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Sony Vegas very slow with MPG files.
Sony Vegas very slow with MPG files.
I have downloaded the trial version of Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8.0d TRIAL to see if it’s worth switching from Adobe Premiere to better support my recently purchased Sony HDR CX7 Video Camera (That is the one that records directly to Memory Stick).
I have run into a problem where Vegas is very slow with MPG files. Using the HD M2TS files seems to work perfectly, but I have a large number of MPG files which I need to edit.
My hardware is a DELL Inspiron 640M Intel Duo with 2GB RAM, fast hard disk (5GB free space) running MS VISTA.
I can create a test project using 71 HD video files which loads very quickly and there is no problem editing this project.
If I create a second project using 50 MPG files then it takes 3:27 to open the project as I can see Vegas is reading all the MPG files into memory. I don’t mind waiting on opening the project. But the problem is now and again Vegas will again go and read all the MPG files back into memory causing the program to hang for 3 minutes. This makes editing all but impossible.
This will occur even if I am not using any of the MPG files in the time line. Vegas seems to be pre-loading the MPG files into memory, I assume to try to speed up the editing. I have tried setting the “Dynamic RAM Preview” option from 0 to 256 M and that seems to have no effect on this problem.
I can force the reading by switching away from Vegas to another application and I can see that its Commited memory falls from around 1090MB to 600 MB when I do this. Then just clicking back on Vegas causes all the MPG files to be re-read and I can see the Commited memory rising back up to 10090MB as all of the data is reloaded. This does not happen with the HD M2TS files as even with 71 files the Commited memory stays below 500 MB.
The real problem is that this re-loading of MPG files is linked to the virtual memory system, which means so long as I keep actively editing then everything should be OK, but if I stop editing for a short time, windows will dump the data and when I start editing again I will have to wait 3 minutes for it all to reloaded.
I have only been using Vegas for a week, so it’s all new to me and I could be doing something stupid!
Is this a common problem with Vegas or is there some how I can disable this feature? Or is there something wrong with my MPG files as I have found that Adobe Premier and Window Medial Player both will not play them correctly?
Any ideas will be of great help.
PS: I am using the Windows Resource Monitor to see that files are being read and the amount of memory being used by Vegas.
From my programming days it looks like Vegas is using Memory Mapped Files to load the MPG files into memory. Using MMF will mean that MS VISTA will dump all those contents from memory when you switch away or it wants to reclaim the physical memory. Then when I switch back to Vegas and Vegas touches the MPG data, VISTA will be forced to reload all the MPG files from disk causing this hang. If this is the case its still Vegas problem, but VISTA is just making it worse.
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3 Replies
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OK, I just found the “Close media files when not the active application” Option. Unchecking that option and after a few minutes of playing around seems to have resolved the problem. I will be sure its fixed the problem if does not occur after a few hours of editing.
Thanks for reading,
Cheers,
Martin
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Vegas is designed to “play nice” with other applications. As you’ve seen, when Vegas loses focus, it will release all files so other applications can use them. This is very useful in some situations.
For example, suppose you have a photo on the timeline and you decide it needs to be modified in your photo editor. You can simply go to the photo editing program, Vegas loses focus so it will release the image, and then edit it as needed. When you go back into Vegas, it then reattaches to all files it needs including the newly modified file which will be automatically updated to the new version.
Changing the option you changed, this can no longer happen as Vegas will no longer release the files it’s using when it loses focus. However, the gain is that it doesn’t have to reattach all files once you return to Vegas.
Edward Troxel
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Thanks Edward for the detailed explanation, it all makes sense now why Vegas would release the files. That had me going around in circles for a while. When Vegas was going slow, I would switch to another application while I waited for it to respond, then switch back to Vegas which would then do it again. Also got confused as it does not seem do the same with the HD files (I guess it assumes they are going to be much larger).
I have been impressed with Vegas after using it for only 2 weeks. I just need to learn all the tricks and differences it has with the other editors I have used. I will read through all your Newsletters to get up to speed.
Thanks for you help again.
Cheers,
Martin
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