Preview Changing from Best to Half...
 

I'm playing back some raw AVCHD footage I downloaded to test Vegas 10 (64bit). I set my preview settings to Best (Full) and as soon as I hit play it switches to Preview (Half)? I tested the same file in Vegas 8 (32bit) and it stays in Best (Full)....is there a setting somewhere in 10....can't find it for the life of me.

It does play back much smoother in 10 which is very nice.

Yes, Vegas seems to have a mind of its own in this regard and switch from full/best to something else whenever it feels like it.

Yes, a new feature that is enabled by default in V10 automatically adjusts preview resolution.

However, you can quickly disable it by right-clicking on the preview and de-selecting "Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback".

I'm with you - I'd rather make the preview quality decision my self, because sometimes I need every frame, and sometimes I need full rez.

Thanks, Seth, is good to know.

Thanks for that, not sure how I missed it.

I have to say that the feature is absolutely awful. It is a good idea in theory, I suppose, but that is about it, doesn't work for me at all.

If the Vegas team were somehow able to devote time/money to improving or changing the playback engine rather than find creative ways AROUND fixing it, we would all be better off.

I agree with you 150%

Picky, picky, picky :-)

I agree with everything you said there. (As a mathematician, I only agree 100%, though. 8->)

I should temper my previous comment with the following comment.

The Vegas team is surely a bright bunch of creative professionals. They cannot be unaware of user complaints about playback.

On the other hand, I have no insider knowledge as to what the limitations they work under are. Budget limitations beyond their control, licensing restrictions, etc.

I have been guilty of making multiple negative remarks about Vegas and DVDA in the past without really knowing the inside story. Designing a program to work with Windows on thousands of different potential hardware configurations could only be a nightmare. It's a miracle it runs on any machine, let alone virtually most of them.


This evening I am trying to imagine the position they are in as people: receiving almost nothing but negative feedback about the product from irate customers. 90% of the issues reported are likely the user's own fault, but yet they have to sort through complaints and feedback to know which is which. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

On the other hand, I receive almost nothing but praise from my customers for a job well done, since I'm in a ridiculously simple business to run: wedding videography.

So at this juncture I feel compelled to say "Thanks, Team Vegas. It is with your product I make my living providing a service that paid for the very computer I write this message".

Well said, Jeff. Imagine working in customer service during a new edition launch? It must be hard to get out of bed in the morning.

I think it's fairly useful. For most people, they're concerned with fluid playback (including myself), and it definitely helps there. Of course, there's times when watching it full-rez is needed, so it can be disabled.

It's not nearly so easy as simply improving the playback though, it's every single plug-in involved also. No matter how fast you composite, the plug-ins will still take the most serious time. Vegas plugins have two stages to help speed things up, one is to provide a quality parameter that plugins can use to simplify their algorithms, the other is dropping the resolution. And it makes a huge difference to the time it takes, there's a LOT of data to process. Cutting the rez by 1/2 on each scale means 1/4 of the pixels to process.

With the new OFX plugin, they may have lost the quality option, although I suspect not many plugins used it very effectively.

I'd love to see it all using SSE2+/OpenCL/CUDA, and I'm sure it will one day.