Seth,

What a clear, concise, understandable answer. I just downloaded Vegas 10 and it must do it's thing without me telling it to. The only thing I did was to select my clips in the "explorer window" - right clicked - and selected "add to project media list." At that point it seemed to be doing something to each clip. Anyway, after that, I put my clips on the timeline and it behaves much, much better.

Thank you very much.

Geoff

Maybe not
 

I realize that my clips AREN'T playing smoothly in my Vegas 10 timeline after all. Did you say there is a built-in transcoder to Vegas 10? I can't figure out how to get it to transcode my Canon clips. There's nothing in the Vegas 10 help files about transcoding. Thanks. Geoff

Geoff, have a look at this: How to Transcode .mov Files using Matrox Codecs | Custom Made Computers

Seth,

If you have a really fast PC and a good Cuda enabled video card, you should be able to work with 2 or 3 .mov files in the timeline. Beyond that or with special effects, you will have some stuttering and things get difficult, even in V10. There you can use Cineform's NeoScene to transfer from card to PC in a really good .avi codec that let's your PC breathe much easier. Even older PC's can run several tracks smoothly and modern ones can run many tracks. The .avi files are significantly bigger than the native camera files though.

Fast PC yes, but a CUDA video card will do nothing to help on the timeline. CUDA does ONE thing for Vegas users; it provides faster encoding of AVC files. That's it.

I agree that Cineform is a very useful intermediate codec. Since it converts to 4:2:2, it also allows more ability to color correct without the video breaking down.

Jim,

Looks like you are right on the Cuda. They improved the performance in the timeline significantly somehow, V10 runs better on my DSLR footage than 9.

To use native Vegas capabilities, you'd load clips on the timeline, then render to MXF. There are various batch render scripts that would help render clips individually, if desired. Vegas itself doesn't have a "transcode" function, which is why it doesn't appear in the helpfile or manual. Again, both Cineform NeoScene and DVFilm Epic have demos, they're worth checking out before you settle on a workflow.

I'm running a stock i7-920 with lots of ram, and I'm pretty happy with timeline performance. Since v10 came out, I've done a series of green-screen clips at 1920x1080 with 5d native footage, and chromakey is one of those efx that will slow things down! No complaints here, though, it's working adequately, and I don't need to transcode for these projects. I do most of this editing at Preview-Half, with keys checked at Best-Full, and animated masks checked at Best-Full using RAM pre-render.

It sounds like a lot of work switching between preview modes, but in practice it's really quite smooth.

Preview still stutters- even with V10 and Cinemform
 

I've downloaded and installed the trial version of Cineform and transcoded some files with it. It seems to help playability in Vegas preview, but it still is a bit jumpy. I can't tell how smooth my pans or any camera movement are until I render and watch in a separate player. I have a pretty fast quad core machine with a dedicated "media" drive sharing the shame channel as my program drive. I can't figure out why I don't get smooth enough playback to be able to judge my camera work. Would a Black Magic card help in this regard? Thanks!

Just curious, what processor and what kind of hard drive are you using? Problem sounds similar to symptoms that would manifest if the hard drive is a USB external. Or maybe it's overly full? Or just a slow drive?

If your using the Q6600 processor, etc, in theory it should be OK with Cineform files...but it is not the ideal procesor for playing with HD. It is a generation to old to be ideal; but again, it should work with Cineform. You probably have an i7, right?

Let us know what you're running.

Oh yes, do you have a separte controller for your media drive you can hook up to? It could be choking for that reason, though it is unlikely. It is more likely to be a slow drive, IMO.

At any rate, it does sound like your hardware is choking, or maybe your preview setting is on Best. If so it shouldn't be. Preveiw Auto is the setting I use and would recommend.

Windows 7 64bit
Motherboard ASUSTeK P5N-E SLI version 1.XX
CPU Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz

Measured Speed 2700.7MHz
Bus Speed 300Mhz
Front side bus Speed 1200Mhz

Total Physical Memory 4094 MB RAM (sticks of 2GB RAM DDR2)

I have three drives. The media drive bench marked with the following results just now:
Disk Mark - MBytes transferred per second: 448
Sequential Read MBytes transferred per second 60
Sequential Write MBytes transferred per second 61
Random Seek + RW 2.26

I just did another test.

I put the Cineform file in the timeline and watched it in the preview window at "preview" quality and it ran at 16 fps.

I put the virgin Quicktime Movie file from my camera in the timeline and it played at 29.970 fps.

Maybe you're transcoding using the wrong settings? I don't know.

Your hard drive sounds plenty fast. With Vegas preview dependent on the processor for the most part, I'm suspecting your processor is bogging down. Again it should work for your Cineform files, though.

Just on general principles, if I were editing/processing HD files of any kind, I would consider something a bit more powerful anyway. The Q6600 is a fine processor, but not optimized for video quite like the i7.

Even with the i7 at 3.6 GHz, editing AVCHD is still a challenge, but for a single cam edit I don't need to transcode and things flow well enough. So far I've been able to dodge needing Cineform. I edit so little AVCHD anyway right now.

The Blackmagic card you mentioned, I don't know how much it costs, but as I recall it's pricey. Does it work with Vegas? I guess it does, I've seen it mentioned a lot around here. I would opt for a newer processor before I bought that card, but that is just me.