Cineform SLOW playback in Vegas and Premiere

[Barry Green]

Okay, so -- using Cineform NeoScene to strip out the pulldown from GH1 footage, I end up with 1080/24p Cineform .AVIs.

I keep reading about how Cineform is so fast, but -- I get, on average, 2.2 frames per second playback on the timeline (from both Vegas 8.0c and Premiere CS4 version 4.2).

Yet if I use Windows Media Player, from the desktop, to play the files, they play back at full speed realtime.

I can actually play the native AVCHD file with faster playback speed than the Cineform file. I know it's not supposed to be like that, so -- what gives? Any ideas?

Vegas 8.0c, 1080/24p timeline, Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, nVidia Quadro NVS 140M graphics card, Best/Full in the preview window. 1.5 to 2.4 fps.

It does get faster if I cripple it to preview/half (about 8fps) or draft/quarter (23.976fps) but -- what's the point of that? Windows Media Player plays the files full-size, full-screen 1920x1080, full frame rate, so ... ???

Yes, I've gone through Eugenia's optimization list and applied all those optimizations. It took the draft/quarter speed from 20 fps to 23.976, but no real help for best/full or even preview/full or preview/half.

[David Newman]

Hi Barry,

Well that is all very odd. The performance you are getting in WMP is want you should be nearing in Vegas (although Vegas has overhead, using RGB rather and YUV, and not using a DirectX surface.) Vegas is a little slower than it should be (their VfW support is not particularly fast), but you are out by a large factor. Preview Full should be RT, although Best Full often isn't on Core 2 Duo. You might have the 32-bit float modes on, and that is simply slow in Vegas, only use that for rendering. File a trouble ticket with support, as they might know what setting are wrong.

[Thomas Moore]

So you should have 8 bit on while editing, and 32 bit turned on when you go to render out?

Just want to be sure cause I've been seeing the same issue but can't test right now...

[David Newman]

32-bit is four times the data, so it slower under all NLEs.

[Barry Green]

Yep, 32-bit is turned off. I'll file a support ticket. Thanks David!

[Chris Barcellos]

I have a 1 year old off the shelf Dell Duo /Quad, or whatever its called. If I try to play back the 5D native files in Vegas, I am lucky to get 1 frame per second.

With Cineform, through NeoScene, adn without any filters, I can get full speed playback at best quality in the preview window. when I start adding thinks like levels, sharpening or color corrector, it slows up, but I can still get full speed in the lower quality settings... allowing me at least a feel for what the final film will look like.

[David Newman]

Chris, Thanks for your report. Yes, that is what it is supposed to be like.

[Soeren Mueller]

Barry, I noticed you have a nVidia Quadro NVS 140M which is a mobile chip. I've got the same one in my Thinkpad and its performance unfortunately is abysmal especially when it comes to video editing. Vegas not being particularly fast with preview as David already noted only worsens things.
I only can do editing with Vegas using Cineform 1080p files if I set it to preview mode. Good/best quality is totally unusable - and as Chris wrote, using the original 5D files is even much much worse.
Guess I'll never try to use an nVidia Quadro mobile version for editing again any time soon. ;)