all the files (at the moment) but I keep downloading others so there might be a problem later on… but I’ll see how I manage that.

Well I don’t know what they meant by pretty good lol I just guessed it probably had a higher performance overall, including video editing. Whatever had over 200 GB was good enough for me at that time 🙂

Thanks for explaining everything! I really appreciate it! I was so worried that there was something wrong with the system and I might have to change it. I still can’t believe it was this easy to fix.