I just had a question about previewing video in Vegas with effects turned. I'm using 1080i HD footage, and am applying several effects to the video.

Should I expect the instant preview to be choppy. I would like to have the video play full screen on an external monitor or at a relatively large size at least on my main monitor. Do most peoples systems produce choppy preview when the video has effects on it, or should this be easy to a computer to handle and play smoothly. I don't have an overly fast processor, it's a Celeron Dual Core 1.6ghz

Vegas preview function is purely software, with no hardware assist. This has benefits and disadvantages - you've just found one.

A 1.6MHz dual-core is about 3+ generations back from the latest core2 duo processors. The newer Core2 Duo architecture performs better overall for Vegas preview, 4-core or 2 4-core processors, and double the clock speed from your 1.6.

Short of a new computer, you can try the various preview settings, from Draft-Auto to Best-Full. In particular, check out Preview-Auto and Preview-Full. One of these settings is going to give you better playback rates.

For maximum preview performance, always match your project settings to your media.

Finally, if you need best resolution and best frame rate for some editing, you may need to termporarily turn off your video fx. Or, perhaps render to an intermediate with fx (eg. cineform).

Lots of info on all these subjects in the forum, search is your friend.

PS. Yes, you should expect preview to be choppy!

Yeah, it's going to be choppy. As you have likely already discovered, "Preview Auto" is a good setting for the window.

While your preview is almost entirely dependent upon your processor, hard drive performance can affect things a bit if the drive that the video is resides on is slow.

One thing you might do is click on the button above the preview window (it's a square with a split circle in the middle) and that disables FX in the preview window for the purpose of improving playback.

This can be a frustrating thing with Vegas, but with experience you can learn to work with it.

ya i know my CPU is low end, it only costed around $70 when it was put in. My question, was more if lets say I had a decent $150-$200 CPU, a good Core 2 Duo processor, would I get slightly better results, or would the video play perfectly smooth, even with lots of effects added on.

Jay, it's a matter of degree. Even with the fastest processor, and two of them, you'll come to a point where one more effect takes playback to 20fps... then the next one to 9fps... and so on.

What's in your typical efx chain?

Also it REALLY DOES MATTER the setting you have the preview window at. The lower the setting the smoother the play back (but the less the resolution).

i think i've discovered what's giving me such such choppy playback. Since I am using a 35mm adaptor, I have to flip my video using pan and crop. This seems to give it a much harder time playing it back.

Is there a way I can capture my footage so that it flips it automatically?

Jay, you might try this plug-in instead of Pan/Crop

M i r k w o o d (http://www.mirkwood.com/vegas/flip/)

The 3dle plugin in the pluginpac may also be faster than Pan/Crop

PluginPac 1.0 Homepage (http://www.debugmode.com/pluginpac/)