timeline getting slower and slower

Putas · Post by **Putas** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:21 am

hello

I have very annoying problem with VS 11. In my new project as I am getting more and more clips in it, timeline view is gradually slowing down. As I started with few clips I was not aware, but when I reach about 100 clips in timeline view I must wait almost one whole minute to complete any action. It does not even have to be some editing, even after dragging other window over timeline and moving it back I must wait long time until VS starts reacting. HDD is working after every such action, don't know why, I have lots of free memory. Storyboard view is not affected. I tried working with imported dvd as regular mpeg, then I tried lower bitrate xvids but it is still the same.
I completed two VS projects before and did not encounter anything similar.
I tried clean reinstall of VS and apply patches.
So I want to ask if you have some ideas why is timeline slowing down, what can I do?

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:54 am

Usually this means a PC resource issue. But since I don;t know what sort of PC you have or what processes you are running in the background I can;t off any advice other than:

Increase RAM

Reduce Processes running in the backgroud...which will require some time and effort to research what the processes do before disabling.

Putas · Post by **Putas** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:00 am

e2140 at 2.9 GHz, GF 8800 GTS, 2GB RAM, as I said it is enough, VS won't take more then 0,5 GB. My windows are fine-tuned as usual.

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 12:04 pm

You certainly have enough system resources there...

Post by **Ron P.** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 1:34 pm

Even though your system would appear powerful enough to handle about anything, the format you're editing has dictated differently. Xvid or DivX video clips are very highly compressed. Therefore VS must expand or uncompress this to work with it. Those formats just like MPEG-2 were developed for the sole purpose of distribution, not editing. Because of public demand and ignorance on what it takes to edit video, the developers of video NLE video programs bow to such requests. In my opinion this serves to provide more headaches and frustration to the user. But hey, we're paying for the programs right???

Next important is not so much how much power your computer has, but how it is setup, and managed. There are several methods to tweak your system to get the best possible performance from it. You might want to review Steve's tutorial on Creating a Video Editing Profile.

Do you have more than 1 HDD? If so do you have your working folders set to one of those? The working folder is designated in the File>Preferences dialog window. Setting the working folder to a separate hard drive, will reduce the read/write demand on a single drive. While one drive (where your OS resides) does the reading, while a second drive (where your working folder is set) does the writing. Using just one hard drive, it must do both.

When is the last time that you cleaned house? No, not the one you live in, but your PC? Since video editing requires so much space, and resources, we must regularly do maintenance, such as running Disk Clean Up and Disk Defragmentation. The Disk Clean Up utility provided in Windows, will help purge those Temp Folders of its contents. If you have not designated a specific drive or folder for your working folder, VS will use the default Temp folder, which can cause system slow down.

Finally in Preferences, do you have the Resampling Quality set to Good or Best? This can affect performance while editing. If it is set to Best, try setting it to Good. Do you have the Playback Method set to Instant Playback or High Quality Playback? Setting it to Instant, will not require VS to render everytime you want to view the work you've done so far.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 2:36 pm

Also, the number of transitions, filters, tracks, etc. all will affect the performance.

Putas · Post by **Putas** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 7:56 pm

Thanks for the replies but it is of no help. I believe there is no such general performance issue. I have currently two drives- windows and VS installation on one and swap and working folder on the other.
When I load my provious project also using filters and transitions with around 200 clips and images where source is pretty good quality xvid there is no delay.
Note that this delay occur only in timeline view, I am not complaing about preview speed or anything like that. For example I can just minimize VS window in timeline view and upon maximizing I must wait that very long time- it is like it needs to recalculate/redraw something although there is no need for anything like that.
Only difference I can think of is size of source - 10 hours footage. It is either 25 GB mpegs split into lots of 10 minutes segments or 15 GB xvids split into 6 files. I don't want to loose much quality. I never work with so much before, could it be the sheer filesize is the #####?

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:41 pm

Certainly one small and easy thing to try is to set the pagefile to a fixed size. That's probably part of the info in creating a dedicated video profile. Otherwise, if you let Windows automatically size the pagefile, there can be a significant delay when this happens. I certainly wouldn't suggest that this is the cause of your problem, but it's one more thing you could easily eliminate.

You might run Task Manager, set to be "Always on Top" and in its "Performance" tab, when you next restore your minimised VS window and see if there are any clues in memory usage or pagefile usage. You'll also be able to see how much cpu power is being used too.

Not sure about the Xvid theory - with admittedly only 10 small Xvid clips in my library window and on the timeline, the VS window restore is just about instantaneous on this Celeron M laptop running XP Pro SP2 with 512MB of RAM, 134MB available.

Don't suppose any or all the clips are residing on an external drive are they?

Putas · Post by **Putas** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 12:12 am

I have fixed swapfile size. I noticed one core is fully loaded on each of this delay, but I still don't know why. Memory usage is always very low. No external drive.