Vegas Slow Down
 

Vegas (ver 6.0a) has recently started to show only about every 5th or 10th frame when previewing a project. I didn't think too much of it at the time I started to notice, because I knew I had done several things that could have been the cause of the problem and didn't have time to try to resolve it. But now I can't seem to find the problem or resolve it. Previously, I could preview my project at the "Best (Full)" setting and it would show full, crisp, smooth video.

I did several, unrelated things, about the same time (I know, don't ever do this without verifying at each step, I just didn't have the time, at the time.) and don't know if I changed a setting in Vegas or made some other inadvertent change. Here is the sequence of events as I remember them:


My system (IBM Intellistation Z Pro 3.07 Ghz with 1 GB RAM) has the ability to drive two monitors. I hooked up a second monitor and activated the monitor in the "Display Properties" dialogue in Windows XP.

I added a a Maxtor 650 GB external firewire hard drive.

I was using a Sony TRV900, 3 CCD DV camcorder with 4:3 standard DV resolution at 30i. I switched to a Canon XL2, using 16:9 in 24P mode.

I stopped capturing to tape and started capturing directly to a Thinkpad using firewire to my XL2. The captured clips were not segregated as separate files, all of the takes on a single capture became one large file, even though I stopped capture and restarted capture. So the files I was dealing with were much larger (longer duration) than normal. And I had to crop them much more than normal. I have since resolved the larger file issue.


This is when I noticed that the system was no longer letting me view at full frames in Best resolution within Vegas. I also noticed the system building proxy audio files, which it had never done before.

I don't know how much video I captured or edited between the time I changed the monitor to the time I noticed the slowdown in replay. I may not have captured or edited anything or I may only have edited previously captured (from the Sony) video, I just can't remember.

I originally thought that there must be something in capturing directly to the Thinkpad that made the files larger (maybe more information in the file). I checked by capturing a 10 second clip directly to the Thinkpad then capturing a 10 second clip from a tape, both on the XL2, both on the Thinkpad, with the same settings (16:9, 24p). The files were the same size.

I changed the monitor settings back, to support only one monitor. This had no effect.

I put some original Sony, 4:3, standard DV files (old ones) on the internal hard drive (moved them from the external Maxtor) and brought them up in Vegas from the "C:" drive. This didn't help.

It also seems to take longer to render a finished video. I never paid much attention before but I recently rendered a 16:9, 24p 720 X 480 wide screen of 3:40 of finished wmv, video and it took about an hour and 20 minutes. I recently rendered a 7:32 video and it took almost 2 ½ hours.

I'm at a loss. This may be something I have to live with but after being able to preview in Best (Full) mode and now only being able to preview in "Draft (Full)" mode, it slows down the entire process. Not to mention the fact that rendering seems to take a lot longer.

I apologize for the long post!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

First of all, update Vegas - version 6 really became usable for me at 6.0b and it is currently at 6.0d.

Secondly, I usually preview at "Preview (Auto)" unless there is something specific that requires the higher preview setting. If you've done anything to the video, I can see "Best (Full)" dropping frames to keep up. Also, make sure you haven't accidentally done something to the video - such as the track levels slider being below 100%, for instance.

I've updated to 6.0d, unplugged my firewire hard drive. My drives are not near full and all my settings match the video, 4:3, 29.970, etc.

Strangely, I can preview a clip in the "Explorer", in Vegas, it plays great. If I then take the same file and drop it on the timeline (by itself), it is choppy.

In the past, it was nice to be able to preview the video at full speed, at full resolution, at full quality. Since I no longer have this capability, it slows down the process because I either have to skip frames (missing potentially critical content) or I have to view it at very poor quality, not being able to see what my video will look like until the final render or only being able to look at specific frames in best quality.

HELP!

Help
 

Anyone have any suggestions?

I didn't read your entire post;

Drives in DMA?
Drives not filled to the rim?
Got any opacity reduction happening in the header?
FX accidentally left on a header?
Scopes turned off even tho they're not visible?
No FX on the master video bus?

These can/will all cause stutter/slow down on most systems.

