I was an AVID user then switched to Final Cut Studio. I have been playing around with Vegas to use as a PC tool.

What I have found interesting is that that file that seems to work the best for me in terms of performance has been a photojpeg Quicktime file. It seems to work even better then DV based AVI files which I found a bit odd. Even 1280x720p 24p video played perfectly with the preview set to Best Full.

I have tried HDV, AVCHD, Cineform, Matrox codecs, SONY MXF and DV and they all seem to choke during playback of any type of effects. Most of the formats do not even play back at full quality.

Now granted I am not playing these from the fastest system in the world but it is my iMac that can edit any form of HD in RT in Final Cut Studio and Premiere Pro. I should at least be able to play back a cross dissolve between 2 DV AVI files in SONY Vegas. I was ready to give up on Vegas when I discovered how well photojpeg Quicktime files work. I can play back dissolves, filters on both clips all at Best full in the preview monitor. They even play at full framerate fullscreen on my second monitor.

Has anybody else noticed this odd performance boost or am I just lucky that for whatever reason my system likes Quicktime. I also tried this on a crappy AMD quad core PC desktop and the same thing. Any photojpeg Quicktime file screams in Vegas while any other format will hardly play at all. I actually find this software almost usable now.

Just so everybody knows I actually really like Vegas but the playback performance has been killing me compared to other software.

I can't comment on your quicktime files, don't use them. But Vegas is known for being relatively decent with most typical formats. I edit three cameras at a time using SD Widescreen avi's, no problem.

Your issue is likely your hard drive is choking, or your pc is old.

People edit on old Core Duos around here all of the time.

You didn't share what your editing with, so it is nearly impossible to know what is happening without more information. Is the .mov on the same drive as the avi? Also, your preview window may be set to too high a setting...go to Preview Window, click Preview - Auto. Uncheck scale video to fit preview window for best quality.

The issue isn't with Vegas, unless your settings are not optimal.

The first system is a core 2 duo 3.06 Ghz Apple iMac running bootcamp with Windows 7 64. Yes it is not the fastest system but Edius, Premiere CS5 and Final Cut Pro slice through SD and HD video on this same hardware like butter.

The second system is a AMD Phenom 2.2 Ghz quad core. Again not the fastest but Most multi threaded software actually runs better then the core 2 duo.

Yes all video was run from the same drive.

I did state that I was playing at best full quality in the preview window. Of course preview and draft work better but my point was that Quicktime works so much better even at Best full. I was even able to edit a 3D camera track and playback in RT at Best full in Vegas when using a quicktime file.

While the systems I was trying at home are not optimal compared to systems we use at work it should be noted that there is a clear performance difference between the different formats. The Quicktime files played back at what I would have expected due to the hardware. The AVI files not so much. Also keep in mind that the quicktime files were photojpeg at 100% quality which typically has a slightly higher datarate then DV AVI files. I understand that typically RT editing in Vegas is done at Preview quality but I just found it odd that I could get the same performance with Quicktime at Best full.

If Vegas is not working well for you, Premier has decent playback, you might try it. I personally don't care much for it.

JPEG algorithms are generally intra-frame only, meaning they have no need to compare two frames to extract the image. Each frame is complete on its own.

Perhaps the memory in the AMD is slower and/or setup badly, so the codecs that don't have to reference different frames to build one up perform slowly, but as a JPEG frame gets built entirely from one place, it is faster? Although DV is only intraframe also I believe.

HDV is interframe if I'm not mistaken.

I have no way of making Photo JPEG MOV files here, so I'll have to take your word for it. Although I'm almost certainly going to buy the Morgan JPEG codecs as an intermediate.

If Vegas is not working well for you, Premier has decent playback, you might try it. I personally don't care much for it.

The point wasn't to try something else but to figure out if others have noticed the same thing. I also am not a huge fan of Premiere. Overall I really like Vegas.

JPEG algorithms are generally intra-frame only, meaning they have no need to compare two frames to extract the image. Each frame is complete on its own.

Perhaps the memory in the AMD is slower and/or setup badly, so the codecs that don't have to reference different frames to build one up perform slowly, but as a JPEG frame gets built entirely from one place, it is faster? Although DV is only intraframe also I believe.

HDV is interframe if I'm not mistaken.

I have no way of making Photo JPEG MOV files here, so I'll have to take your word for it. Although I'm almost certainly going to buy the Morgan JPEG codecs as an intermediate.

Yes DV AVI files work exactly the same way. I have worked with many other formats in the past and even wrote a few mpeg2 tools to use with Avid software. I say this only to point out that I have a lot of experience in different video formats and understand how many of them work at the programming level. This is of course why I was so shocked because typically Quicktime doesn't work as well as AVI on PC systems.

By the way anybody who has Quicktime installed can create Photojpeg compressed videos. It is one of the built in Quicktime codecs.

I just installed QT7 in an effort to see if I could create Photo JPEG, and indeed, as you point out, now I can.

I created one, and the original DV and the PhotoJPEG both play fine on mine. Watching the CPU usage, it actually seems to me that it probably averages a little higher on the PhotoJPEG than the DV.

My machine is not bad, but it`s no powerhouse. AMD Phenom triple core @ 2.1GHz, 3GB RAM. Score is 5.9 on average with the windows 7 'Windows Experience Index', but only 4.8 on the graphics score.

Is it possible that you somehow have a different DV decoder installed that performs sub-par? Vegas uses VfW, and it only allows one codec per type. I don't know if the basic codecs like DV are externally changable with Vegas though.

