I recently purchased Vegas 7. I downloaded the connect HD trial software. I have a Duo Core Intel 2.1, asus P5W DH motherboard, 2 gigs of ram, esata 3/gbs 300gig seagate drive, and Quadro FX 560 card. I am also using a Canopus ADVC110 for preview.

I captured clips with Connect HD. I converted the files to cineform and kept the m2t files. When I play the files on the computer the cineform files are slow and choppy. When I play the HDV files they play nice and smooth. I'm using a 24P file. The files are from the V1U. The frame rates are showing up properly in Vegas. All playing at 23.98. I know that cineform files are bigger but I have heard they play much smoother then HDV. Why would mine do the opposite? Also, the files play choppy with or without previewing on the Canopus ADVC110. I should add that in the windows media player the cineform files play smooth.

Vegas is ease to mess with the playback settings. Start with preview half.

Okay, I feel a little dumb now. I'm trying to rap my head around Vegas. I have only been using it for a day. I previously was working in FCP 5. Things here are a bit foreign. When I adjusted the preview to half it played just fine. Does the codec create a reference file based on settings?

Thank you for your help.

The quality of the preview has a lot of settings -- too many in my experience. You should set it to the resolution and quality needed to complete the edit, then render out using best quality. You can run the preview in best, but that mainly results in a lower framerate.