DSE,

Thanks for the reply.

This just started.

My drives are not full and no settings have been changed for them and it acts the same whether I load a new project and put a simple video on the timeline or if I load a previously used project.

So, no opacity reduction in the header, no FX in header, no FX on master video bus.

"Scopes turned off even tho they're not visible?" I plead ignorance. Are your referring to the video scopes in Vegas?

BTW I have two other (slower) systems that are not having this problem. I'm now afraid to transfer projects from this system to the other two.

i was on a duo core AMD 4200 and i was having playback problems -- after i set the dynamic ram preview to 0 (from 400) no problem playing back ...

Don,

Thanks for the reply. I set the dynamic RAM preview to 0. I am still having the same problem. The other two systems I'm using don't have the problem.

Any suggestions appreciated.

What are your project settings? 4:3? Widescreen? 24p? What are the clip properties? Do they match?

David,

my project settings are 16:9, DV widescreen, 24p, and the video was taken at these settings, so the project and the original video match.

BTW, I've even loaded some older video 4:3 standard, 29.970i and set project appropriately and it still runs slow.

If I select the file in the "Explorer" and set it to auto preview in the play window, it plays fine. It is just when I drop the file on the timeline that it gets slow and at one time it played fine on the timeline.

Do you have anything running in the background outside of Vegas?

I have checked the processes running and there doesn't seem to be anything abnormal. Nothing is using more than a bout 2% of the CPU besides Vegas. Which leads me to believe that it must be something in Vegas.

Also, if I use any setting above "Draft" it skips frames.

I am having the very same problem and am banging my head against the wall trying to figure it out.

The system, is a Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800 dual core processor, with 2 G of RAM. Vegas is set up to run off of a 15,000 RPM harddrive and we are exporting out via Firewire to a Canopus device which splits the signal to two preview monitors. The storage drives connected are (2) 500 gig 7200 RPM. Neither absolutely full.

There are 2 MAJOR problems I'm having.

I preview in "preview/auto" mode and it starts out fine. Then starts playing jerky after a minute or so..dropping frames. This does not happen in "Draft/Auto" mode. Then, if I render something out and bring it back in, it will play fine but the audio will go out of sync with the video.

However, when we look at it in Premier, everything is fine. No problems at all.

PLEASE help me figure out what is wrong. I haven't had this problem with my other system that has Vegas.

Vegas Slow Down
 

Run task manager before you start vegas (or anything else)
Click the column that shows CPU utilization (CPU) - this sorts on that column.
Start Vegas; keep an eye (resize windows or whatever u haveto do) on the CPU utilization; start dissecting anything that appears to be popping up an inordinate amount of time.

If explorer is consuming a lot of processes, you may have spyware/virus. They embed themselves in the internet explorer which shares processes with windows explorer.
I usually try to stop (via services.msc) any process I can get away with and see if performance improves. Compare what you see with other PC's.

PS "System idle process" should be the highest, if you are not doing anything.

2) Look in event viewer - look for red items, specificly ATAPI and DISK events - pending disk drive failure. Also look for other events that started after you started seeing these sysmptoms.

Also, corrupt display driver (disk or other ) could be causing this.

3) Check Hardware Mangler (ok Manager) - make sure you don't have the ! or ?
4) Check vegas log file.
I did catch the info it plays in explorer, but how about windows media player or similar?

My gut instinct is it might not be a bad idea to reinstall Vegas right over the top of the existing install. or de/reinstall... If it plays ok outside of vegas, likely a part of vegas is at issue. Also resetting the preferences (can't remember the command) on vegas start would be a good idea before doing a de/re. Good luck.

Thanks for the tips Jim! I have actually watched the CPU's utilization and its negligible, however you got me thinking and I can't be sure I've watched it throughout every process so I will give it a shot.

This PC has never touched a network, so I doubt it could be a virus, but just to make sure nothing has come over through a removeable drive, I will check it out with a spyware blocker and virus scan. It is possible someone could have loaded something on at the studio without me knowing it.

I guess I'll have fun trying to fix this thing against my deadline.

Anybody else have any suggestions?

~J