[Nigel O’neill]

Have you played back the burnt disc in a blu-ray player that is not on your pc?

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

Faster processor AND faster drives is what you need.

A faster CPU helps in previewing and rendering. The second generation Intel i7-2600K processor offers good bang for buck and nearly outperforms the original i7 work horse/benchmark, the i7-980.

Multiple 7200 rpm in a RAID configuration means multiple spindles, and generally better read/write performance over a single drive, and if you have spare change, a SSD drive for your OS. I would also be looking at getting SATA 3 drives, but make sure your motherboard supports them.

The 10K and 15K RPM drives tend to literally run hot and also burn a hole in your pocket :-), but tend to be based on older, SATA 2 or SCSI technology.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

Ronnie

You could also take a look at Vasst Infinitcam or Ultimate S Pro. I don’t particularly like the way Vegas edits multicam, and found that the Ultimate S plugin suited my style of workflow.

If you only need 2 tracks, DuoCam is free on the Vasst website

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

I typically get the ‘Sony Vegas has stopped responding’ message when scrubbing on the timeline.

It may have died on me once when using Protitler.

I frequently save. Ctrl-S is a very useful keystroke combination :-).

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

Mike

I regularly edit with HDV, and I have found that in a single track edit with minimal fx, Vegas edits it like a hot knife through butter. But, alas, that is not reflective of the real world. Most of my work involves multicam footage which requires colour correction and matching, and like you, I have found that things don’t go as smoothly.

I recently did a project which required me to add AVCHD onto the timeline along with my HDV footage. Preview performance dropped dramatically and I ended up editing mostly in Preview, Auto, when I would normally do so in Good, Auto. I can only attribute this to the sheer number crunching nature of AVCHD. It needs lots of PC horsepower.

I cannot say I have experienced the 2.5 second lags you have, but I do experience some stuttering. Your lags could be attributed to the highly compressed nature of the MOV footage you are using.

Perhaps you could try using Gearshift to speed things up.

Re: CUDA cores – The CUDA cores only kick in if you have Sony AVC on the timeline 🙁

I notice that you are using Vista x64. The best thing I did was to ditch Vista for Windows 7. I did an in place upgrade from Vista Ultimate x64 and Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Not only were things zippier, the machine has not blue screened on me once.

Your render times are determined by a number of factors: transitions, effects, colour correction and the compressed nature of the media you are editing with, plus the target format you are encoding to. Even simple colour correction requires the whole event it affects to be rendered out, so your render times are not unusual.

You did not mention how your storage was mapped out. Are you using RAID, and if so, how is your system set up? For example, RAID 0 offers most speed but high risk as there is not redundancy. RAID 1 offers redundancy, has great read performance but no so for writes. RAID 5 offers redundancy and speed across multiple disk spindles, but is costlier as it typically requires 5 drives, of which you only have the effective storage of around 3.

Re: Choppy playback – you could try pre-rendering some events on the timeline to a lossless intermediary. I recently had to edit about 14,000 time lapse images for a 30 second segment. Each image was less than 40kb and was 00:00.00.01 in duration. Vegas absolutely was choking on this, so I did a region render in a separate project to m2t and then brought that into the timeline of a new project. Problem solved.

Hopefully you have got some useful tips out of my post.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

If shooting under poor light indoors, most cameras will ‘gain up’ the image to electronically amplify the available light, which adds digital noise, unless you manually control the shutter speed, iris and gain settings. Sounds like this is your problem i.e. you are running on auto settings. Most consumer video cameras don’t handle low light conditions very well as the chip on the camera is too small to resolve the image properly.

You did not mention what cameras you were using, so I am taking a guess that low-light is your problem. I use prosumer cameras (Sony FX1 and Z1P) which handle low light conditions surprisingly well.

A plugin called NeatVideo can clean up noisy footage, but can make the output look smooth but soft.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

I tend to use Asus or Gigabyte motherboards. MSI’s can be a bit flaky.

Your power supply could be a bit underpowered if you plan to run more drives in future. I would look to a good quality 850W PSU that delivers clean power.

Video card is a bit on the low side. If you plan on using Sony AVC, a GT480 or GT570 should do the trick.

My drive configuration is 5 drives:
C: 1 TB drive: Operating System & Programs
D: Projects: 2 x 1 TB (RAID 1) – mirror < provides redundancy
E: Output: 2 x 1 TB (RAID 0) – stripe < no redundancy, but excellent write speeds

I also have eSATA which connects to a slot-in caddy.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

You can do as Steve suggested, and the transition will take on the duration of the overlap. If you simply butt two events up against each other, the default transition length set in preferences will apply.

In either case, you should not lose sync. I think Dale needs to explain his workflow.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

Dan

Simply try playing the device when in the capture screen. If a preview appears, you should be able to start capturing, but that means Vegas cannot control the device, and as such, you will need to manually stop it and stop the recording in Vegas as well.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Nigel O’neill]

Dale

I have used InfinitiCam as well as UltimateS for several years with Vegas Pro 9 and 10 and cannot say that I have experienced this particular issue, either with cuts or fades. I typically edit 1 multicam/multi-track project a week and have never come across this (not to say that the problem does not exist).

I don’t use the syncing tools/markers that come with either and therefore manually sync all tracks (typically 4 video and 1 audio) and am extremely careful with ripple editing being switched off once I have done my 1st alignment and clean up of unwanted footage. After that it is just cuts, fades, colour correction, effects, transitions and titles.

John Rofrano is a developer with Vasst who regularly contributes to this forum. Perhaps you need to get his attention on this forum.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6