I do have the Matrox codecs installed on both my systems which I believe does have it's own DV codec. I also know of a lot of Vegas users that use these codecs for the HD codecs as an alternative to Cineform. To be honest Cineform never worked the best for me either. This is on both systems. I guess it could be possible that the Matrox codec doesn't work as well but I find that hard to believe unless all the other Vegas users that use the Matrox codecs no longer edit DV so they may have not noticed any performance hit. To be honest I don't really work with DV anymore and use strictly HD. I was mainly using DV as a benchmark to try to figure out why Vegas has been performing so bad for me on both systems.

Craig which version of Vegas are you using by the way? I have heard Vegas 8 was a lot faster for some people. I am currently using the latest version of Vegas 9 64.

One other question for anybody.

Has anybody ever been able to play back any type of 60p video in Vegas. I have some projects that are 1280x720p 60p and no matter what I do they will not play back very well. They were shot AVCHD but I tried converting them to MXF 35 and 50 as well as the trial of Cineform with no luck. They all played better then the AVCHD clips but not by a lot. If I render a 60p photojpeg I can at least get a consistent 30 fps playback but it still isn't perfect. FCP on this same iMac has no problem at all playing 1280x720p 60p at full quality and full framerate with basic color correction and dissolves in RT. So clearly the hardware is up to the task and it all comes down to the software.

Craig which version of Vegas are you using by the way? I have heard Vegas 8 was a lot faster for some people. I am currently using the latest version of Vegas 9 64.

VMS 10, so probably more like 9 32bit.

Just a small update here.

I just reformatted my desktop system and installed a fresh copy of Windows Vista 64 and Sony Vegas 10 64 trial and nothing else. I still get basically the same performance as before with AVI and MOV files. Quicktime Photojpeg plays with a better framerate then DV AVI files. The really odd thing is that because of Vegas 10 I can now play my AVCHD 1280x720p 60p footage in realtime in Vegas. Even dissolves work at Preview/quarter. So the dissolves with raw AVCHD footage work as well as DV AVI.

Since I don't use this system very much except to convert files I am thinking of trying to install XP with Vegas 10 32 on it to see what I can get for results.

I also have the option of upgrading my cpu from a 2.2Ghz quad core to a 2.8Ghz 6 core for $200.00 and am considering doing that if it will actually help with Vegas. I am well aware that it will help with rendering since benchmark comparisons show this cpu upgrade on average to be over 2x faster but what I am really looking for is RT playback performance.

Since Vegas 10 is optimized for Windows 7, it would seem logical that would be the OS to use.

Incremental hardware upgrades are often not worth the trouble, IMO. Why not get the fastest Intel pocessor you can afford and forget it? Processor is key for Vegas, so you always want the fastest processor you can afford.

Because upgrading my AMD cpu is $200.00 compared to $600.00 to $800.00 to build an Intel system. Plus the AMD 6 core cpus are known to equal many of the below $1,000.00 Intel cpus give or take a few seconds depending on the application. I really doubt spending the extra money on a i7 940 over this AMD cpu is going to really make a huge difference. Of course moving to Intel is not just the cpu cost but a new motherboard and upgrading to 8 GB of DDR3 ram. The AMD cpu for me can use the same motherboard and will also work with either DDR3 or DDR2 ram so I do not yet have to upgrade the ram and motherboard.

This AMD cpu upgrade is not just an incremental upgrade. This dumpy system I bought has a AMD Phenom 9500 cpu. This is the first generation Phenom cpu's that were very slow compared to the core 2 quad Intel cpus. On top of that the 9500 which is a quad core is only clocked at 2.2Ghz. So for me upgrading means moving from 4 core to 6 core, moving from 2.2Ghz to 2.8Ghz, moving from Phenom 1 to Phenom 2. All of these make this a pretty huge performance jump and means at least a 2x performance jump with many applications being closer to a 2.5x performance jump. That is almost on par with a Intel 940.

PhotoJPEG works great with Vegas.

I work primarily with RGB (not YUV) footage... even 1920x1080 plays well, tho i usually see more 1280x720 on my timeline... system currently is dual Xeon 2.83GHz with 4GB ram on 64bit OS. i use it to swap out TIFF/TGA sequences regularly.

if ur working with 4:4:4, PhotoJPEG 100% is as close to lossless as you'll ever need... and anyone with any version of QuickTime can read it or write to it.

excellent codec.

Ok another update. Just for the heck of it I downloaded and installed the trial of Vegas 10 32 bit. I have been testing out the 64bit version but since some people mentioned great results with the 32bit version I figured I might give it a shot.

WOW

I can now play DV AVI at Best full quality with dissolves, track motion and color correction in RT on the same system. I can even add extra layers and filters if I drop down to preview half. Not bad for a cheap system.

AVCHD seems to work about the same which does playback in RT as long as there are no effects.

Interesting... that isn't something I'd thought of.

One other thought that just struck me, what mode were you using it in? 8bit or 32bit, colour that is. Perhaps the 64bit version defaults to 32bit projects, but the 32bit on defaults to 8bit?

Another thing I find interesting with the new Vegas 10 is that AVCHD plays back better then mpeg2 based material. I converted some of my 1280x720p 60p AVCHD clips in Vegas to a MXF template that matches the format and it will not play back at full framerate in the 32bit or 64bit version no matter what the preview window quality setting is at. AVCHD on the other hand will playback at the full 59.94 fps even at Best full quality.

How odd is it that I can edit AVCHD material better in Vegas then my footage from a SONY EX1? By the way I was even playing the AVCHD clips directly from a 6x SDHC card while the MXF footage was directly from a SATA drive.