I thought I would ask fellow XL2 users that edit in Vegas these questions. Why does the CPU usage seem to Double when using an external monitor in vegas and DVD Architect? What will solve the problem? What is the purpose of having the ability to use an external monitor if the quality drops horribly?

I have a 3.0GHZ pentium 4 with 1gb of memory. I just ordered 2gb more of memory, but one member told me that would not help. ANY suggestions please would be great. I added this 26" LCD widescreen monitor to give myself the best picture to edit with, and so far It ain't workin. I am using a firewire cable from the pc to a small mini dv camcorder to convert to analog and then sending to the tv. Thanks.

Hi John,

When you say the CPU usage doubles, do you mean in the Windows Task Manager or somewhere else? And more importantly, doubling from what to what? Going from 10-20% for example would be fine, 40-80% would be another story.

What do you have the quality set on?

Is this a desktop or laptop? What is your Control Panel > Power Options > Power Scheme set to? I know on my P4/3.46Ghz laptop, the Power Schemes make a huge difference. The most misleading option is 'Minimal Power Management' which actually regulates the CPU based on demand waaaay up and down. The idea is the CPU will draw less power when there's less demand. But it doesn't always respond to demand properly, and sometimes underpowers my processing loads, by running at a lower clock speed than really is needed.

I found when running Vegas on my laptop and desktop (AMD Athlon XP 2500+), that using the preview monitor set above the first or second quality setting resulted in less than 30fps playback. You should get *better* playback performance via firewire than video card, because the computer just has to spit out data, and not convert and move pixel info.

Hopefully some of this is helpful? :)
-Eric

Thanks for the input. I am doubling from 40 to 80 or higher on CPU usage when using the external monitor in DVD Architect. I run at about 20% in Vegas until I add any effect, such as brightness or contrast and then boom, it jumps to 70% usage. Can't use Magic bullet at all and view it on the external monitor. I don't get it at all. I cannot believe that one effect should eat up the entire processor. I am installing 2GB more of ram which will give me 3GB total in a few days. I hope this will at least help the problem. When you speak of the power scheme in the control panel, what do you recommend it to be set on? This is a desktop Dell dimension 8400. In vegas, the problem only seems to happen when I try to run any kind of effect. Brightness, film look, etc. Any of them slows it way down to ultimate stuccado. (not worth viewing). I wanted the second monitor to see the results of the effects prior to rendering.

Hi John. This is typical Vegas behaviour and does not really have anything to do with the XL2. So, you could probably get more response in the Vegas forum.

I fond that the external monitor is only really useful for checking colour and brightness. If I want to check motion smoothness or for interlacing artifacts, I usually need to render to new track or render to RAM (depending on the length of the segment).

Magic Bullet is a real processor hog, and apart from being slow on playback it is v-e-r-y slow to render as well. If you want to use MB I recommend that you "crossgrade" to Magic Bullet Editors' Edition which uses the graphics card for hardware acceleration. This will playback in realtime in Vegas and it renders much faster too.

Richard

Hmm, that doesn't sound right. Where are you measuring the cpu usage? In the Task Manager or elsewhere?

What quality is your preview set at? I think that's what makes a big difference.

You can try 'Always On' for your power scheme. I always believed these power schemes were just preset names for the monitor and hard drive powerdown times. I learned this is not the case a couple of years ago, when I got this P4 laptop and wanted to squeeze as much battery power as possible out of it.

What happens if you make your onscreen monitor much larger? Do you have this same problem still?

Are you using a firewire interface on the motherboard, or on a card? Maybe you need a driver update? BIOS update?

Does it capture without dropping frames? You're basically sending the same amount of data out, that you'd be receiving while capturing. It shouldn't be much of a load on the computer compared to running a large preview window onscreen. But I think the quality setting might be affecting things quite a bit here. I don't get smooth playback using the 2 highest settings in the preview window after adding an effect.

I see that another reply came in while I'm typing this. Those could be possible problems too. In any event, the problem is not a result of your camera, it's something with the computer, or slowness in Vegas.. But just one effect shouldn't be a problem, if it's a normal effect anyway. If it's a super CPU intensive one, that's different.. But some normal basic Vegas effect should easily be possible.

Adding more RAM shouldn't really make a difference unless you're almost using all of your RAM right now.

Moving this to a Vegas forum might help too. But it sounds like a bottleneck somewhere. If increasing the onscreen preview size doesn't bog it down, it's firewire interface-related, most likely..

-Eric

It appears to be a problem related to Magic Bullet. I can use some of the sony effects such as Brightness and others without too much effect on the external view. But when Magic bullet is engaged, Wow! It takes the entire CPU for itself. I hate that, because I liked the looks. I have the Magic bullet editor that plugs directly into vegas. Someone recommended Celluloid to me, it is supposed to use much less CPU. I can only imagine the render time on a full length film. I think I will try Celluloid unless someone else has a better suggestion. Running dry, no effects, the external monitor looks beautiful. Simple sony effects are ok too. Thanks for all the input. J

Ahh, glad you tracked it down!

That's too bad it's so resource intensive.. I don't know if you have another machine you could setup as a render farm? I haven't used Vegas' render farm features but maybe there's a way to offload this to another computer?

It'd be nice to combine the horsepower of 2 (or more) machines for previewing/editing. :)

For MB, the best answer is to get the Editors Edition. It really does work. You can download the demo for free and see if your graphics card is compatible.

Richard

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/mbe2whatsnew.html

For MB, the best answer is to get the Editors Edition. It really does work. You can download the demo for free and see if your graphics card is compatible.

Richard

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/mbe2whatsnew.html


I am using the Magic bullet Editors 2. Now you have me thinking the problem may be my video card. My video card is a 64 bit ATI DELL card. It has been an awesome card for everything else, I have never had a problem with it. But how could the video card effect the external monitor? Tell me more... Thanks.

Yeah that shouldn't affect it, if you're going through the firewire connection. But you also won't get GPU acceleration if you're not using the graphics card for display.

Does your video card have another output on it? Most newer cards these days come with 2 or 3 outputs.. Maybe VGA, DVI and S-Video.. Some combination of those. So you may be able to drive your secondary monitor with the video card, instead of the camera. I had some trouble with this, but it should work.

Yeah that shouldn't affect it, if you're going through the firewire connection. But you also won't get GPU acceleration if you're not using the graphics card for display.

Does your video card have another output on it? Most newer cards these days come with 2 or 3 outputs.. Maybe VGA, DVI and S-Video.. Some combination of those. So you may be able to drive your secondary monitor with the video card, instead of the camera. I had some trouble with this, but it should work.

I just checked and I have a Radeon x300 video card. I have not looked on the back to see if it offers any additional outputs, however, The preview screen on the PC monitor is slow and hangs with magic bullet editor 2 engaged also.

I would compare the regular Vegas bundled plugins on the on-screen preview and the camera's output, and see if there's much performance difference between them.

You won't get the speed boost with the other verison of MB, if you use the firewire output, as far as I know, because you're not running through the video card at all.

The easiest way to enable the second output under Windows (if it has one), it to plug it in the other display into that output and then reboot... or turn off and plug it in.. Windows will detect it at startup and assign it as the secondary monitor, because it already knows the one you had previously attached is your primary display.

-Eric

Moved from Canon XL2 to What Happens in Vegas.

I'm a long time user of both Vegas and the Canon XL2. What I can tell you is that the CPU cycles needed to produce a preview image, whether on the computer monitor or an external monitor, is a function of how large the display is and what quality settings you've selected. It's no surprise to e that your CPU usage doubles IF you're simultaneaously increasing the size and resolution settings. If you're not changing either of these, something else is wrong.

John,

I don't know if your problem is the same as the one I had but after adding a second monitor (2 outputs on graphics card) my system not only slowed down on the 2nd monitor but all realtime rendering came to a crawl.

If I simply clicked on a file, it previewed in realtime just fine. But once added to the timeline, it would skip 20 to 60 frames at a time to render the same file.

In my case, discontinuing use of the external monitor did not put the system back in original condition. I wound up reformatting and reinstalling everything from the OS up.


Here is a link to my original thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=70511

At the time, I did several things to my system all at the same time (I should know better) and could not determine which one caused the problem. But I did disconnect the 2nd monitor and changed the settings to use only one monitor, to no avail. I'm just guessing that it may be graphics card driver related.

I hope you have better luck than I did. I limped along for 4 or 5 months before my reformat. Keep us posted on your progress.

Oh those problems are ugly.. Change 3 things at once and it's anybody's guess what went wrong.

