Enable Multicore preview playback?!?! - who knew?
 

(I posted this in another forum not on this site, and I wanted to see if anyone else knew about this or had experience with it here)

I would like to know how many of you out there knew about this and didn't tell me.

ok, while reading another thread I came upon the statement that you can enable multicore preview playback.

While I do not condone doing this I found some interesting results while doing it.

To enable multicore support you have to access the internal preferences tab, which cannot be done unless you hold down shift when clicking on preferences, then clicking on the "internal" tab, and doing a search for playback will allow you to find it "enable multi-core rendering for playback"

I tried playing back some chromakey footage with it off (default) and on my q6600 I got about 10-11 fps in best full with some SD footage I had laying around, and I had a chromablur on there too.

I also tried making a 7 video plane composite all in 3D space, and then moving that all in a parent 3D track (also in SD) at between 10 and 15 fps.

Then I enabled multicore....

for the first chromakeying, I even resized and set to best full with chroma blur and keying on, and got full 23.976

same for the second, even though I had all that 3D motion, I still had 23.976.

For 3D motion, in 1080HD 24P, I actually get a drop in performance with this enabled ( all gen media ) making it between 3-4 FPS, but with it disabled I get between 4-6FPS after changing the parent 3D motion to make sure it's not using any pre-rendered RAM buffered footage.

For keying and motion blur on some HDV footage I have had laying around, and the multi-core rendering for playback enabled, I got .8-.9 fps. and with it disabled (default), I got 1.1-1.2 fps.

All these tests were done with Best Full scaling on, and simulate and scaling video to fit preview window on from the right click menu on the preview window.

All projects were matched to footage to enable the best performance.

Would be curious to see what others may get, but remember that you do this at your own risk, and while I'm not sure that anything bad may happen, I do not condone mucking about in the internal prefs of Vegas... they're hidden for a reason.

Dave

Yes, Lots to play with in there. But I strongly advise that you back up your system before playing too deeply with any of the internal settings.

David, I have searched and searched for the setting, but keep missing it. Can you give an idea of at what point on the list it is located? Thanks in advance.

I'm in V8, I've been told it's also in 7, but I went back to check, and it's not in 6 to be sure.

there's a search box at the bottom of the "internal tab" and if you type in "playb" it'll be like the 4th or 5th one down and you change it from FALSE to TRUE to change it.

But like was said.

You make these changes **at your own risk**

and it's not suggested you go making changes in there willy nilly

to start vegas out at default BTW - you should hold down CTRL+SHIFT when double clicking on Vegas until the restart at default message box appears.

Dave

Thanks, it seems to be working fine. I'll be working on Monday so I'll get to see it perform then.

Anyone care to speculate why it is a hidden setting and, more importantly, what problems it could introduce, if any?

I can't imagine it'd be to serious, it's not like we're delving into the bios or anything like that, Edward will probably know more about it, hopefully he'll post something soon.

Paul.

It would seem to me that it could not break anything to change a preview setting. If preview were to malfunction at the worst I would think you could close Vegas, open a new instance of vegas with nothing on the timeline and change the setting back.

Generally speaking, the "hidden" settings are hidden for a reason. Perhaps they were added as an idea that didn't get fully implemented or tested so were reset back to their default value and left alone to be resolved in the future. Or perhaps they're still a work in progress.

However, sometimes the hidden preferences DO get moved to the visible preferences. One such preference was the option to dock the timeline at the top OR bottom. It used to be a hidden option - now it's freely available to use. Before becoming visible, there WERE some issues with changing it - mainly in regards to the docking area. These were resolved once it was made visible.

So there ARE some interesting thing there. Just be extremely careful when playing with them, though.

I think this is a wonderful can of worms that David has opened. I'm playing it safe and am sticking to the one setting, but will anxiously await to see what trouble others can stir up playing with them. Great thread David.

It is obvious as has been pointed out by everyone, that one should be careful, that is why I'm not going in there. I have enough issues even when things are going well, I don't need to create new unnecessary ones!

What's the worst thing that could happen ?
All my footage is on external drives so i don't think that loosing footage is a problem, what else could go wrong ? Is it stress on any pc part, ie proccesor or graphics card ?
Or could it be a complete pc crash ?
Could going back to the original settings cure things if something did go pop ?

Paul.

And for those of us at the bottom end, it is there in Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum as well.
I type in 'multi-core' in the search box at the bottom and two options get displayed.

'Disable multi-core rendering'
'Enable multi-core rendering for playback'

I suspect that it's hidden because enabling it on a computer with a single core processor might cause Vegas to fail to initialize. It seems that people with true multi-core processors can enable this setting with no apparent ill effects.

As stated on another forum, I have had this switch turned on since version 7a with no ill effects at all. There is nothing to be concerned about.

There are lots of good settings and switches in there to play with and customize.... just back up before you play though, because you're bound to play with the wrong one sooner or later.

Most of the problems that I've ever found in Vegas, were fixable by reducing the number of cores to 1. So this is likely not enabled because of the fact that it would add instability to Vegas Pro of a sort that would be unacceptable.