Problems with slow playback
 

I am new to this forum but not to video editing.

Our normal video editor is Vegas 8.0

Here is my problem

I have heard that Edius is a very good editor and wanted to try it for myself.

I put it on my machine (Pentium 4 dual processor, 2 gigs of memory, SATA drives, 3 gig processor speed, running Windows XP SP2 with all the latest updates my C:\ drive is an IDE ATA 133)

Vegas runs fine on this machine.

When I attempt to playback a file in Edius it is played back at 1/2 the speed. I have tried both Edius Neo and Edius Pro demos and both do the same thing.

I am somewhat confused as to why this is happening. I put it on my office computer to see how it would perform there and it works GREAT.

I am by profession a mastering engineer so my computer is optimized for audio and video and I have done all the normal tweaks.

As a green Newbie to Edius can you give me some suggestions as to what I should check. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

It would seem you're not the only one reporting this problem. A poster on the Edius forum is complaining of the same problem. As of right now, there is no reply from support.

I posted my problem over there as well when I noticed that someone else was having the same problem. This is really strange to say the least.

What kind of video file are you editing. HD or SD? For HD work i had to upgrade from a P4 3.2 gig Hyperthreading CPU to a core 2 duo. The former had real time problems with HD footage. The latter solved the problem.

Try to check your GPU cards. Its recommended to use Invidia or ATI radeon cards for optimum performance.

we currently have 5 edit suites in our facility running edius. All running different hardware configurations. 4 for SD work 1 for HD.

Are your drives at least 7200 rpms? I recommend using barracudas from seagate. Drive buffers and speed also play a role in the pipeline.

Ted

I am using an NVIDIA 8800GT video card. I just upgraded my main drive to SATA and it is a lot faster. I have not tried doing any editing with EDIUS since the change in Hard Drives. I am using all Seagate SATA drives.

Simple playback of HDV footage is continuous even on al oldish Sony Vaio laptop of mine, 2.4 GHz P4 with only 512 megs of RAM, also on a P4 office Dell machine at 3 GHz hyper threaded processor with 1 GB of RAM, so your specs are probably not the cause. It might have to do with some configuration you did for Vegas, maybe?

Thomas, I am no Edius guru, but I had very similar problem with Final Cut Pro. It was playing my HDV footage twice as fast.

Problem was in the combination of FCP and my JVC HD100 camcorder. At that time, they really didn`t work together.

So, what is your footage? Did you try to play and capture any other footage, maybe from another cam?

First there have been some problems reported with the 8800 graphics card. Some are running OK and some have problems. My first bet would be to try a different card.

Also you might try to unhook any USB peripherals and see if that does anything.

I think this all has to do with our pro sound cards. We are using RME and a Lunx One audio cards.

Info here http://www.lynxstudio.com/lynxonebrochure.html and http://www.rme-audio.de/old/english/digi96/digi968.html

The only computer that it runs correctly on has a Realtek HD sound card built into the computer MOBO and that is our office computer.

As far as I can see that is the ONLY difference between the four computers that we tried this on. The office computer runs it fine (both versions Neo and the full version) The mastering room computer does not run it smoothly and has an RME card in it. The Video Computer has an RME in it and our rendering computer has the Lynx One card in it and neither one runs it smoothly. Is there something that is tying the sound card to the video?

Three of the computers use NVIDIA cards with all the drivers up to date the Video computer used an ATI card with all the drivers up to date.

I would like to get to the bottom of this ASAP so I can make a decision as to purchasing the EDIUS program.

Thanks in advance for any assistance in this matter. Let me know what additional information you need from me.

Thanks also for all the help so far.

We disabled our pro sound card and enabled our MOBO's sound card and got Edius to run properly. You would think that a pro company like Thompson/Grass Valley would allow people to use their pro sound cards along with Edius instead of relying on internal sound cards. I am having an ongoing dialog with Thompson/Grass Valley about the problems and will report back if any thing changes.

Thanks again for all the help and suggestions.

After all the problems with EDIUS I finally went out and purchased Final Cut Studio 2 and a new 24" IMAC and all I can say is WOW!

Thanks again for all the helpful advice and coaching.