But I don't think his video card drivers are the problem if sending out through the firewire cable is causing the same problem. The quality setting of the preview is the problem, I believe.

After checking my video card, I found that I have an HDMI output, so I used it to connect to my second monitor. The picture is great but even slower here. I have no problem with the picture at all even previewing at best full, as long as I do not engage Magic bullet effects. Some sony effects do the same thing, but not as bad. I can live with it. I am still upgrading my memory from 1GB to 3GB, It certainly cannot hurt. In an article I read last night from Cnet.com, it said that the particular card I have is a great card for the dough, but it must borrow from the RAM in order to function to its potential. So, I will add ram and it can borrow all it likes. Thanks.J

Is it a dedicated video card, or a chipset built into the motherboard? If it does share the system memory, it will most likely automatically grab more system memory when more is available. The ATI chipset in my laptop works that way. That will speed up the GPU based effects you may be using.

As a general rule, dedicated video memory cards will have higher performance.

You may want to check with the manufacturer of the Magic Bullet software and tell them about how it becomes unbearably slow and see if they have any advice specific to their software.

Thats a great point Eric. I am certain Red Giant Software will have the scoop on what video card to use. I did download the latest ATI control panel for my card and I must say it is working better than ever. If the hangs get corrected with my new memory upgrade, I will stick with what I have, I am close to where it needs to be. If it doesn't, a new video card is next. Thanks! J

Alrighty, cool.

Did the control panel contain the latest driver? I don't remember if they're together or separate with ATI.. An updated driver should help, an updated control panel may or may not help.. You could try overclocking the video card a little bit to squeeze some extra power out of it while still remaining stable. But I would say work out the other kinks first.

I'm interested to see how you make out with the additional ram.. hopefully that'll fix this :)

The card that was tested with magic bullet was Nvidia 7800 GT and GTX. This is recommended by Red Giant Software and they claim they have fastest real time editing with this. At 30fps with no problems. I ordered the 7900GTX with 512MB Ram in the card and all the latest goodies. I expect a huge improvement from this, I will try my memory first with this card to see how it works though, before adding this video card. I will update you once I perform the installation. J

Oh very nice! I think you'll be very happy with that. :)

Yes I am certain that between the 3gb of Ram and the new video card, this will provide much better performance. But, as I said, I will install just the memory with my current video card first to see if this gives much improvement. This may help someone else with the same problem. I will report the difference here, and then I will add the new video card and give another report. I cannot wait to get the new parts here! J

Sounds good, looking forward to it :)

Well Eric, I got Video card from XFX and I had not received my 2gb memory upgrade yet, so I couldn't wait to see how the video card would improve my system. First, this card is HUGE. I didn't think it was going to fit. After I installed the card and the software I went straight to vegas and opened a file where I had used magic bullet as a video effect. I couldn't believe the difference! I ran the setting on best full and still got a good real time picture from this new card. The card is 512MB onboard ram and the key is the GPU checkbox in the magic bullet effect box. With this checked, all the problems go away. Apparently the processors on the card pick up the slack and allow your CPU to focus on other things. I have not even upgraded my memory yet and I am tickled pink. The voice is just tiny bit ahead, but it will not hurt in editing and it will go away when rendered. If NVIDIA offered an adjustment for this, that would be great. I know when using the 1394 firewire DV card option, you can adjust the frame lag to compensate. Not so with the Dual view monitor mode. At least I am not aware of any. But as I said, it is such a small difference, It will not affect my editing at all. If I decrease picture quality, that problem goes away also. But, when editing, the picture is what I want to have the most power dedication. That is what you are going to be putting on DVD, so it must look right to properly adjust color saturation, etc. I will again update you once I get the new Ram installed. But for now, I can swear by the NVIDIA by XFX 7900 GTX extreme edition Video card. It came with tom clancys new ghost recon game also. (not a big gamer though). The card also came with the VGA adapter for monitor, and an HDMI adaptor so you can use rca cords with it. This card Rocks! For those of you wishing to use magic bullet, you need this card. I will put a fresh post on this site to alert people of the solution from CPU hog from magic bullet. Later! J

Awesome! I'm so glad that fixed the performance problems. I'm not sure offhand of any way to sync the audio and video, but you might want to experiment with the different modes NVidia offers. The dualview, clone, span, etc. Each has its pluses and minuses. The big thing is if you're using different resolutions on each screen, you're restricted to dualview, I believe.

