Solved Had my preview smooth and good quality. reset settings and now it's horrible. what did i do!

A few months ago when I started using the program I was able to get the settings setup so that my preview was good quality and ran smooth. I reset to defaults and now for the life of me I can't get the preview screen running in any workable quality. Even on draft quality it runs choppy. Need help figuring out what setting I was using that made it run so well. I don't remember doing anything other than pressing a couple buttons but I can't figure out what I did. please help

Hi enchantor

I think I just replied to you on YouTube.
Make sure to read and watch this tutorial here:
www.moviestudiozen.com/free-tutorials/sony-vegas-pro/553-sony-vegas-zen-tips-3-preview-lag

Regards
Derek

Unfortunately I have meticulously gone through all the settings and watched all your videos and read more articles and still nothing. In my previous configuration, I simply adjusted a setting or two in MS13 to get the preview screen smooth and great quality. It was as simple as a few clicks of the mouse and I know it was a general setting because I never had to do anything special between projects. I simply opened MS 13 and started editing. Big files too: gopro 1080, 4k drove videos, etc.

I will set the cash reward starting at $20 to the first person who can tell me what setting I have wrong, I am desperate to get back to editing!!!!

Thank you for the response additional help greatly appreciated

Which exact program and version are you using ?

Please note that if you are working with a different type of video file than what you normally use, this may be what is causing the lag.
Some video formats are extremely compressed - this means they need to be decompressed when editing in real time.
Examples of this are GoPro videos.

The best solution is to use GoPro Studio and convert .mp4 into .avi cineform, which is much, much easier to play back in real time.
Once I know which program and version you are using, I can advise further.
What is in your project will also affect Preview Window playback.

I am editing using both goro and 4k video from a DJI drone like I always do, nothing different than what I've been using since day 1. I am using Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13. Given that I had this problem when I first got the program and resolved it after messing around with a setting, 'm nearly positive there's a very simple fix. I just can't seem to remember what it is I did. But it went from terrible choppy video to smooth crisp video preview. If only I could repeat whatever that step was that I originally took.

You know what I figured it out I think.

I've been using 4k video from my dji drone and gopro video without any problem so i improperly assumed vide off my iphone 6 would be a piece of cake. Turns out adding that to the video was causing the problem. Is this common? clearly i need to convert my iphone video to some other format. Recommendations?

My B

sony movie studio 13 platinum

No, I'm the idiot. I haven't got my glasses on. Because now I can see you did answer in another reply. :blush:

The first thing in your equation that is the No.1 factor affecting your preview window, is that you are using 4K video !!!
You need a very powerful CPU to edit 4K video smoothly. Technically speaking you should be using a 6x Core or 8x Core CPU.

The second thing that is affecting your Preview Window, is the type of video you are working with.
GoPro video is highly compressed, as I have already mentioned in a previous reply.
For best results and performance with GoPro video, you should be first converting it to Cineform.avi by using the free GoPro Studio Software.
shop.gopro.com/APAC/softwareandapp/gopro-app-%7C-desktop/GoPro-Desktop-App.html

The third thing affecting you is the iPhone video.
iPhone video is a pain to use on Windows computers. It uses weird Frame Rates that cause big problems in all video editing programs.
Because it often imports as a weird non-standard frame rate, this puts a bigger strain on CPU and therefore bogs the Preview Window down to a crawl.
I recommend converting iPhone video to H.264 .mp4 using a Video Conversion program and making sure it gets converted to a standard Frame Rate like 30fps or 25fps (depends on what country you live in).

Now when you get into Movie Studio Platinum 13, my advise is to make sure ALL your videos are converted into Proxy Videos, using the Proxy Video Conversion function.

If you reset the program, this would have turned ON a feature that automatically converts ALL your 4K video into easier to play Proxy Video files.
You should notice that as soon as you import any 4K video, it starts to convert in the bottom left corner and takes quite some time to do.
If you go to Options/Preferences/Video - you will see a setting Automatically create video proxies for Ultra HD media (4K video).

For all other video, you need to manually convert to Proxy Videos, which improves playback quality while you edit.
Go to Project Media tab after importing videos and then right-click any non-4K videos and select Create Video Proxies.
If it is greyed out, it means a Proxy version already exists.

The final link in this chain is your Preview Window Settings.
For Proxy Video File versions to playback on the timeline, you need to set Preview Window to Draft or Preview quality. This forces "easier to play/edit" proxy videos to play back while you edit. Setting the Preview quality back to Good or Best, forces original HD versions of videos to play instead - when this happens, you will most likely notice lag again, which is normal !!!

When it is time to render, original 4K and HD versions are used to render the final video.

Thank you for you invaluable advice on using this software. Ironically, it wasn't the 4k or gopro video that gave me any problems. The proxy video it creates by default works nicely and the preview is crisp and smooth. The culprit was the iphone video I threw in there that I never had before. Having used gopro and 4k without any problems. I didn't even consider that as being the turd in the punch, but it was. I will start looking into converting my iphone files. Can you recommend a program?

Again I am perplexed by Apple's insistence on being "different" and thus causing such an unnecessary problem like this one.

I use Any Video Converter "free edition".
www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/

I do not own an iPhone, so I am not sure if it works OK in AVC.
Try and see if it works.
There are literally 100's of different Video Conversion programs. Keep trying different ones until you find one that works well for YOU :idea: