Vegas seems slower than usual...

[Renton Maclachlan]

The project I am working at the moment seems to make Vegas (Pro 13) go slower than it has on similar projects in the past.

The computer I have is at the top end of all the Windows test stuff...and I have a Samsung 512gb SDD as my C drive...and plenty of memory.

I'm wondering what could be causing the lag time that I am experiencing.

Yep, I'm aware this is pretty vague but would be interested to know what sort of things could make this happen.

I have some pretty big png graphic files being used at various points on the time line but the lag time shows up not just with them but even when I am imputing text in a text media generator...hit key...lag...letter appears.

I do not have the working file on the SSD. Should I?

Renton

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Large images can have this effect on many editors. You can look in the preferences to see if more cache or ram can be allocated. Or lower the quality of the preview.

I do credit rolls by moving a large graphic and have found it's best done in a separate program designed for animation and special effects.

[Mark Watson]

I agree, that it's most likely the large images. I've had that issue before. Best to keep your project media on a separate drive from your C drive, though I sometimes send renders to the SSD C drive.

Try pulling off the images and check performance. I don't know which part of my newest laptop upgrade is responsible for mostly eliminating the issue for me, but I've now got 32GB RAM, and suspect that's the fix.

Mark

[Jurgen Bauwens]

Could be the picture files but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a windows issue. I am also experiencing some slowdown in vegas sometimes and I'm editing on SSD's in Raid0 which gives me read and write speeds of about 1000mb/s. I think it could be a windows 10 issue with vegas since there hasn't been a windows 10 upgrade for vegas yet. The pc is a dual xeon cpu with 36cores/72threads and a K5000 quadro so plenty of pc power.

[Renton Maclachlan]

hmmmm...It wasn't long ago I upgraded to Windows 10...

In my experience, larger files on the time line could be slow to read when playing them on the time line, but other parts of the timeline wouldn't be slowed down by them. I have not had this issue with the text media generator being slow on input before.

I have 16GB RAM...though I thought I had more than that...

[Renton Maclachlan]

Actually I have:

16GB 'KINGSTON HyperX DDR3 1600' (4GBx4) RAM. The motherboard can take up to 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 2200(O.C.)

I have a ASUS P8Z68 DELUXE/GEN3 motherboard and a ...

Intel Core i7-2700K 3.50GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 processor.

Would 32GB RAM improve matters?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

You're only fast as the weakest link (the software in this case). It also sounds like a display issue.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Renton

Are you using an VFX in Vegas ..they will slow things down dramatically!! I decided to add the "Soft Contrast" plugin to a 4 minute clip yesterday and the render time jumped from 3 minutes to over 16 minutes!!
I'm running an i7 2600 also with just 16GB Ram and on "normal" timelines without any fancy stuff on them. I have Vegas 10 and Vegas 13 so if you still have an older version installed try a test on both versions?? You might have hardware acceleration turned on and the graphics card cannot keep up?? I always keep mine off and have a nice fast machine! Mine will comfortably render 1920x1080 clips to MPEG2 at around 3 times real time.

[Chris Barcellos]

Large images have alway been a problem with Vegas. The best way I found to had it is to convert the image down to the size of you output. That eliminates having to resize each frame during playback or render. Similarly, you can render out a single second or two of you image into a video file, then multiply on the time line for the length you need.

[Mark Watson]

Along the same lines... If I've got still images in a Vegas project with 4K video, and I plan to do some crop and pan on the stills, I'll resize them down to the UHD dimensions before importing them. Sometimes I take it a step further and create a separate project just for the stills sequence, then do my crop and pan and render out in a high quality format that won't cause any issues when brought into my main project timeline with the 4K video footage. These stills are usually a time-lapse, so 2,000 - 3,000 images isn't uncommon.

Mark

[Ian Stark]

Just to add a personal experience - I tend to use Photoshop psd files on the timeline and they can get quite large. They work absolutely fine but I do notice a slow down if I get to around 25/30. Then I convert them to png (but I don't change the dimensions - good idea though).

I have rarely worked with more than around 100 stills on the timeline but even at full original resolution I don't think I have ever experienced a slow down with jpg or png files.

To eliminate (or keep) the png files from your list of culprits, have you tried saving the file with a different name and then deleting the images to see if that has any impact on your issue? Worth a try.

Also, do you have any effects on your master video track that you might have forgotten about? Other things to check are whether you've accidentally knocked down the opacity of any tracks and whether your project settings match your video media, if you have video as well (i.e. is the project trying to convert every frame of video).

Are other graphics intensive apps on the pc running slowly as well? And finally, are other Vegas projects also sluggish or are they performing as expected?

[Jurgen Bauwens]

Did a test with a project on an separate non raid ssd in my pc yesterday. I remember that on windows 7, vegas could easily play prores files from this non raid ssd. Now they don't play smooth at all anymore. It's terrible. When I open adobe premiere, I can easily play 3 or four at the same time from that same location. Motherboard drivers, bios etc are all up to date. My conclusion: something very bad happened with sony vegas on windows 10. I think there have been some windows updates that sony vegas doesn't like. Two days ago I had the same issue on another pc with an Arkaos program. I had to reinstall the software and that fixed it. Maybe microsoft updates are overwriting some dll files sometimes.

[Jay Allen]

This is because Sony gave up on Vegas as soon as they started Catalyst.
I have 4 NLE's with Vegas. 2 on windows 7, 1 on windows 8.1, and one on windows 10.
I build a new system with 20 xeon cores, 64 gig ram, 2- 24gig raids, and a ssd operating drive....and guess what...not a very big improvement, but in Adobe CC it just works. Full rock steady preview!!! Thats all i have been asking for with Vegas for YEARS, and all i get with each new rev is more third party programs.
I guess that Sony is going to stick with the most profitable part of their business, chips and insurance.

[Ian Stark]

20 core Xeon?! Boy I'm out of date!

Having said that, I get solid performance these days with my humble 6 cores. Without effects I'm previewing 4K footage and DNxHD in Best/Half or full screen, smoothly, in real time. With heavy effects I need to drop it down to Good or Preview quality to prevent judder. I can work with that :-)

[Seth Bloombaum]

Although I'm a Vegas user since 1.0 (!), I do have to admit that Premiere's Mercury graphics engine does an excellent job of max performance on any hardware. Adobe sure did that one right.

But, Vegas is so much faster for me... especially for the internal VFX, where on Premiere I'd have to go out to After Effects. Um, and, Vegas' internal sound editing outclasses Adobe's Audition, in my experience, for speed and flexibility.