What is wrong with Vegas
 

I just get new CPU/mobo - super fast Quad Q9450 with 12 MB of cache memory on it and SSE4 instuction for video encoding; 4 GB of PAM and fast Nvidia 8800GTS (with 640MB RAM ); my mobo runs 1333 MHZ. Prety decent system BUT... when I edit HDV video in Vegas preview rate is just 13-14 fps!!!!!!!!! When I play that HDV video in WM player or VLC it plays full resolution 29 fps. What's wrong with Vegas!? Only time when I have 29fps preview is when I set it to Best/Quarter. It sucks.

Yea, Vegas sucks.

You should have bought Avid Xpress Pro, or Edius Broadcast. Then you'd be living large...

I suggest you only set the preview to Best when you want to capture a still. We always monitor video using "Preview/Auto".

I'm sure there is a minor setting that should help. Vegas uses only cpu and you should have plenty. Maybe more help over at the Sony site.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/default.asp

With such a computer, you should get full speed preview in "preview" mode. Here's how:

1. Make absolutely sure that you use the M2T files with the right "Project Properties" template (e.g. 1080/60i). If you don't use the right template, then Vegas' speed decreases as it has to also calculate the video resize.
2. A faster editing way would be to set the temp folder on one drive, and the footage itself on another (NOT USB/firewire drives though, Vegas doesn't always like that on *some* systems). But this is just optional.
3. Right click on the preview window and de-select the "Scale video..." option. Make sure that "Simulate device..." option is selected. Set the preview quality to "preview (auto)" (you don't need "Best" quality to edit, the default is "preview(auto) on vegas).
4. Go to Vegas' settings/preferences and on the Video tab tell it to use 4 or 8 threads. If you experience random crashes, go back to 2 or 4 threads. The fewer threads the more stability, but the more threads the more speed (for a hyperthreaded/multi-processing/multi-core CPU like yours, that is). It's a trade off until Sony fixes all their multi-threaded bugs.
5. If you are using 32bit editing, then it will be naturally slower. Because of that, I personally use 8bit editing (selectable in the "Project Properties" window of Vega Pro).

I use a three+ years old P4 3Ghz with 3 GB RAM, which is much slower than your multi-core PC in terms of CPU speed. On the "preview (auto)" quality, I don't get *any* dropped frames, unless I add plugins. When you add plugins the speed naturally decreases.

I hope this helps.

with preview "best/auto" and do not scale the video I have 16fps in hdv
I use 8bit of course and 2 threads; I don't know what is wrong!

>with preview "best/auto"

As I said, use "Preview/auto", not "best". What you get, 16fps, is normal for "best" quality (which is overkill for the most part of editing). And make sure you used the right Project Properties template too and the other things I mentioned above. Please put all of the above suggestions into action before judging vegas.

the thing is that system is powerful enough to play such HDV file in full resolution on 24" moitor 29fps; so it must be some limitation in Vegas when if placed in timeline (not using any filters) will play only 13-14fps - this is not enough. Now, this is strange: I closed preview window and render HDV pragment to HDV 1080 mpeg2 file and I see that all 4 processors work btwn. 72% and 88%??? All other programs are not running; why they not utilize more than 88% power??? just to run windows itself doesn't require 12-28% x4 cpu power. Strange.....

It's not Vegas. It'll be your configuration or projects settings.

I run an edit machine half as powerful as yours and have absolutely no problems cutting HDV. Either m2t or intermediate AVI's. All play beautifully.

Naturally, if you've got a stack of colour correction going on or complex transitions then it will start jerking around. But, find me an edit system that won't with a ton of FX going on for the price if Vegas!

Sadly I'm not computer literate enough to help find your answer! But I'm pretty sure it's not Vegas.

I'd be willing to bet he hasn't adjusted his threads to one per core. That should make a significant difference.

>play such HDV file in full resolution on 24" moitor 29fps

You don't understand. Vegas is NOT a player. When Vegas loads an .m2t file on its timeline, it does A LOT MORE than just "playing the video back for you to view". This "a lot more" work is done under the hood, and it's done for editing purposes to help the Vegas engine to do editing stuff (sorry for the funny sentences, I have to write as simple as I can so you can understand). You use Vegas to edit, not to watch videos. Different rules apply, because Vegas is an editor and doesn't play with the same rules a media player plays.

