How to get a real time HDV preview? Very disappointed

[Arthur Bueno]

I installed the latest nvidia driver.
On my new computer I can play a hd mpeg2 file in Windows mediaplayer fluently, (without purevideo installed), so the card and driver can keep up with the amount of pixels.

[Arthur Bueno]

Hope someone still notices this thread:
I’ve done quite a lot of experimenting for HDV playback on Vegas7 and the new quad system, with the following results:

– I CAN get full framerate of m2t playback at Preview Full quality, however, ONLY on a seperate preview window (and not the ‘secondary display’ setting). And tt works only if Dynamic RAM is set to 0, and ‘Simulate Device Aspect Ration is turned off.
When I give Vegas some dynamic RAM, the framerate gradually goes down and comes to a halt.
When I put Simulate Device Aspect Ratio to on, the framerate drops consistently to around 18 fps.
So the full framerate is good news for me, however by switching “Simulate… etc” off, the image is always distorted (characters are too tall). So my question to Spot: are these settings what you meant when you said the preview window should be correctly sized to avoid scaling? Do your workstations also have a distorted (stretched) preview then?

[Kirmmela]

Heya. I still hope somone will read this thread…

I’m using Win XP, 3Ghz processor, 3GB RAM, 128MB video card. Reformated my hard drive and installed Vegas 7 just for the maximum performance. I gotten brand new Sony HDR-SR5E camcorder so I was hoping I will have fun making movies.

But I’m having the same problem as mentioned above, my preview screen laggs like hell when I try to edit HDV movies. It’s very very sad, annoying and makes me upset. Might it be because of my graphic card? Any tips?

Thanks in advice.

[Arthur Bueno]

Yes, the thread seems a bit abandoned.
Don’t be sad and upset, it isn’t worth it 🙂
I think your cpu isn’t strong enough to work with raw hdv, it is similar to my previous system, and I got the same low framerates then. You should try the preview-auto setting with a 1/4 size screen, that’s probably the best preview of raw hdv you’ll get.
If it’s unworkable, you should use proxys (just render the clips to DV, and exchange them with the HDV content when the edit is ready), of render the material to the cineform intermediate format (never gave me full rate playback either).
Updating to a modern quad system will give you full framerate at half size. There are people that claim to have full quality /full size preview on such systems, but it’s a mystery how they get it, since they don’t answer when I ask them. In some recent postings on the sony forum (about the preview performance of V8) confirmed for me that many people don’t have full quality preview of hdv, even with a quad Q6700 processor.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

1-No way will you see real-time performance of AVCHD on virtually any computer. SR5 is AVCHD, not HDV.

2-Running Vegas in Preview/Auto mode should provide realtime internal and external preview of HDV to SD monitor or HD LCD/plasma monitor

3-Kill all background apps, particularly antivirus, and you should see an immediate increase in playback performance.

4-HDD’s set to DMA and not PIO.

5-Be sure HDD’s aren’t completely/nearly completely filled.

[Kirmmela]

Thanks a ton for answers guys. Done few things that acutally bit helped. Guess I gonna buy a new PC soonish… *sigh*

[Arthur Bueno]

Ok, I tested it again: indeed playback is a bit faster in a preview window at preview auto (around 21 fps), then with Windows secondary display as Preview device (around 19 fps). Never is it full framerate.
But quite clearly the image in the preview auto setting is less sharp then at Preview Full, it’s actually quite a difference.
So the conclusion stands that playback of HDV at it’s full size and qualtity from the timeline isn’t possible in Vegas 7, even on a fast quad system.