[Gene Lee]

Thank you very much, Vince. You’ve been very helpful (and looking at all the posts you make in other threads, you’ve been helpful to a lot of people)!

So do you recommend Nvidia cards? Which card do you use personally, if I may ask?

[Gene Lee]

Thanks, Brian. I will do that. NeoScene seems to be pretty inexpensive.. is that the intermediate codec that you would recommend the most? Also, should I export the final product using that codec, or just use it as an “intermediary”?

Also, may I ask what kind of video card you use personally? In research about my video card problem, it seems like a LOT of people have had issues with the new ATI cards…

[Gene Lee]

Ok, I tried installing and playing the demo of FIFA 10. I think something is wrong. The game plays fine, but no textures or shadows are rendered in the game!! And when I exited, my Windows 7 desktop background theme was gone and the desktop was all black! I tried to change it to something else, and it stayed black….

What is going on!?

[Gene Lee]

Okay, I tried a test with DV footage, and there wasn’t much lag at all (especially compared to when I was doing it with 720p footage).

So what does that mean?

(BTW, I’m about to try installing that game demo)

[Gene Lee]

Good idea! I have some on another computer… I will see if I get that preview lag with those files also.

The only effect I used was I used the Linear Swipe effect to do a triple split screen (I used it instead of crop because I can feather the edges). So three video layers and NO audio layers… 1280 x 720 pixels, *.mov files, 30fps.

I’ll try a similar test with the DV files and see what happens.

[Gene Lee]

Thanks for offering help on this. I appreciate it a lot.

No, I am not previewing on a second monitor. And I did uninstall the display drivers cleanly and reinstalled (many times actually). I even went as far as letting Windows (I use Windows 7) load their generic drivers and didn’t install any ATI drivers. I opened up Premiere (in 800×600 mode) and I STILL had the same very laggy video preview playback!

I also did this: I reinstalled the ATI drivers and opened up the Catalyst Control Center to monitor “activity” under the ATI Overdrive section. I noticed that the activity mostly stayed at 0%.. it sometimes went up to 1, 2, and 3%, but that was it! Even when I opened up a movie file I had on my computer, the activity would reach more than that (at 5%).

Right now I’m about to do another test… run a 3D game. I’m downloading a playable demo version of a game right now. I’m not a gamer at all, but I want to see if the graphics card (which is pretty much designed for games) has any problems playing the game.

Does it sound like a hardware issue to you now?

[Gene Lee]

Vince,

I tried to install the old drivers, but the most previous driver I could successfully install was the Catalyst 9.12 version (dated 12/17/09). I think this is because I have a 5700 series graphics card and not a 4800 series.

Am I going to have to wait for new drivers? Or could it possibly be a hardware issue? I did some more research and some guy seemed to fix a similar issue by overriding the voltage controls and keeping them higher…

ATI is really getting on my nerve now… argh!

[Gene Lee]

Thank you very much, Vince. I’m at my day job right now (video editing is a new hobby of mine) but I will look through those posts. I have a big feeling that the drivers ARE the issue. I already had an issue that I resolved by turning off OpenGL (AE kept crashing whenever I did anything in 3D mode).

Thanks!!

[Gene Lee]

Thanks for the quick response! I am using a Canon 500D (I know, I know, video should be done by camcorders and not DSLRs, but I’m just starting and I don’t have the budget for a good HD video camera) but it records 720p30 as *.mov files. Since I’m a noob, I’m not sure if that is considered AVCHD, but I do EXPORT to H.264… but that’s after I edit, so I guess it doesn’t matter…