So, because of this, don't expect Vegas to playback your .m2t files in 100% speed on the "Best (auto)" format, not for another 5 years maybe.

You should not be using the "Best" preview option to edit, unless you want to view something in its finest detail (e.g. when you are color grading). For any other editing purpose you should be using "preview" quality in the preview window, NOT "best". And you said that you have a 24" monitor. If this is a 1920x1200 monitor and you use it as a "preview second monitor", then please use "preview (full)" instead of "preview (auto)".

And again, don't forget the rest of the suggestions I gave you. All this will help you edit at 100% speed, until you add plugins/transitions (then, the speed will decrease again -- and that's normal).

Finally, another pointer: on a 1920x1200 monitor that you would use as a secondary preview monitor, you will get DECREASED performance than if you were only using a small monitor, or the preview window as a small window. The reason for this is because the graphics card has to work EXTRA HARD bandwidth-wise to deliver 1080p video, rather than a resized version of the video. When I used to not have a second monitor and used the preview window at 1/4 of the overall size of the video (640x360), I would have the "preview (auto)" size run at 100% speed. But when I got this 1920x1200 monitor, the graphics card has to work so hard to deliver so many megabytes per second to both monitors (and full screen 1080p video on one of the secondary monitor), that I had to go down to "draft (full)" to get the speed I used to have before. Now, your PC is faster than mine, so I do expect you to be able to watch "preview (full)" on a secondary 1080p preview monitor at full speed with your PC (after you have followed the rest of my suggestions and have not added plugins/transitions that is).

I hope I didn't confuse you enough. :D

this is very interesting....
preview windows scaled to 800x450
- with Preview set to Best/Auto without scaling, Vegas shrinks it to 640x420 size and plays it blury at 26fps (very bad quality)
- with Preview set to Best/Full and WITH scaling it plays full 29fps
conclusions anyone???
it looks like it is some seting in vegas
(I changed threads to 1)
O, Eugenia...thank you for such plain english...but I am not doing any editing, just try to play it in the timeline and I am not worrying about my 8800 Gts wth 640MB it plays everything flawlessly even on two monitors
I was trying to use raw files from Sony PMW EX1 and it was so huge that Vegas couldn't handle it (in preview best/auto it played them 3-4 fps...) I know that for editing I don't need best preview all the time but it is
inconvenient to switch it back and forth when I need to see some details. I agree with Stuart for the money it is good software although not professional.

Sigh...

>640x420 size and plays it blury at 26fps (very bad quality)

Right click on the preview window and de-select the "Scale video..." option. Make sure that "Simulate device..." option is selected. You should be using resolutions that divide exactly with 1920x1080, and that should be 640x360, not 640x420. You achieve this by doing what I say above.

And if you still get blurriness, it's because you didn't use the right "Project Properties" template. Please use 1080/60i or 1080/50i depending if you are on NTSC or PAL country.

I wrote all that above, but you obviously ignored me. If you are going to reply here, at least do us the courtesy of trying the things we are suggesting. We are only try to help here.

Eugenia, take it easy...
you don't understand; I dragged the timeline window un and down to scale the preview window so I could achieve 29fps preview; that happened when it was on 800x450; if you have any hdv file on hand please do it on your computer exactly as I described above and let me know what happens.

> I am not worrying about my 8800 Gts wth 640MB it plays everything flawlessly even on two monitors

It doesn't matter how fast your gfx card is. If the video is very heavy to decode, there will be a performance hit, no matter if you have the greatest gfx card on earth.

>I agree with Stuart for the money it is good software although not professional.

Vegas Pro is professional. Is FCP or Premiere any faster? And before you answer:
1. Are you sure that FCP/Premiere don't use the "preview quality" by default on their preview windows?
2. FCP by default *transcodes* all footage to ProRes or AIC before editing or playback, so you never use the original .m2t files. This means that FCP can playback faster than an editor like Vegas which uses the native files for editing. But this also means that you will have to wait for the transcoding and having huger files on your hard drive.

Vegas is pretty much as fast as it can be for using native files to edit instead of transcoding, so each to its own.

>if you have any hdv file on hand please do it on your computer exactly as I described above and let me know what happens.

I said above what happens. M2t plays full speed on my old P4 3Ghz when in preview quality in 1/4 of the size. It is very slow on Best quality. This is all to be expected.