framerate frustration: slow preview / high cpu use

[Edward Troxel]

Did you always preview at “full” instead of “auto”? Sure you don’t have something somewhere else? (i.e. effects can be installed in multiple places). Want to post the VEG file so we can take a look at it?

Edward Troxel

[Arthur Bueno]

thanks ed:
I read posts on bad performance and have seen the checklists of possible culprits, and still can’t find it. I’m inclined to think ‘my computer just isn’t strong enough’, but I can hardly believe it when I compare to systems experiences of others.
The veg is the most simple possible: I place a totally ordinary PAL DV clip into an empty new default PAL DV project, and play it from the timeline.
I went on tweaking and trying with the following results:
In Vegas 6:
If I have the preview in a window (preview full) on the secondary monitor, Vegas uses 95% CPU.
If I set preview device to the full secondary monitor, Vegas only uses about 75%, and can scale the preview to fit the 1920 x 1200 monitor, so that’s already a lot better
If I play preview through firewire to an external monitor, I get full framerate full size and Vegas uses only about 23%. Now it becomes workable.
I have no idea why it should be so much more difficult for Vegas to output to a computer monitor, and if this is normal.

Another thing I found: performance of Vegas 7 is a lot worse than Vegas 6 when playing a VOB (for PAL DV): I can get full framerate full size on external monitor on V6, and only about half framerate on V7.

And just one thing I’d like to check: do you know what HDV performance I should expect for my computer (athlon 64 – 3400)? Vegas 7 previews m2t files a bit better then Vegas 6, but still only about 3fps preview full, and maybe 5 fps preview half. I have to go to a postage stamp format to get a frame rate that I can use for editing, but then I can hardly see anything. With cineform intermediate it gets better, but I never got a full framerate ever, even on small preview windows. So I don’t really get this HDV hype with Vegas, find it actually unworkable. Is it only for dual CPU’s of 4000+?

[Randall Raymond]

Just a thought – but do you have hardware acceleration set to full on your video card?

Is there any other program running in the background that is trying to grab hold of the video file?

Are you running an automatic defragmenter on the drive where your video files are being pulled from?

[Arthur Bueno]

hardware acceleration is max for both monitors. No other programs at all, even turned off virus detection and firewall, and defragmentation only manual now and then.

[Adam Rose esq.]

someone else on another forum i frequent detailed same problems with 7c. First time user of Vegas, and while he likes it a lot, finding the stuttering frame rate a bigtime hassle. Uses PPro (and some other NLE) without such problems, accessing same material – ie not likely to be hardware related

also has 97% cpu use during preview. I’m thinking mebbe something wrong with v7x………?

[Randall Raymond]

Perhaps it’s time for Sony to develop it’s own intermediate editing codec – or use some one else’s. I just built a dual core system on the fastest motherboard out there and it’s still a pain to preview footage. I hope they are reading these threads.

[Craig Cooper]

There is a great utility called ENDITALL that I always run before doing editing. This kiils all backgroud apps like antivirus, printer agents and so on. Just a warning, if you ENDITALL by killing all background apps and enter the Internet you might just get a virus.

Your performance issue might also be your render-temp files which should be on a diffrent drive and not on the same drive as your Windows default pagefile which usually is your C drive.

Tell me something, have you got your “Hyper Threading” on or off?

Craig

[Arthur Bueno]

Enditall sounds useful (a little suicidal as well, I’m not THAT desperate). But will give it a try.
I’ve got my Prerendered Files Folder (if that’s what you mean with render-temp files) on another drive.
My system has an AMD Athlon 64/3400 CPU, if I’m not mistaken these chips don’t support hyperthreading?

[Rob Mack]

I find your expereience here a bit odd. I have an Athlon 64 X2 4400. Admittedly faster than what you’re using, but I don’t think this is the issue. I’m using Vegas 7.0D

Playback on a secondary monito averages about 16% CPU with 25fps playback speed.

This is just a generated noise pattern that I then rendered to DV25 PAL. I have both the preview and the secondary screens playing back simultaneously.

Outputting over firewire would require conversion to DV on the fly for anything that is not already DV. If you are seeing the message Preview on External Monitor (Frame Recompressed) then it’s a sure sign that what you are previewing is not just straight DV25. So if you think it really is straight DV25, there is a good chance that there is some need for processing that you’ve missed. That would trigger all the cpu usage.

Such high CPU usage indicates that there is rendering going on. The fact that it drops lower for output over firewire seems to show that the rendering is specifically for output on your secondary display.

The HDV and VOB stuff is another matter though, which I wouldn’t even want to guess at. I’m assuming that these aren’t in the same project.

Rob Mack

[Arthur Bueno]

Isn’t a dual core 4400 about 3 times faster than a single 3400?

I just tested the situation you describe: rendered a noise texture to the PAL DV preset in a brandnew PAL DV project without any fx. Indeed this should guarantee that no rendering is taking place.
Like in your test, Preview device is secondary monitor (not OHCI Firewire, but a 1920 x 1200 Dell, “scale output to fit display” is off), I have preview playing simultaneously.
This gives me about 19 fps with CPU usage averaging something like 98 %. Believe me, I find it odd too.