Can I improve edit playback in the project view, please?

[liviococcia]

Hello Members
I'm using Videostudio x4, a recent installation on a 2 week old 'Dell Inspiron one 2320'. The computer is an 'All in One' and runs great generally.

Members, I seem to remember when I was running what was back then the Ulead version years ago, and, that it was better to have a second hard drive as a scratch disk for the realtime, or Timeline project playback, the reason I ask, I still suffer some jerky-ness when picking 'Project' in the edit playback window, I do not suffer problems when rendering the project as a final video format.

The Dell spec is the highest I could get, a i7 intel 3.8 processor, 8gig ram, 2tb HD, 1gig Nvidia Gforce GC, Intel HD sound card, with a monitor of 1920x1080 Full HD, the USB is 2.0 (3.0).

If the idea is a sound one, what changes do i make and where in the settings do I make them, also would using a 16 gig Patriot flash dongle be any good, or should I get a bigger HD for the job, either 30 to 60 gig SSD or bigger 7200rpm HD type.

Your help would be great.

Kind regards
Livio

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Livio
and welcome to the forums.

Poor project playback when editing HD video can sometimes be improved by using Smart Proxy.
Although X4 has Smart Proxy enabled by default it is worth checking that the actual files have been created, View the Settings-Smart Proxy Manager—Smart Proxy File Manager, the proxy file names resembling the original.
These do take some time to create and closing VS before completion will terminate the process.
Once created the thumbnail in the library and on the timeline show a small double icon, for want of a better description.

Can you confirm that you are using SP and that files have been created.

Some users have found that although the files are created when re-booting the program the files are lost/not saved???

[liviococcia]

Thanks Trevor, thanks for your help.

I'm not at my computer right now, but will be later tonight.

I'm guessing that it's probably doing this 'Smart proxy' thing because when you first place a transition between two clips, the first time you play that part of the clip, it seems to play very jerky as if it's rendering the preview, once this is done if you then click on the 'project' button in the playback window, it plays much better with far less stutter in the clips, and the transition concerned.

But I will check and post back Trevor, if it's the case that it is using this 'smart proxy', refering to my initial post, would a second external hard drive in a USB 2.0 socket help improve the playback, and easy on the internal hard drive use any?

Regards

[liviococcia]

Hello Trevor, yes your correct Smart proxy was not enabled, i now see the small double film strip icons over the video clip thumbnails, and as you've said playback is perfect in the clip edit window now, thanks for the advise.

But just for a little more advice please, as i only have the one hard disk in the computer (C drive), which contains the Windows 7 64bit os, would it still be beneficial to have some sort of external USB hard drive, just to reduce the burden on the 'c' drive, possibly just to reduce system resource use, or for the Smart proxy system to use?

As i mentioned, i have a 16 Gig Patriot Flash drive, these drives are meant to be quite fast, and may react like a solid state drive if used for this purpose, or would a regular fast spin hard disk be better?

regards
Livio

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Livio

As far as I know Smart Proxy should have been enabled by default. But at least you have things running a little smoother.

Hard Drives
Video uses a lot of disc space, a standard definition will use 4 gb per hour, high definition much more.
16 Gb Flash Drive is not going to go far when working with video.

You show your hard drive to be 2 TB that is quite large enough to handle your videos.
Your operating system will only require a small amount of the 2 TB, may be 100 Gb max. (depending on what you have installed)
Using an external hard drive would be required where the main HD is of limited size or indeed filling up

Generally a large hard drive would be partitioned , C for the operating system and D for user files. View My Computer / Computer to view the drives.
If not partitioned I would create a separate folder to hold my video files.

[liviococcia]

Thanks Trevor, again as you mentioned another external drive is actually not recommended (after reading the Corel 'Knowledgebase', and VS x4 Manual), especially as my only sockets are USB 2.0.

VS x4 creates a 'My Projects' folder when it installed, i keep my footage under 'My Videos', i also use this same folder for any final rendered movies made by VideoStudio, so i don't know i that's right or not.

I do have other issues, which i've just done a new posting in the forum, it involves Boris Graffiti and the final render play quality, see below:-
http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=44769

Thanks for all you help Trevor, i hope you may have the answers to the above posting.

kind regards
Livio