Vegas 7, XDCAM HD – want to improve the frame rate and PAL/NTSC monitoring?

[Gary Kleiner]

Your frame rate is dropping because the resolution is being converted on the fly. So if you monitor in the native rsolution with the hardware you mention, the CPU doesn’t have to work so hard.

Your best bet is to use the preview monitor, or get the 2nd monitor output working,and hook up to a high res computer monitor (which is a very good solution for working in HD).

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[Mark Stuart]

Thanks for the quick reply Gary.

I dont follow about working in native resolution not making the CPU work so hard. My understanding and experience is that in order to increase the frame rate you reduce the size of the preview resolution to half or quarter. If I run at Full (native), the frame rate is always lower in my case.

I have got the secondary display working now. I am only getting around 10 fps running Full HD res. Dropping the res to half – I get around 19 to 20 fps.

This project will be downconverted to SD and encoded to SD DVD so I’m not bothered about viewing HD during post, I prefer to work with a proper PAL output to CRT PAL monitor rather than a computer LCD display. However, I would make do with the secondary monitor display if I could get full 25fps frame rate.

Regards
Mark

[Gary Kleiner]

Sorry to be unclear. The point I was making is that if you go out to an external monitor via firewire, it has a lot of recompressing to do.

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[Mark Stuart]

Do AJA or Blackmagic cards have the recompressing processing on the boards so it takes the hit off of the system CPU?

Regards
Mark

[Ian Roach]

I’m editing an XDCam HD project (NTSC – 35 MBps VBR) on a dual Xeon 3.4 Ghz processor, 2 GB RAM using an AJA Xena card, previewing to an external HD monitor. I don’t know if the AJA card takes over some processing but I too experience some jerkiness at times – even previewing at the good/half setting.

Full is impossible to watch. (the auto preview setting inverts the external image – called Sony on this one and they’re looking into it).

I find with one line of video, the image and frame rate is fine – until there is lots of motion in the shot or an effect is applied. Even dissolves are not perfect most of the time. We end up doing a lot of dynamic ram previews just to be sure.

I preview video captured either from an external Lacie S2S drive (striped 4x500GB) – connected throught the PCI-e bus or an internal ide drive. There does not appear to be any difference in playback performance.

Mutliple layers of video really slows playback down.

We are in the process of getting 2GB more RAM. I think more RAM will help. I don’t know if it is psychological or not, but our external playback seems better – if we leave a small preview window open on our computer monitor.

I also think part of the problem is the variable bit rate XDCam HD is recorded at.

Not sure if this helps you – just my observations from my experience.

Ian

Ian
“Step outside, the graphics are amazing!”

[Randall Raymond]

The original footage is never changed – so all previewing is on the fly while the CPU changes the footage by instructions of the .veg file. Going out through a card is not going to help since it must first get its picture through the CPU. Going Quad-core with lots of ram and a fast board will get better play-back – more frames per second.

[Mark Stuart]

It is disappointing that a modest spec dual xeon machine with an Aja still struggles with the output.

I cannot understand why Vegas has such a following of users content with monitoring on small preview computer monitors or adaptive resolution and frame rates when so many competitor systems have hardware solutions to give full frame rate/ resolution output to an external monitor plus real time colour correction and other filters, transitions etc. Vegas was perhaps more useable with 4:3 DV but there has to be solutions to working more effectively with HD.

BTW – Ian, My XDCAM HD footage is the same – 35mb/s VBR

Regards
Mark

[Dr. Dropout]

Everybody’s free to try whatever they want as they dial in a workflow…

I would focus on what appears to be the delivery format, so create a PAL 16:9 [interlaced] project, load the 25i (or is it p? no matter here) XDCAM HD footage into that project, and preview that out 1394 using the preview resolution of “preview/full”. When doing that, what framerate do you get in a no-fx situation (cuts only)? Should be a solid 25…

[Randall Raymond]

[Dr. Dropout] “When doing that, what framerate do you get in a no-fx situation (cuts only)? Should be a solid 25…”

It WILL be a solid 25. Like a straight pipe-line to the firewire out.

Now tell the CPU to brighten every frame and add a little contrast to every frame and sharpen every frame and reduce the green just a tad and cross fade that clip with the next and the challenge to the CPU becomes apparent…

I love Vegas – I can cut extremely fast on it. I rarely render and when I do I go directly to what I will out-put – usually Mpeg2 – I test with short segments and play that out to a monitor.

You kinda get an eye for what you’re going to get after doing that a number of times.

‘Real-time’ is still a misnomer even on a $100,000. Avid system. It’s real-time until any system is challenged by the reality of a typical editing session. “Real-time for one or two layers of HD” (Yeah, if you don’t change ’em too much!) What’s real about that???

[Randall Raymond]

[msvideo] “I cannot understand why Vegas has such a following of users content with monitoring on small preview computer monitors or adaptive resolution and frame rates when so many competitor systems have hardware solutions to give full frame rate/ resolution output”

I think you will find that those ‘hardware’ solutions are based on intermediate codecs. Vegas does not use an intermediate codec but directly with the original native footage. Nothing is lost.