You may be able to fix your sync by lowering the image quality slightly.. Go to Display Properties, then Advanced.. then I forget the next click, but anyway go to the OpenGL or DirectX tabs (whichever Magic Bullet uses) and lower the quality setting there. That will speed up the rendering and may be unnoticeable. That should help to sync things up for you. I get your point about the video mattering, but I had a shoot last week and used a laptop as a recorder. The screen was delayed maybe 1/3 of a second or so, and looked good, and I got the general idea. But it wasn't the same as looking up at my lcd viewfinder and seeing it at the same time I heard the person speaking.. perfect sync is way better than nearly perfect, when you can compare the 2. :)

Has anyone had any experience with SLI mode? Installing a second SLI compatible card and using both to get better performance? I bet that would be awesome. I have done a little research, but it mostly talks about 3-D gaming. I just wonder if the results would be worth considering this option.

Hi Jesse, I just now really got to take the time to read your old thread with the frame skipping problem. I have never had a real problem until I tried using the Magic bullet plugin. Apparently it is a pretty serious CPU hog...but, a new video card upgrade to the NVIDIA 7900gtx with 512mb ram did for the most part, solve all the issues. It will still hang a tiny bit on the BEST FULL setting if I add any other effect with magic bullet. But, it is 100 times better. Magic Bullet is great, but uses a lot of power. Fortunately, the GPU on the new video card provides MAGIC bullet with most everything it needs. I am also using two monitors now, the second being a flat panel LCD widescreen 26" TV. I love having the clear picture of my material to edit. Best Regards. J

I haven't used SLI mode, but basically it combines the power of 2 GPU's into one. I believe you'll still get dual video outputs from the combination, but can't get more than 2, though you'd have 4 on the computer at that point. Or would it be 5 including the factory video (or was that a card that you removed?)

Anyway, that should give you about an 80-90% boost in performance over 1 card I would imagine. Usually doubling the power on anything doesn't quite give double the performance. Same with dual cpu's vs single.

You *will* need to be sure your power supply can handle the load of the 2 video cards and all of your other internal hardware. If it can't, there are several power supply vendors I can recommend. Not all power supplies are created equal. The more expensive ones will pay for themselves by outputting cleaner power, and wasting less energy as heat (which then needs to be cooled by your air conditioning or whatever, which uses even MORE energy).. And power supplies are rated by the maximum power they will put out, not by their continuous draw.. So you could get a 1200 watt power supply, and it may draw less power than a 400 watt power supply, given the same load. Because the 1200 is most likely a more efficient design. So it costs less to run even though it has a higher number and makes you think it's gonna use 1200 all the time..

But anyway, if you want to run SLI, check the power supply and if you need another, I'd be happy to recommend some for you. :)

Eric

I think I will stick with what I have. I never thought about the power supply not handling it. But that is true. Also, when I spoke with XFX about getting another card to SLI them together, he said the purpose of this is to put the cards together for the benefit of ONE monitor. He said running two monitors would not benefit at all. But he did say the 2GB memory upgrade WILL add to the performance of my new card.

Hmm, I'm not sure on that. I would check to see about using a pair of dual output cards and getting only 1 output from the whole sheband..

Here are some videos that may help. I haven't watched them, just came across them for you..

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_diy_videoguide01.html

Congrats John, I use MB myself and am looking around for a 7800 GTX and am also considering running in SLI. I do my work in HDV so hopefullly 7800 GTX in SLI will give me decent rendering/preview performance in HDV.

Altho some ppl say that the geforce cards are gaming only, the 7800GTX uses the same gpu as the quattro fx 4500, but costs much less.

Some people say AMD processors are for gaming only too.. Just because companies go where the money is, and do well at at it, it doesn't mean their stuff doesn't work with other things.

Horsepower is horsepower, as long as it's code-compatible, it works.. :)

I do understand the concern with the Geforce video cards. Most do say they are for gaming only. But, only because that is what they generally are used for. However, reading from the XFX website, they give you the reasons why you SHOULD use these Nvidia cards for editing. Furthermore, magic bullet tested their software in VEGAS with the 7800GTX. Go to Red Giant's website and read the findings. They recommend these cards for their software. There must be a reason. I would recommend this though. If you are looking at using the GTX cards, I certainly recommend the 512mb. You will get much better results.