Dropouts
 

I was using friend’s computer with the latest Vegas Pro, when viewing certain video files (NTSC SD, XDCAM) the preview window showed a lot of dropouts in them. I could go back and forth in the file, come back to these frames and the dropouts were there. Yet when viewing the same files in other NLE the exact frames were just fine. In all cases I was using the same source, USB external drive. Any thoughts why?

Rob

PS. The other NLEs were Premier Pro and Edius.

Assuming you mean that you're not getting full framerates on playback, Vegas depends on raw processor power for preview performance. An older machine is going to have difficulty with full framerate playback of heavily compressed codecs, such as XDCAM.

However, DV25-SD in an AVI wrapper should be pretty good, even going back to a medium speed Pentium 4.

The most frequent cause of dropped frames on preview is the project properties not matching the media properties. If this is the case, using one of the DV presets in project properties should clear it up.

XDCAM is a full 1920x1080, isn't it? I'm not that familiar with it, but here again, matching project properties to media is a first step.

Seth

XDCAM is just a tapeless recording system. It uses Sony’s professional blue-ray disks to store SD or HD video in: DVCAM, IMX and MPEG HD formats.

No, when I say dropouts I don’t mean framerate. I mean dropouts like attached at the bottom.
I see the dropouts when paused, so the CPU horsepower has nothing to do with it.

Honestly, I don’t see any logical explanation, though I was hoping for one.
Thanks for responding.

Rob

If you are talking about XDCAM (DVCAM-mode) with Vegas Pro 8.0c, there is a significant bug that can cause what you describe. It also causes your audio to go away if you have a clip longer than 17 minutes 40 seconds.

SCS has two dlls that can fix the problem. Otherwise, you need to go back to Vegas Pro 8.0b for XDCAM (DVCAM-mode) to work right.

So there is a problem...
Thank you, I will pass the info to my friend.

Rob

The specific dlls that need to be replaced by new ones from SCS are the following two:

mxfplug.dll

smdkwrap.dll

With the fixed version of these two dlls replacing the original ones in Vegas Pro 8.0c, both XDCAM SD (DVCAM-mode) and XDCAM HD work fine, I've been using the replacement dlls for months with both formats.

Eugene

Now that you mentioned the sound, I just remembered that there were issues with sound as well.
I was not sure it was related, now I know.

Thank you again.
Rob