Dear Jay,

Quote from your last post:

"Prior to Vegas 7 it wasn't practical to use .m2t sources because of lackluster playback and edit performance, but that limitation is gone. And since the playback performance of the Cineform intermediate in Vegas 7 has degraded significantly (compared with Vegas 6), it is no longer the preferred option unless you are doing multiple generations of rendering."

Has the playback performance of the Cineform intermediate in Vegas 7 degraded significantly? Is this Sony's position, or have you seen this yourself?

I haven't seen Sony comment about it, but I have observed it myself. As have others on both forums (Sony and this one). You can check some of the commentary in the Cineform Software Showcase area on this forum. Their CTO comments that Sony has changed the way Vegas is making program calls into the Cineform codec, and the result is slower playback.

I don't have actual playback framerate comparison data to share. Some people might have posted these observations in the forums..

For a project I'm working on that does require multiple generations of rendering, I am using Vegas's "takes" feature to put both an .m2t and the Cineform intermediate on my timeline. When I do playback, I view an .m2t take. When I render, I switch active take to the one with the intermediate. I did all this because it was necessary to run the footage through DeShaker in VirtualDub, making the original .m2t not an option for final render.

I ve been monitoring this thread, having asked the original question. And yes, my question was intended to address intermediate v. "native" editing.
Of course, coupled with that is equipment needed as well as the way Vegas 7 now handles both methods of editing...

Jay's and Dan's posts are getting to the heart of things. It is interesting that Jay's post indicates that Vegas 7 seems to have taken intermediate editing a step backward. Does anyone else have an indication or comment on this ?

Dear Jay,

Thanks for the udpate. I did not know that the Cineform intermediate was slower under Vegas 7.0.

Thanks for everyone who pointed me to the right choice. I got my upgrade and what a big improvement as far as using native m2t. In Vegas 6 I get a 8.8xx frame rate playback on raw m2t..now with 7 I get 29.4XX-29.9XX. These are all under the preview auto quality. I'm very pleased!!

A good friend is having difficulties with this very issue. According to him, the Cineform forums have additional information on this.

And yes, he was screaming along at full framerates on a custom build Athlon X2 box with Vegas6.