Video card for i7

[Ron Cooper]

I have just built a new editing PC using an i7 930 2.8g / 12g RAM and am using a Radeon 5850 video card. However, I find that I get drop outs when playing AVCHD clips on the timeline with Power Director 8. (Win 7 64bit) DV clips are fine.

Is this video card not so good for this or is it likely to be something else ?

RonC.

[Robert Baynosa]

power director pre renders avchd into an intermmediate format for faster preview. it takes the program sometime to do this render and you will see a yellow mark on the lower left of your clip in the media room. this turns to green once the clip has been fuly rendered.
it could be that the clip hasnt been fully rendered yet hence the stutter etc. check the yellow/green box.
if the stutter happens during non 3pu accelerated transitions, it it usually due to a lack of cpu power or hdd speed. what i do is pause it and then play it again. that usually gets rid of the stutter until the next transition and i repeat the process. your system seems to have hefty components though, but try it out still.

[Bruce Phung]

My i7 920 6gigs with NiVida GTX260 work great. No problem with drop out what so ever.

[Ron Cooper]

Thanks guys. - Actually I was only doing a test run from the timeline with no transistions or effects applied. I had just dropped the clips into the timeline & hit play. However, as you say Robert, maybe I didn't wait long enough for it to do the intermediate render which I assume it does automatically and all the time.

I will retry tonight.

I normally use Vegas Pro 9 but I like the simplicity of P/Director for simple tasks, and especially the fact that it can process my AVCHD at 24Mbps. which Vegas can't. I am just trying out PD before I buy it.

RonC.

[Robert Baynosa]

Originally Posted by Ron Cooper

Thanks guys. - Actually I was only doing a test run from the timeline with no transistions or effects applied. I had just dropped the clips into the timeline & hit play. However, as you say Robert, maybe I didn't wait long enough for it to do the intermediate render which I assume it does automatically and all the time.

I will retry tonight.

I normally use Vegas Pro 9 but I like the simplicity of P/Director for simple tasks, and especially the fact that it can process my AVCHD at 24Mbps. which Vegas can't. I am just trying out PD before I buy it.

RonC.

im quite sure it has something to do with the intermediate render called shadow files. however for a fast system like yours, using shadow files actually slows down the process as you have observed. you can actually turn this feature off by going to edit>preferences>general and untick "enable file processing to speed up hd video editing". this will force power director to render hd video on the fly and could get rid of your drops and stutters. try it out too.

pwer director is great for simple/intermmediate videos and it encodes quite fast too.