Why apps don't playback HD properly?
 

Hi Guys,
I think this is my first post. Thanks, great forum.
My query came to me recently when Vegas was struggling to play back some HD Clips in real time when Windows Media Player played the clip back perfectly, no dropped frames. Adobe Bridge will also play back the same material without a hiccup. Adobe Premiere Pro, same thing, struggletown. I can understand if there is a lot of processing to be done but the editing apps can't even play back a straight clip. We are told that HD is hardwork for a computer but obviously not always.
What gives?
Thanks.

What are the project preview settings ?
I set mine to "preview" and "best".

Anything else results on slightly choppy playback, and that's on a quad core pc with 4gb of ram.

Paul.

Hi Paul,
This is what I mean. How come Windows Media Player can play back .m2t files with ease?

How i see it, correct me if i'm wrong but what you see on the timeline isn't actual footage, it's an image of footage, ie, if you apply an effect to a clip, you haven't actually applied the effect to the actual clip, just to the image, so vegas has to project what that clip looks like with the effect applied, which takes time and pc power.
When you're editing and chopping clips up and swapping them about, you're no altering any footage. Then when you render the finished project another copy of the footage is created with the effects which you've applied. Now you've got an actual clip.
This is called non destructive editing, because you're no being destructive to the original footage.

When you play the rendered file in windows media player (or any other player) you ARE playing actual footage, not an image of footage.

Hope this makes sense.

Steve,
What did you do to get MP to play the m2t files?? On XP mine will not play them.

Regards,
Jerry

Hi Jerry,
I just rename the extention .mpg. The .m2t is just a form of mpeg.

I can understand playback being hardwork if there are effects to calculate but a straight .m2t file still is difficult for these NLE's. Just not sure why.

Actually, I just checked again and my .m2t files play ok in WMP without renaming. I thought I remembered that they did. I just associated the extention with the program so when I double click it will open it.

So? Anyone have an answer?

I think Paul explained it well enough...

I can't wait until we can get GPU's in on this... they're awesome for Video Editing/Encoding..

Well, Paul addressed a situation with effects employed but as I said earlier.....


"I can understand playback being hardwork if there are effects to calculate but a straight .m2t file still is difficult for these NLE's. Just not sure why."