Frustrating problem with preview

SP · Post by SP » Wed Jul 05, 2006 10:56 am

hi folks,

ok, i'm really stumped as to what is causing this terrible lag i've got,
Every time i go to preview my project, it jerks and stutters from the very first frame, basically the preview comes to a standstill but strangely enough, the music track plays fine.

I'm using a series of small clips taken from a dvd encoded in DIVX format
with short transistions between them. It really is getting tiresome now trying to view how my project is going. This problem was minor in VS8, i didn't suffer half as much lag as VS10+ is producing.

I've gone through most of the proceedures, reduced my system to the bare minimum of programs running, defragged and cleaned out my temp files, but still i get this annoying slow down, anyone shed any light on why this may be?

I've also tried changing my working folder and preview folder to my external harddrive but it seems to always default itself back to my C drive.

My system is running 512 ram, 160gb HD, 2.0gh processor - i'm using project settings for output to dvd (MPEG2 Configuration)

If anyone has got any ideas or theories, i'd be greatful to hear them.

Many thanks,

Dave.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 12:27 pm

You don't say if you were using files from exactly the same source (i.e DivX) in VS8, or something else. If you were using DivX files, then I am stumped from the outset since DivX is a form of mpeg-4 which happens to use the carrier format .AVI but is not AVI as we know it i.e. either uncompressed or slightly compressed as DV/AVI. And VS8 was simply not able to deal with mpeg-4 files. As it is, VS10 is supposed to be able to do so, and I personally have had not trouble importing, editing and outputting to mpeg-4/DivX (using the DivX 6.2 codec). But quite a few other people have lots of trouble with it. Could be a computer thing (i.e different architecture, fewer/different computer resources), but I can't say for certain. But I am not at all surprised that you should be having difficulty in trying to manipulate an mpeg-4 format... Mystified as to what causes the problem, yes; surprised, no...

SP · Post by SP » Wed Jul 05, 2006 12:40 pm

I used a Ripper called DVDTODIVX to get the files, then imported them into VS8, they worked fine and i had minimal preiview lag, and this was before i had modified my system to run minimal tasks & software besides my vid editor. Perhaps it would be worth me upgrading my ram to 1gig, not sure i would see much difference in performance though?

I guess I'm a little impatient though, i don't want to have to wait for a high quality preview to render just to see a several seconds of edited footage, i'm really stumped as to what is causing this slow down. Perhaps it has something to do with my amount of transitions? i have a heavy amount, but as mentioned before, this wasn't as big a problem when using VS8.

I'm still trying to set my temp folder and working folder to run from my external hard drive but VS Seems to return my configuration to default and work off the C drive everytime i do this. Changing my preferences to run from my external drive - would this perhaps improve my preview quality and/or performance of VS?

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 4:03 pm

SP wrote:I guess I'm a little impatient though, i don't want to have to wait for a high quality preview to render just to see a several seconds of edited footage, i'm really stumped as to what is causing this slow down. Perhaps it has something to do with my amount of transitions? i have a heavy amount, but as mentioned before, this wasn't as big a problem when using VS8.

If you have your properties set to High Quality Preview, then you are going to have to wait for it to render. Set it to Instant Playback for, um, instant playback.

SP · Post by SP » Wed Jul 05, 2006 4:11 pm

Yeah that's the problem though, the instant playback is terrible, the audio plays fine but the video clips barely play, they get stuck and/or lag really badly. It's annoying having to change to high quality playback and wait for the render, i'm totally baffled as to why VS10+ is so sluggish on the instant playback, especially when i've followed most of the system reccomendations and proceedures to increase VS performance.

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 4:21 pm

SP wrote:Yeah that's the problem though, the instant playback is terrible, the audio plays fine but the video clips barely play, they get stuck and/or lag really badly. It's annoying having to change to high quality playback and wait for the render, i'm totally baffled as to why VS10+ is so sluggish on the instant playback, especially when i've followed most of the system reccomendations and proceedures to increase VS performance.

See my Post on your other question HERE

Ron P.

SP · Post by SP » Wed Jul 05, 2006 4:27 pm

Thanks for the feedback, i've just noticed i've kind of made a double topic on the same thing (Sorry about that)