Why is my video preview in my video editor choppy?

Question

I used Sony Vegas Pro, and other video editors. When I click play in the editor to view my changes its playback is very choppy. I used to have 1.256 RAM more than enough. But why is it so choppy?

Answer 1

When editing using complex systems, such as the Sony Vegas Pro, your video can be choppy. It's probably not an issue of RAM; though intense HD editing may require a bit more, like 2-3GB.

   One problem could be that you are using multiple video effects. When you have various tracks on the timeline, with many transitions and video effects, the preview in the Canvas window may be choppy. To solve this, try pressing the "Render" button occasionally, while editing. This will give the project a chance to process and incorporate all of the complex commands. It should run smoother. If not, don't worry, the problem will be solved once you finish and export your video.

hope that helps...

Answer 2

As above, try rendering, also check the preferences / user settings for playback.  Many programmes (certainly Premiere and Final Cut and Avid, never used vegas so cannot say for sure) have a reduced quality playback setting to save on rendering etc.  Could be your timeline playback is set to low.

This lets you see things like captions and colour correction almost straight away, even on basic pcs with lowend video cards, the trade off is that the quality is reduced.

Before you dump to tape the system will render to high quality, it lets you work faster rather than previewing every effect, etc.