yes when im looking at the cpu monitor they barely crack 80% yet my video and sound are choppy. My video card is a very good one so it cant be that.

Lack of proper code optimization or GPU acceleration. Which doesn't mean the CPU is not important - but I'd say that anything above certain (pretty basic) specs will perform the same, fps-wise.

A fast CPU is if course the fundamental thing when it comes to rendering, followed by available RAM and HDD speed.

I think it's a lot of variables, predominantly related to guys that go pick up a computer off a store shelf and simply think they can start editing without thought as to optimization, background processes, proper file and RAM management, etc.
For example, I can't in my wildest dreams, imagine even installing, let alone running anti-virus on an editing machine. Talk about dragging hard drives through dusty roads behind a pickup truck!
Then there are background processes. How are they managed? What about USB2 vs 1394? What apps are running in the background? How full/fragged is the system drive? Any media playing from the system drive? DMA vs PIO modes? Swap file set up?

Many, many variables. I have zero performance problems in Vegas, and appreciate not having to convert files to any intermediary format. Then again, my laptop is set up primarily for video editing, and very little else.
BTW, my MacBook Pro screams with 720p60 files under Bootcamp/Vegas

My system is custom built, I defrag my drives daily.
I'm anal about not running background processes...there are none. Even on my laptop I run an external drive for video files. Pagefile on my laptop is on the C drive, but, on my desktop I have a dedicated SATA drive for pagefiles. 2gigs of RAM on the laptop, 3gigs on the workstation. HD speed tests with HDTACH all show very high thruput, well over the reqmt for HDV. The video drive on my workstation is a RAID0 with a read speed of about 100MB/sec. The laptop video drive tests at 50MB/sec.

I'll leave it at this. I'll post a screenshot to demonstrate it, as I'm currently working on my laptop.

Really? I can do that just fine on 6 and 7 (with the medium-quality and other caveats), but that feature was removed from Vegas Pro 8. It gives you the standard Cineform not-licensed error.

I always use HDLink, never go thru Vegas to transcode to CFHD. It is possible it was removed in V8 and I never noticed...sorry if I was incorrect about this.

Douglas, from the screen grab attached I can see you're using the Preview/Auto setting. While OK for a tiny preview window, it's no good for the full screen preview on a separate monitor. With this setting, I guess you are right, but we were talking Best/Full here.

At Best/Full, the full fps is only possible in 8it mode and without any effect added - even on high end machine. I hope you can agree.

A-Best/full resamples everything. An understanding of how Vegas works is a requirement.
B-I get full screen preview at Preview/Auto as well, with nothing added. But, I also have an SDI monitor that I use, so it's not a big issue for me one way or another. But, on a laptop, full screen preview is full framerate, in Auto/preview. My laptop isn't 1920 x 1080, however.

Douglas, thanks for this kind advice :)

If it didn't resample, there would be no issue of slow timeline playback (just as there is no problem when it plays back from Explorer, or Project Media folders).

It's the performance of this resampling/playback process that shows lack of optimization, as even with a Quad CPU, it rarely can play full fps and yet - even when it heavily drops frames (like in 32bit mode, or with stuff added) - the CPU usage is just around 30%. For most of the time Preview/Auto is enough, but sometimes I need to preview in Full res - and Vegas should be able to do it, using as much CPU resources as required. If it did work at 100%, I'd be more understanding to a few frames dropped here and there or a glitch in audio - on a new transition I just threw in, or similar stuff...

Of course, I can use the RAM render/preview, but it's a joke.

So, it's the fps of the Best/Full preview that I (and I guess others, as well) were talking about.

If you wish, please call me another "Edius fanboy" (Bill, welcome to the club) - but yes, it beats me why I can add transitions and some curves or CC to my HQ mxf timeline, and it will still play back full speed _AND_ quality in Edius, but not in Vegas (on the same hardware) - not without pre-rendering, that is.

Which is a pity, because otherwise, I like Vegas much more, as it's simply a much more complete solution!

What is significant here and no one has addressed it is HOW BIG YOUR PREVIEW WINDOW IS. If you use the small default preview window then you will get full frame rate from the mxf files even at best auto (unless you have a problem) but make the preview screen fill half an HD screen as I do and even with Cineform you are going to get 5 or 6 fps.

Mike
PS
Happy and a Joyous Easter everyone.

All I know is when viewing my external monitor with Vegas set to preview, the image is soft. When set to full, it slows down as mentioned, but the image looks great on my external monitor. When viewing my external for image quality and color, I have to use full in Vegas.

I'm trying to save my project or clips in vegas to .avi or windows video. I tried "Render as..." and tried to save it in dofferent formats and it either saves blank or it saves it very choppy. Any way to convert these .mxf files to avi?

Again, i'm new to the editing department so your advice is appreciated.

-Dennis

That's what the Cineform codec does. If you are going to use Vegas and EX1 a lot for serious work you need but the standalone codex. That way you ditch ClipBrowser and convert the mp4 in the camera to avi bypassing the mxf altogether. If you go the cheap route and use ClipBrowser so you have the mxf files in Vegas render them all to avi individually using the Cineform codec in Vegas.

Render As>
Video for Wndows>
Custom>
Video>
Format>
Cineform HD Codec

Then edit and if you wish your final work to be avi then do the same again for the whole project.

I did just that and the sound came out perfectly but no video. I want to basicaly downconvert it to a lower resolution HD to send in a file for a friend of mine.