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I'm trying to use X2 for the first time to edit a video, starting with loading a 16-minute AVI file into it. Compared to working in VS11 and earlier, X2 seems really sluggish and slow to respond to mouse clicks, menus, etc.

Bringing up Task Manager, I can see that vstudio.exe is using a lot of CPU time "in the background", but obviously it's also affecting my foreground work adversely. Is it doing some sort of "smart rendering" of the video clip? Is there a way to turn this feature off?

Also, if my final target is MPEG in prep for creating a DVD project, should I set the project properties to my MPEG target or leave them set to the properties of the AVI clip?

That sounds a bit strange. I find X2 if anything a noticeable amount faster than previous versions. The only exception I have found is loading high definition clips, whether HDV or AVCHD -- the latter being just a fraction slower than the former. However, on my Quad, that is only about 2 seconds for the clip to actually become selected/highlighted. Once it is, however, then it can be dragged and dropped instantaneously like other files. And VS11.5+ had the same reaction time for these files as well. At least for me, I stress again...

So I guess the first question is exactly what kind of AVI you are talking about... There are literally hundreds of video formats which use that wrapper extension.

As for (smart)rendering in the background, VS only uses SmartRender -- as its name suggests -- during a render. Unless you have VS set to produce full previews ('High Quality Playback') instead of Instant Playback, no render is done. And if you *are* rendering, then as always, there should be a dialogue box which allows you among other things to toggle SmartRender on or off.

As for the question of project properties, it again depends on what your
AVI actually is. If, for instance, it is pretty standard DV/AVI, then I would leave the project properties in that format until you finish editing. Then I would render it to DVD-compatible mpeg-2. However, if the AVI is some other format e.g. DivX or XVid or QT or MJPEG, I personally would probably be tempted to not just change the project properties, but actually convert the individual videos from their AVI format to DVD-compatible mpeg-2 (or even DV/AVI) before attempting to edit them.

Thanks, Ken. My video is all files that were made by a 3rd party from my old 8mm films. The clip properties indicate that it uses "DV Video Encoder - type 2" compression, 720x480, 4:3, 24-bit, 29.97fps. These films were mostly on 400-ft reels and the AVI files are 3-4 Gb in size, so maybe that has something to do with it.

FWIW, I just reloaded the project and the program is responding fine now. I'll know more when I process the next film. Other than that, VS X2 seems to have rendered a good MPEG video for inclusion on the DVD, so I guess I'm back in business.

gordonwd wrote:I'm trying to use X2 for the first time to edit a video, starting with loading a 16-minute AVI file into it. Compared to working in VS11 and earlier, X2 seems really sluggish and slow to respond to mouse clicks, menus, etc.

Bringing up Task Manager, I can see that vstudio.exe is using a lot of CPU time "in the background", but obviously it's also affecting my foreground work adversely. Is it doing some sort of "smart rendering" of the video clip? Is there a way to turn this feature off?

Also, if my final target is MPEG in prep for creating a DVD project, should I set the project properties to my MPEG target or leave them set to the properties of the AVI clip?

Video rendering is one of the most intensive tasks performed by a computer and if your motherboard fans are a bit clogged will even cause a machine to overheat during this rendering process. when rendering a video you should not use your computer for any other purpose and should leave it to do its work.

You can improve the rendering performance (on an XP machine) by
Creating a Video Editing Profile

sjj1805 wrote: when rendering a video you should not use your computer for any other purpose and should leave it to do its work.

I always leave it alone when I am explicitly rendering a video, during which VS uses all of the CPU's capacity. This post was just commenting on VS's apparent CPU-usage activity in the background while I was trying to edit the (large) clip that I had inserted.

Are you using the Smart Proxy feature? If so, VideoStudio may be converting the clip to the low-resolution format automatically (I believe it does so the first time you insert a high resolution clip into the timeline). If you bring up the Smart Proxy Queue Manager from the Tools menu, you should be able to see what it's working on.