Jagged playback while editing

VEGAS Pro

Jagged playback while editing

Posted by Audra Yentz on April 16, 2009 at 4:08 am

Hi,
I just signed up in this forum after reading several postings and am impressed at the advice that is given. I hope someone can help me as I really enjoy video editing as a hobby as long as everything is “working correctly”.

I have Vegas Platinum Version 9 and a new Dell laptop Studio XPS 16 with 500GB 7200 RPM hard drive
4 GB RAM
Intel Core 2 Duo processor P8700 2.53 GHZ
ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3670-512MB Graphic card
64 Bit VISTA

I researched this laptop and it is supposed to be good for video editing. Maybe my expectations are too high but my current desktop has only 250GB hard drive, 2 GB RAM single processor Windows XP so I expected the laptop to be “lightening fast” in comparison. I am hoping I just need to “tweek” some of my Vegas settings to improve my playback because it does not play back smooth on my older desktop or my new laptop. This sounds like a fairly common problem. I do want to note that the DVDs I have made on the desktop seem to play smoothly on my DVD player but it would be nice to have smoother editing.

I have read a few postings regarding adjusting the Dynamic RAM and or preview quality in the properties section but don’t yet understand it. I checked my setting is defaulted to 128mb but has a max of 1028? (If that makes sense?) Is the dynamic RAM the frame rate or is that something different? And as far as the Preview quality, what does this actually relate to? I read something on a recent post dated March 18 2009 by John Rofrano referring to a RAM preview by pressing Shift+B for a certain portion of the timeline but that doesn’t make sense to me.

Also note, my files are either JPEG photos or MPEG 2 video files from my NON HIGH DEFINITION hard drive camcorder SONY.

With My Regards!
Audra

Audra Yentz replied 17 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
2 Replies

John Rofrano
April 18, 2009 at 10:44 pm

> Maybe my expectations are too high but my current desktop has only 250GB hard drive, 2 GB RAM single processor Windows XP so I expected the laptop to be “lightening fast” in comparison.

You didn’t say what the format of your source video is. If it’s HD it takes a lot more processing power than DV. If it’s AVCHD it takes even more than that. You really need a quad-core to work with AVCHD at good frame rates and even then it may get choppy.

> I read something on a recent post dated March 18 2009 by John Rofrano referring to a RAM preview by pressing Shift+B for a certain portion of the timeline but that doesn’t make sense to me.

RAM preview is when Vegas renders to memory instead of a file. You use this to quickly see how a small selection of the timeline looks at full frame rate when normally you cannot play back at full frames.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Audra Yentz
April 19, 2009 at 2:20 am

Thanks for your response. My hard drive camcorder is standard definition and is a MPEG2 format.

How do I select the selection I want to view on my timeline and use the RAM preview feature? ie. say I have 4 photos in a row that I want them individually to open and close one after another at a distict time in my song. Do I “highlight something” and adjust the Dynamic RAM for that section in order to view it? And would you keep my general project setting at the 128 Dynamic RAM that it defaulted to and adjust it manually when I need to fine tune a certain section?

I maybe don’t understand what prerendering is. I have only rendered at the end of all of my projects.

Thanks for your time!
Audra

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