Real-Time Playback. V8

[Simon Denny]

This is from the Sony product page inregards to The Vegas Pro 8 Workflow

Real-Time Playback and Nondestructive Editing
Playback and edit video effects, transitions and composites on-the-fly without rendering while viewing each change instantly on external monitors in real-time. Vegas software takes advantage of the PC's processing power by caching complex processes or effects directly to RAM for smooth frame-rate playback and previews.

I'm still using version 7d and the preview window is stuttering even with a few small amount of fx and levels on tracks. I'm getting about 7-12 frames a second.
Does V8 fix this problem?
If i go Quad core will this help real-time palyback?
Or is this problem still the same in V8.

Cheers
Simon

[Mike Kujbida]

Have you tried doing RAM renders on specific sequences?
Have you tried looping the sequence and letting it play a few times?
Either of these does it for me with a RAM render being the quicker of the two.

I just tried a quick test (cross blur between 2 clips with one media FX (NewBlue Halovision) per clip) on 7.0e and 8.0b.
Both took 5 loops of the cross blur transition segment before they hit 29.97 fps.
Normal playback was full framerate but, once the FX was added, it dropped to between 15 & 20 fps.
BTW, this is on a QX6700 quad core.

[Simon Denny]

Thanks Mike,
Yep i know that trick of letting it loop a few times but what a slow procces, oh well i wonder if other NLE'S have the same problem.
One trick that i do is, un-dock my preview window and for some reason this really helps with playback performance.
I just did a test as i write this and with the window un-docked and it set as best full, it took 8 trips around a 1.17 sec clip to get to full frame, 25fps play back and this was wuth a truck driving by as my footage with saturation boost up a bit.

Oh yeah....
Simon

[David Hadden]

Other NLE's handle this differently, whether it's extreme optimization to requiring pre-renders for changes to the footage, to pre-rendering. Not to mention those that just have high priced hardware that drive full framerate realtime previews.

There's a difference between realtime previews and full framerate realtime previews.

Shift+B Ram Renders are the best way when you're doing work, ( then it just renders the selection region to RAM and you can view it at full framerate ( assuming you have a lot of FX otherwise you should be getting full framerate on just a simple clip w/o FX ) Lowering your preview settings will help with this too. In intense sections of super heavy composites ( 20 plus layers, 3D planar compositing etc... ) i just kick it down to draft so i can see the motion and then pop it back up and RAM Render when I'm done and review how it looks just to make sure it's right.

Dave