Help Getting Video Preview to play smoothly?

[Christopher Young]

Jay there is nothing exotic at all in my raids.

When I say 4 to 6 drive raid I mean just simple e-SATA 7200 rpm HDs. I’m using WD Black Caviar drives in Raid 0 for speed. Not worried about redundancy because should a raid fall over I can always reconstruct it quickly and drop the files back on. It’s then open up the Vegas project where it will most likely request a file re-link so you just navigate to the new raid and find the files and all is well.

All my drives in the raids these days are configured as software raids under disc management in Win 7 Ultimate. If you want added security you can always use Intel’s Matrix Storage Manager where you configure a firmware raid in your Bios.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...ntel%c2%ae+RST)

I used to do this all the time so as to never lose the raid config plus the Storage Manager Software lets you monitor the health of your raid and can warn you of any impending disc issues. Coming from the old school of 72GB Ultra Wide SCSI drives on the old Discreet Edit* Win NT systems you would understand why. You had to save your raid config or you could lose the lot with a system failure.

I guess I’m getting lazy these days as I find modern drives if kept well ventilated and cooled, especially enterprise quality drives that are designed to run 24/7, are very reliable. For years now I have been using Western Digital ‘Black’ drives but next time around I would use their ‘Red’ drives which are designed specifically for raid operation.

A four 7200 rpm drive raid 0 will give you as I previously posted very low CPU usage with uncompressed. Just as a double check I have just run Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test on a 4 x 7200 raid 0 and it indicates that it could handle 10 Bit RGB 4:4:4: Write / Read in 1080i and in 10 Bit YUV 4:2:2 Write / Read it can handle 1080 50p. Seeing that most of my material is Matrox 50-mbit 8-bit I am well in the clear.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Jay Morrissette]

That's amazingly inexpensive. I'll give that a try.

In experimenting with FCPX, I noticed that a project in which the source footage was about 20GB had somehow multiplied itself to become 325GB. Using your method of creating an uncompressed file in Vegas, it would only have been slightly larger.

Can you be more specific on how you use a script to create the uncompressed file in Vegas?

thanks again for your help.
~Jay

[Christopher Young]

Jay, it’s probably easier to explain this in images so have a look at the attached JPGs.

JPG 01 = select all your clips.

JPG 02 = tools / scripting /add regions to events (This script is not a standard inclusion in Vegas. Download the attached script and drop it into your scripts folder in Vegas. Next time you open Vegas it will be in the scripts menu. There is also a ‘Rescan script menu folder’ option if Vegas is already open.

JPG 03 = Once you have done the above your timeline should now look like this.

JPG 04 = The next step is to run the ‘Batch render’ script. This is part of the standard Vegas selection of scripts.

JPG 05 = You will now see the batch render menu. Select the template you require and make a selection from the bottom three options. Normally this would be ‘Render Regions’ if you want to keep each clip as a separate identity, your choice. IMPORTANT NOTE: Browse and name and nominate where you want these files to go otherwise they will fill up your system drive in no time with their default location!

One last point. If you modify and save a new render template for any reason you will have to close Vegas down and re-open before the new template will appear in the batch render dialogue.

Give it a go and be surprised.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Juris Lielpeteris]

There correct scrip, sorry, Christopher...

[Christopher Young]

Doh! My bad. Finger trouble again. Thanks Juris. Would be hard to do it with the other one.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Jay Morrissette]

Thanks Chris, that's really helpful.

I'm always amazed at the power that's available in this often under appreciated NLE.

~Jay

[Christopher Young]

People who knock Vegas don't know it. I have delivered over four hundred, yes 400 + one hour TV shows covering everything from sport and entertainment to docos along with countless TV spots and yes all produced on Vegas Pro.

I am 5 episodes into the official Government production of the "History of the Royal Australian Navy." to commemorate the Australian Navy's Centenary. Over 3000 hours of archive material that has ranged from SD to HD from MPEG to Uncompressed from NTSC to PAL and with most of the old material in 4 x 3. All the old 4 x 3 material has had to be scanned and panned and key-framed. Every single clip has had to be graded and all the old archive material has had to be 'Neat Video' noise reduction treated. All of this has been done INSIDE Vegas with very few issues.

A big job in other words. It started in V10 and has now evolved through to V12. Vegas' ability to handle any format, any frame rate, any dimension, any bit-rate and almost any codec natively on the timeline is where it has blown the others away. We also use Premiere, Edius and Avid. All very strong in many areas but overall on a five year project like this where we are shooting in XDCam HD and having to integrate it with battered WWI 4 x 3 footage Vegas has proved to a most versatile, capable and stable 'craft' editor. In conjunction with the Decklink HD cards it has been great to work with.

Vegas flies under the radar most of the time. It is just another tool in the tool set but if it is used well is a very powerful tool.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Graham Bernard]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

People who knock Vegas don't know it.

Great statement! I'll quote yah - if I may?

Grazie

[Jay Morrissette]

I have been using Vegas for years. Our world wide radio broadcast used Vegas Audio 1.0 the day it came out. It was only in 2013 that we stopped using Vegas Audio 2.0 for the broadcast. The reason for the change was that the old engineer retired, and the new guy preferred something else. He uses Nuendo.

I use Vegas video mostly as a hobby. At work I have Vegas 12 installed and use it primarily for occasional in-house videos. To date I have only produced two publicly released videos. I guess you could call it professional because I was paid to do it, and they each have about 10,000 views on YouTube.

I think the challenge in America, is that almost everyone is obsessed with Macs. It's nearly impossible to be taken seriously as an audio, and especially a video professional if you don't use a Mac.

Early on, we used Macs with Sonic Solutions for audio. About 12 years ago, I made the switch to PC because I believed the best tools for the job were on a PC, and the PC was better for networking back then.

If Vegas were more sexy looking without losing any functionality, and were available on the Mac, I bet it would get the respect it deserves.

For me personally, after my home Mac experiment over the Christmas break, I am a firm believer that Windows is better. I tried the Mac because I was under the impression that it would be better for video.
Here's where it let me down:
I use a Sony video camera, OSX Mavericks QT won't play the the video files.
I use a Sony SLT camera, OSX Mavericks won't show the raw files.
Old DV footage won't play natively in QT
FCPX creates an insane amount of temp files which equates 10 times the size of the source footage!
FCPX has no master bus for audio. How do you keep the mix from clipping?

All that to say, I love Vegas!

~Jay

[Christopher Young]

Oh yes, the Church of Apple. Plenty of Mac adherents down under believe me. Though I know a few died in the wool FCP editors who felt incredibly betrayed when FCP was dropped. Some of them had major investments and numerous seats of FCP. That shook the faith.

Not trying to start an Apple vs. PC thing here but have you noticed when you go into a major Apple store that the top chosen products are displayed on tall display stands that sit on elevated platforms. Very much like an altar on a dias. Brilliant subliminal marketing without a doubt. I will say no more on this particular subject other than to quote Abe Lincoln

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

All platforms can produce good programming. It's all down to the people, a good script, great story telling and well cut vision backed up with a great sound mix.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney